A new yataghan

[Henk]

Wow!! Stunning ceaftmanship!!

[delor]

Thanks to all of you.
I would be very interested by any question or remark from you, concerning the departures from characteristic aspects of the genuine models you might have known (size, weigh, design...).
Regards.

[nalan1978]

Very faithful to the original work

Handle seems shorter

[delor]

Originally Posted by nalan1978

Handle seems shorter

Yes and no... the whole size of the handle (bolsters + ivory) is as usual, but you're right, the ivory part is shorter (see attached photo).
The reasons for this are :

• mammoth first quality ivory is quite hard to find. You already need two large blocks because of the "ear" shape, and longer would mean really much more expensive. So longer bolsters and shorter ivory is a good compromise ;
• this is what the customer asked for, having already seen the same kind of design with another contemporary yataghan... (same constraints, same solutions).

Thanks for this interesting remark. I shall keep it in mind !

[katana]

Very, very nice , if you have any 'construction' photo's ....especially of the hilt and how it was fixed to the tang, I would be grateful if you could post them.

Kind Regards David

[delor]

Thanks !
Yes I have many photos of the whole making process. Maybe it's better to start with the beginning and the blade forging :

The commission was mainly based on a single drawing, and a common agreement to decide on the embellishments details "on the way".
The blade was made of 60Ni20 and 80CrV2 steels, (choosen for their bright and gray colors after etching), which were forge folded up to more than 1200 layers.
Then the blade was forged out of the folded billet, and finally roughly buffed.

[delor]

The next step was to do a better grinding / buffing. A wooden handle was made at the same time, for the customer to see what the whole thing will look like...
Then came the heat treatments and a long polishing phase to reveal the final steel pattern.