Dragonfly Forge

Dragonfly Forge recently completed and delivered a commissioned koshirae for a katana by top Japanese swordsmith Yoshindo Yoshihara. The photos of the project have been uploaded to our site.

Continue reading →

With a super busy summer here at Dragonfly Forge, we were finally able to update our swordsmithing school’s website, www.tomboyama.com with some photos and information regarding our August, 2009 Oroshigane Seminar.

We hope to update this site with some photos of the resulting oroshigane blades forged by Michael and Gabriel from the results of the class soon!

A successful and enjoyable August Oroshigane Seminar!

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the 33rd annual San Francisco Token Kai will be held at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.  Once again, Michael and Gabriel Bell of Dragonfly Forge will be attending the show on Saturday and Sunday.  The show is sponsored by the Northern California Japanese Sword Club; for more information visit the club’s site.  The Nihon Bijutsu Token Hozon Kyokai (Society for the Preservation of Japanese Art Swords) – American Branch (NBTHK-AB) will be hosting exhibits and seminars well worth attending.

We hope to see you there!

This tsuba is in the Higo style, with two seashell, or ‘kai’ in Japanese, pierced and carved in negative silhouette.  It is forged from antique wrought iron.  It was pierced and carved by Anna Bell and given a finish and patina that emphasizes the inherent beauty of the iron’s organic grain structure.

The tsuba itself is only one piece of a larger ongoing collaborative mounted katana project by the Bell family.

The blade itself is a katana of 25 inch (63.5 cm) nagasa forged of cable by Michael Bell.  Point is Michael’s standard extended chu-kissaki.  The hamon shows excellent control with activity due to the cables grain throughout.

The tsuba, pictured above, is made of antique wrought iron by Anna Bell.

The blade has a copper habaki by Gabriel Bell.  The koshirae is also by Gabriel.  Black lacquered saya with buffalo horn kojiri, koiguchi, and kurigata.  Silver shitodome.  Tsuka is full-wrap same lacquered in black, with Higo style fuchigashia in shibuichi, wrapped in brown silk ito.

More pictures and information to be posted as work progresses.

If you don’t what Facebook is then this probably has no importance to you.   But now that more and more people are on Facebook, Dragonfly Forge has decided to jump on the bandwagon too!

So go ahead and visit us on Facebook, you can even become a fan

This tsuba is currently being sculpted by Gabriel Bell.  The tsuba was forged from antique wrough-iron.  It was then pierced and carved.  The basic design is classic Japanese; the most famous tsuba of this design can be seen in the book, One Hundred Masterpieces from the Collection of Walter A. Compton. The tsuba is now in the process of being sculpted using small files, chisels and other metal carving tools, including the double-edged carving/scraping tool pictured above.

Crab design tsuba of wrought iron, in progress

After it has been sculpted and finished, a patina will promoted.  The color patina we desire can only really be achieved on old-technology iron The organic nature of old-technology iron gives a grain, as well as what are referred to as “bones”, slag inclusions, that give a tsuba a wonderfully natural beautiful finish with character.  This particular piece of wrought iron which is now becoming a tsuba, was the iron rim of an wagon wheel that traveled the Oregon Trail in a previous life. Continue reading →