Thread: Western style Japanese blade in grafted purpleheart / maple

This project has been on my bench for years. I work on things as the mood takes me. This razor is a western style Japanese blade which I acquired a long time ago. I reground it on my bench grinder, and then handsanded it up to 2000 grit, after which I polished it with my dremel and chromium oxide. The Tang reads 'Parker Ltd, Made in Japan-Tokyo, Best Silver Steel' and 'swedish steel'. The blade is 11/16

There was one peculiarity on the tang. It doesn't show on the picture, but there is a line across the tang, on both sides, as well as on top and below. No matter how much I handsanded, it would not go away. I finally figured out (also because of the shape of the lines) that this must be a heat treatment line, probably indicating the shape of the clamp that held the blade during quenching. This matched with the observation that the scratch marks on one side of the line were consistently deeper than on the other side. It's kinda like a hamon, but without the added 'cool'.

I got this one without scales so I had to do something new. I had some scraps of wood lying around that were too short for normal scales. I took pieces of maple and purpleheart, and sanded a taper on the end. Then I glued the 2 pieces together with a thin film of water resistant wood glue, and clamped it for a week. Then I sanded them flat again. The joint was good because I couldn't feel the the transition with my finger.

Then I lined up the purpleheart - maple transition on both pieces so that they matched each other, cut off the excess, and turned them into scales. I did a bit of careful sanding to make sure that the transitions on both sides had the same shape. As you can imagine, because of the way the 2 materials overlapped, it was just a matter of sanding the white material away until I hit the purple. I coated the scales with a dozen layers of CA, which I sanded away every 3 layers. That way, there was no ridge or bump between the 2 materials and they felt just like scales made from a single material.

The scales are also pretty thin. this is on purpose to minimize stresses on the joint due to flex. Tbh, I don't expect problems there. The overlap is still a full inch, the joint is strong, and I bent each half of the scales more than a full inch to test it. The joint is strong and the layers of CA on both sides will prevent the ends of the joint from ever getting loose.