bushido and Fabrication, Japanese sword making part 4

So far my tasks on this project have been pretty basic.  I picked out a blade, forged and filed some copper and carved some wood, but my next task was a bit more complicated.  There are four more metal fittings on a Japanese sword, and I had to make each one by hand.  The fittings I made were the shitodome (pommel),  fuchi (collar), tsuba (guard) and the seppa (spacer).  These metal fittings are often referred to as "furniture" for the sword and they are considered to be an art form unto themselves.  Authentic examples of antique sword furniture are prized by collectors and many examples in museums are considered to be national treasures of Japan.  I decided to fabricate the fittings from metals that I could easily form and solder.  I chose brass and copper.  Copper can be easily softened through heat treatment (annealing), as I mentioned in part 2, and brass can be easily machined and filed.

The fuchi, seppa and tsuba all needed a slot in the center to accommodate the blade.  The cross section of my blade is rectangular so I needed rectangular slots in all these parts.  The first thing I did was sandwich together two pieces of 1/32" brass and one piece of 3/16" brass.  The 3/16" material would become the tsuba, one piece of 1/32" material would be come the seppa and the other one would become the top plate of the fuchi. 

 

The sandwich was soldered together with low temp solder.  Then I clamped it in the vise of the milling machine.  I used a 1/8" mill bit to cut the slot in the center of the sandwich.  

The ends of the slot were squared out with files.  Lastly, I took a torch to the sandwich and separated the pieces.  

After making these parts I then started forming the copper for the fuchi and shitodome.  This process is very similar to making the habaki.  The copper is softened and tapped to shape around the wood hilt.

  I was essentially making two collars that would fit the hilt.  

Once the copper collars were formed to fit, I soldered the seams shut with high temp silver solder.  The shitodome had a piece of 1/8" thick brass soldered on top of it to make it into a cap.  I then soldered one of the slotted pieces on top of the fuchi.  The next step involved a lot of filing and shaping to make these pieces into smooth rounded parts.  After they were shaped I bead blasted them with glass beads.  I then attached gold plated dragonfly and leaf ornaments to them.  The seppa was cut to shape and then the edges were hand filed into a braided pattern.  It was then buffed with a Scotch Brite pad.

The final step was to hand brush black enamel onto all of the fittings and then apply three coats of clear lacquer.  In the picture above from left to right you can see the finished shitodome, the fuchi, the tsuba and the seppa is the brass part in the foreground.  The fittings came out pretty nice.  They wound up looking like machine made parts.  In the end, making these parts was a very rewarding process-- though I will admit it was a lot of work.  At this stage things became very exciting because there was only one more task to do: finishing and final assembly.  Check back soon for part 5-- the finale of this project.  Thanks for looking.