Folding

For battlefield applications, the steel used in naginata and sword blades was required to have two distinct properties. First, it had to be flexible enough to withstand direct impacts and thrusting types of cuts without breaking. Conversely, it had to be hard enough to retain its notoriously sharp cutting edge. How could one piece of steel be both flexible AND hard? .....


Careful metallurgical examination of a Japanese sword reveals that it is composed of not one, but TWO distinctly different types of steel. It contains a soft "core", called shingane, which is made of low carbon steel. Wrapped around this is a harder "jacket" made of higher carbon steel, or kawagane. It is important to note that the finished blade is NOT a laminate, but instead consists of two separate pieces of steel which, through the forging process, have been welded together.  ~ "Blade Forging" - www.sncf.org
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As always when I suffer a setback, I have been thinking, turning things over in my mind to try to put all the pieces that had tumbled down back into their proper places again.  Predictably, everything won't go back where it was originally.  That's not always a bad thing.  Sometimes things shouldn't go back at all.  Some things need to be examined and reordered.  Some things need to be be thrown away altogether.

I remember thinking last Friday that I wasn't steel at all anymore, that I had become cast iron.  It's strong to a degree, but if too much pressure is applied, if it is twisted, it shatters.  As I stared into the mirror, I felt I had somehow lost some of the essential flexibility that has always allowed me to move with change and survive.  Maybe even calling myself cast iron that day was too gracious.  It was more like heavy glue chip glass (a term that may not mean anything to you if you don't do glass).

Now, though, I am setting about the process of getting back to what I am again at my heart, and the delicacy is fading.  I am more a blade than a decorative object, made more for use than for show.  This article gives me hope in a way for several reasons in that regard.

First, even the best of blades requires a softer core in order to maintain its flexibility.  Hard all the way through would equal something that would shatter on impact.  It is the core of shingane that allows the katana to survive and slip in to places protected by hard armor.  There is a virtue in having a soft heart.

Second, to be strong, everything must be tempered and folded.  It is just a matter of how many times.  The kawagane, that hard outer shell is folded some 30,000 times.  Even the "soft" heart is folded ten or more.  To be a keen-edged and useful tool, some shaping and strengthening is going to have to happen.  I guess nobody likes the feel of the hammer or the forge, but when the edge is on and the wave pattern is complete, there can be a sense of satisfaction in all it took to get there.

I continue to sort and sift through these things in my mind, my own mental forge, I suppose, welding the two parts together, heating, hammering, making sure there is no disunity between that hardness that wants to protect and isolate, to throw down and walk away, and that other inside me that is still a little hurt, still a little sad, always wanting to see the best and do what is right, always wanting to reach for someone and save the damn world from itself.  It will be interesting, I suppose, to see what sort of markings are finally present.  I suppose, though, that this may take a very long time.