The making of... Lasagna Tanto

The Lasagna Project was pieced together from ideas that both Walter Sorrells and I had for awhile to recycle scrap pieces of steel. I had a bunch of these high carbon pattern-welded remnants from other projects and wanted to turn this steel into something useful but I did not want to do the usual powder steel can. The idea of doing a wafer billet like the Japanese teko-gane came to mind and we set to work. The name Lasagna came from the appearance that the piling up of layers of little pieces of steel took during the process. I welded the lasagna into a bar and Walter forged it into a tanto. Walter lay down the clay and I heat treated the blade. We took some amazing pictures of the yaki-ire process. Walter took the blade home and polished it and made a habaki for it then I made the saya.

Remnants of other blades and old projects.

Bits of steel after flattening the remnants and breaking them up.

I think we started off with some 50 or 60 pieces smaller than an inch.

This is the tekogane platform that with serve a a base to hold all the pieces.

First layer of steel.

A little borax.

Some steel filings to fill in the gaps.

More assembly.

Paper wrap to hold everything together.

And into the forge it goes.

Some initial consolidation.

Working at the press.

By now it is a nice and solid steel bar.

This is the yaki-ire picture. Notice the down curvature as it enters the water.

Detail of the hada.

Go to the TOP of the Page