A Visit to the Blacksmith: Keizaburou

Happy New Year everyone!

About a month or so back a group of friends and I took a trip to Miki, one of the regions in Japan that has historically been a center for blacksmithing. Our first stop was the shop of Uchihashi-san, who makes Keizaburo plane blades. I had been looking forward to this visit for a long time. Keizaburo has a reputation for producing amazing kanna that are incredibly beautiful and accurately made, and most importantly cut really well.

When we arrived, Uchihashi-san began by giving us a general tour of his shop. Right inside the door was his huge spring hammer. A truly massive tool.

Just across from the spring hammer was the earthen charcoal fired forge.

Scattered throughout the shop were piles of metal that are the raw materials for Keizaburo plane blades. Below is a stack of steel used for hagane, the hard steel cutting edge portion of a laminated blade.

And here is one of the many piles of jigane, the soft backing iron that the hagane is forge welded to.

Below is a blade in progress. You can see in the lower half a rectangular piece, the hagane, that has been laminated to the softer jigane that makes up the main body of the plane blade.

After forge welding the blade, Uchihashi-san uses a combination of massive grinders followed up with files to further refine the shape of the blade. He also uses a large grinder to hollow out the ura side of the blade.

Pictured below are the anvils that Uchihashi-san has bedded into the ground. He uses these for ura-dashi and for detail work, like adding his makers mark and patterned textures to blades.

We spent a lot of time admiring the range of gennou (hammers) laying about. They are really amazing tools in their own right, humble and simple. The gennou below have smooth polished faces allowing the blacksmith to pound a blade without leaving any noticable marks.

However the following gennou are used for the exact opposite. Uchihashi-san customized these for adding texture to the face of his kanna blades.

I took a quick video of Uchihashi-san demonstrating this process. (apologies for the shaking camera). It’s a bit difficult to see but if you watch the video at full screen and look closely, you can see the surface change as Uchihashi-san tries out three different gennou.

Piles of kanna blades littered the shop. I’m guessing they were rejected for one reason or another, but are amazing nonetheless. Like any good blacksmith, Uchihashi-san is very particular about which blades are acceptable or not.

Uchihashi-san also gave us a great demonstration on ura-dashi. For those not familiar, ura-dashi is a process done to maintain the condition of the blade, and is done repeatedly over the lifetime of the blade. The process involves tapping the soft iron on the bevel, which pushes the cutting steel down in an effort to maintain the condition of the back side of the blade. Ura-dashi is a bit of a mysterious process when you first start playing around with Japanese planes. A lot of people are timid about hitting an expensive blade with a hammer, which is why it was so amazing to see a skilled blacksmith show how it’s done.

Below you can see the customized anvil that Uchihashi-san uses for ura-dashi. On the right side you can see where he ground back the sides of the anvil leaving just the middle protruding. That middle area is where you support the blade while performing ura-dashi. By making the contact area narrower you reduce the risk of leaving the blade unsupported below the spot where you are tapping, which can lead to cracking the blade.

Here’s a shot of the gennou Uchihashi-san uses for ura-dashi. The ura-dashi gennou with the elongated end started out just like the standard one on top. Uchihashi-san heated it up in his forge and reformed it with his spring hammer to make a more usable tool for ura-dashi. Pretty cool.

Outside the shop was more material for jigane, including big cut up chunks of old boat anchor chain.

After the shop tour we went into the office next-door to look at some finished planes and to place some orders. One of the great things about placing an order directly with the blacksmith is that you can specify just about any detail, from the type of steel, pattern, and even the makers mark.

Here’s my friend Jon checking out a shaku-ganna, a blade that is around 300mm long (12″)! The skill required to make a blade this large is truly impressive, and the details were incredibly well done.

We had to restrain ourselves from buying another blade that was half the size of this one. Nevertheless we were all so jazzed up by the experience that between the 6 of us we placed an order for 13 blades! I myself placed an order for 2 blades, 70mm and 65mm, with two different steel types. After all it’s a rare thing to visit Keizaburo, and you’ve got to make it worth the trip.

Thanks for stopping by, and hope everyone has a safe and happy 2021!