You idjit.....Peaches is in the freezer until I can afford a proper plot and headstone in the pet cemetery....sniff. It ain't easy living in an apartment sometimes!
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I watched this great article once on the making of a sword all the way from smelting the tamahagane (specially smelted metal) to the tsukamaki (wrapping the handle) and application of resin to keep the ito (cord used to wrap the handle) in place. I believe that the guys who sharpen a sword spend about three weeks per blade and end up finishing with a very small fine piece of stone. The sharpeners said that it took them years to learn how to use a sliver of stone about the size of their thumb pad. I looked katana sharpening up on youtube, a video shows how the sharpener uses slurry dabbed on the blade to polish the hamon (wavey line on the sword blade) with a pad. They had a stack of stones (very jealous) and like a razor, the stone they used depended on the way the steel itself turned out.