Student’s may reserve a place in the class of their choice online through our school website, tomboyama.com with deposit payment via PayPal. The deposit is refundable up to 60 days before the scheduled session. Space in our classes is limited, and reservations are made on a ‘first come, first serve’ basis.

We are eagerly awaiting another enjoyable year of sword-making classes.

Dragonfly Forge will soon be attending the Oregon Knife Collectors Association (OKCA) annual knife show in Eugene, Oregon.

The show, held at the convention center at the Lane County Fairgrounds, will be held April 8-10, 2011. Friday admission is open to club members only, but Saturday and Sunday the show is open to any who enjoy “things that go cut.”

A large variety of lectures and live demonstrations will be held throughout the weekend, including a presentation by Michael Bell, master swordsmith of Dragonfly Forge, scheduled on Sunday of the show at noon. Entitled “Origins: The Evolution of Blade Technology”, the talk will focus on the metallurgical development of blades worldwide, from around 1000 BC to present day.

For more information on the annual show, please visit the OKCA website.

We have added two new courses for the 2011 school year: the Intermediate Forging Course and the Tsuka Course.

For more detail on our class please visit our school’s website tomboyama.com

Also, let us remind everyone again that we will not be attending this year’s San Francisco Token Kai, due to Gabriel and Maria’s wedding!

While doing the required repairs, we took the opportunity to upgrade the page templates and hopefully improve the overall look and functionality for the better. Feel free to let us know what you think about the changes!

Continue reading this article in The World newspaper by Teri Albert at theworldlink.com…

The April 2010 Basic Forging Course, with students and sensei hard at work forging wakizashi to shape.

Dragonfly Forge’s swordsmithing school, Tomboyama Nihontō Tanren Dōjō, was happy to welcome the first class of the 2010 school year to the dōjō. The full class was a Basic Forging Course, and all four students successfully forged wakizashi of forge-welded cable! It was a thoroughly enjoyable week of class, and we would like to thank Cameron, Dean, Michael, and Ryan for making the class a delightful experience.

Continue reading at www.tomboyama.com…

We would like to thank Frank Knight for taking the time and effort to produce the video and allowing us to share it.  Thank you Frank!

Continue reading this article in Ethos Magazine by Frank Knight…

Dragonfly Forge is proud to unveil our new mon, which will serve as a logo for our business and swordsmithing school. Our mon features three dragonflies facing outward, enclosed, like the majority of mon, within a bold circle.

Mon are heraldic symbols of medieval Japan. Like European family crests, they developed amongst the aristocratic class first, gradually being adopted by commoners and merchants. They came into widespread use by the 12th century, especially for use in battle, seen on flags, armor, tents and other military equipment to help distinguish clan member from enemy.

Today, the influence of the mon can still be seen in the Imperial chrysanthemum, the paulownia of the office of the Prime Minister, or probably most visibly, the Mitsubishi logo.

The three dragonflies within the mon are symbolic of the three family members who run Dragonfly Forge: Michael, Anna, and Gabriel Bell. They also reflect upon the past, present, and future of the lineage: our foundation in the teachings of Nakajima-sensei, the current body of knowledge taught by master Michael Bell, and the future of the tradition to be continued by Gabriel Bell and Michael’s other apprentices.

Each of the three dragonflies has a tail shaped as a ken, reminiscent of a well known Japanese creation myth in which a famous and powerful sword is born from the tail of a slain dragon. In the tale, the fearsome Yamata no Orochi, an eight-headed serpent is defeated by the storm god, Susanoo, after he tricked the beast into drinking too much sake. In the fourth tail, he discovered a great sword, which he called Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi (“Sword of the Gathering Clouds of Heaven”), which he then presented to his sister the sun goddess, Amaterasu, to settle an old grievance. The sword also features heavily in other Japanese legends, later being renamed Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (“Grass-cutting Sword”), and becoming one of the three pieces of the important Imperial Regalia.

We will begin featuring the mon on our website, and anywhere else deemed appropriate. Come visit the annual OKCA Show in Eugene, Oregon on April 16-18 to see the mon for the first time, as well as to see a few of our swords and to learn about our swordsmithing classes.