Osafune

Today I travelled about 4 hours to the small town of Osafune, just outside of Okayama. I wanted to visit the Japanese sword museum there because on the second Sunday of each month they hold demonstrations of traditional sword crafting techniques.

The strength of the Japanese sword comes from continually folding the steel over and over again by heating it in a furnace and hammering it. The demonstration was of this particular technique and did not show the creation of the sword itself. There were other areas of the museum where there were demonstrations of polishing a finished sword, engraving a sword, and creating the sword hilt.

Heating up the steel.




Glowing hot steel.




Hammering it flat.



Here's a short video showing the technique of hammering the steel.




After the steel has been hammered and re-heated it is then folded.




They ended the demonstration after hammering and folding the steel a few times.


One of the other demonstrations was a professional sword polisher polishing a finished sword.









Some swords on display.











This one was for sale.



The price tag. That's about $12,000.