Bloggaday: Bloggaday 182 – Craftspicable Me: A Battle Damaged Katana? Pt1

Bloggaday 182 – Craftspicable Me: A Battle Damaged Katana? Pt1

Sorry, the guitar Bloggaday is getting pushed back a day or two. I’ve got crushing news. I just finished my katana yesterday, which was the 4^th one after my making my niece and nephews’ ones. All I had left to do was put the handle on the tang (blade part that sits in the handle). That’s where it broke bad.

I wanted the handle relatively small, so it ended up being very snug. So I’m outside. I put a little bit of wood glue in the handle, and I started putting it in there. Unfortunately, it got stuck 7 or 8 mm form hitting the handgaurd and going all the way in. I had someone help me try to push it in, but no luck. I put a towel on the ground and tried bashing the blade into the handle, but again, nothing. Well, guess we’ve got to get it off. We tried several times to get the handle off, but that sucker wasn’t going anywhere.

Now, if that was the worst part, it wouldn’t have been bad. Unfortunately, when I said, “broke bad,” I was being depressingly literal. When I was pulling on the handle, and my dad pulled on the blade, we pulled hard enough to flat out snap the katana in two. I don’t know if snap is the right word. It seems to indicate that bent it until it broke. That’s not what happened though. We pulled it until the particleboard blade just came apart. It broke just above the brass looking ring that makes it fit snuggly into the sheath where the blade was the weakest.

“Well, it was okay, I still had that brass ring, so I can still put it in the sheath.” Enter stage right the suggestion to take a hammer to it make the handle go in. I was kind of on autopilot at this point and did that. Smashed the living crap out of that brass ring before stopping. Pissed me off more. I say screw it and just put it in the sheath. I’ve got to say, it does look really good. I just can’t pull it out.

I think the most depressing part is the fact that I didn’t end up needing to remove the handle. I ended up just gluing 3 pieces of cardboard into the void and wrapping it with a ribbon like I’ve done with the other katanas (as seen in a picture at the end of pt 2*).

I had to modify it a little bit at the top of the wrap, but you would never guess that the handle didn’t go all the way up. So if I would have thought for about three seconds, I wouldn’t have continued to try to get the handle off and I wouldn’t have broken my blade. Cest la vie.

I’ve got another 500 words to add to this, so I’ll post it tomorrow, well Tuesday because of the SotW tomorrow. Then Wednesday is more Zombie fiction, then Thursday I’ll get back to the guitar posts.

Listening to

Goodnight Goodnight by Maroon 5

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Not depressed? Read about how I ruined a 10 hour project, only on Bloggaday (it turned out okay)

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