Do-it-yourself steel post-apocalypse katana

Knives and swords

Greetings the inhabitants of our site!
In this article, you will learn how to do it yourself. do it yourself make a katana samurai post apocalypse.

This manual is taken from the YouTube channel "DreadCraftStation". First, a small introduction. Now we will craft katana. Katana is a long samurai sword, its length varies from 2 to 2.5 shaku, which is approximately 60-75 cm. And the total length together with the handle is conventionally 85-105 cm, usually 90-100 cm. The author decided on the size and decided that the length of his katana would be 90 cm, and it just fits all the above standards.

Well, to make the typewriter complete, we will also produce tanto.

Tanto is a short sword, or rather a samurai dagger. The length of the tanto varies from 30 to 50 cm with the handle. Our today's dagger is about 43 cm long.

By the way, both katana and tanto will later become part of the samurai armor in the style of post-apocalypse. The creator of the DreadCraftStation YouTube channel has already begun work on their creation.

So let's get started. First we need a template. You can download it from the links in the description under the original video of the author (link "SOURCE" at the end of the article).

Next, the template must be printed and glued in such a way as shown below:

Then the fully glued template must be glued to thin plywood with a thickness of not more than 3 mm.

After this, you need to wait a bit until the glue dries. Then, when the glue has dried, you can start cutting out our template.

Now we need the resulting templates in order to cut the blanks for swords already from metal. To do this, first apply the template to the steel sheet, and then fix it to prevent the template from shifting during metal cutting and thereby not spoil the workpiece. By the way, the thickness of this sheet steel is 6mm.

Now you can start cutting the workpiece along the contour of the template.

Of course, it would be possible to produce metal cutting with a grinder, but it was necessary to master a new tool, and therefore the author decided to cut blanks with a plasma cutter.

When cutting metal, one should not forget about personal protective equipment, still sparks are the temperature and the like.
So, our workpieces are ready, now they need to be leveled and run. This is best done on the grinder.

A tsubu (an analogue of a guard for a Japanese blade weapon) must also be cut and honed, giving a more aesthetic appearance, it is also necessary to grind all angles 90 degrees as follows:

The master will do the descent using a special fixtures. But first you need to make the necessary markup. We have to mark the center, from which the slopes will actually go. The author does not have a special paint for this, so he uses an ordinary ballpoint pen paste for the task.

Next, you need to securely fix the sword with a clamp. Then we set a certain angle and proceed to grinding. In this case, it is necessary to take small breaks, as the steel heats up pretty quickly.

By the way, the angle of sharpening on the blades will be approximately 17 degrees.
During construction, it was decided to slightly redesign the blade design. Auto decided to add aluminum pads to the products. But just a flat strip of aluminum was somehow not very good, so the master drew a blank and cut something like cloves on it.

The author pondered for a long time how to make these curly cuts, but to his surprise the usual hand-held jigsaw and wood saw did a good job of this.

Even after cutting the teeth on aluminum strips, the pads still looked very poor, well, they should not be flat and that’s it. And then it was decided to add a little texture. To do this, the author, armed with an engraver, made a unique embossed product from boring flat aluminum strips. Such engraving gave the plates a certain charm.

For katana we do the same thing, repeat everything the same, cut it out, make denticles on the overlays, but a little wider, then engrave the embossing. The aluminum used by the author is a former window cast. When cutting with scissors, aluminum bends, of course, but already with swords it can be easily leveled, giving it the necessary shape.

Also, according to the project, we have pads on the handle, both on katana and tanto. The overlays are quite similar in style, the only difference is that they are naturally shorter on the tanto.

These pads will be placed under the braid, but the author still decided to get a little confused. The linings are carved all from the same aluminum, in the same way and tool.

All this decor will be attached to the blades with epoxy glue. Our swords are decorative, so this glue will perfectly cope with this task.

With handles, the author decided not to bother very much and did much easier, developed them in tinkercad and printed on his 3d printer, but not with ordinary Formax plastic (Formax, carbon plastic).

Among other things, it was decided to add a couple more unique elements to the products - these are tops.

As you can see, these are not ordinary flat tops, but made in the form of skulls. They are also printed in carbon on a 3D printer. In addition, the author did not post-process them, the only thing he decided to do with them was to apply a little red varnish to the eye sockets.

Sticks on the handle and top are also fixed with epoxy glue. After this, it is necessary to clamp the glued elements with clamps until completely dry.

By the way, embossments are also present on the overlays, and they are made in the form of a qr code.

The tsuba also did not go unnoticed; it also has a decorative overlay made of the same aluminum. Everything is done using the same technology as the previous decor elements.