Lasagna Tanto

Collaboration Walter Sorrells & Jesus Hernandez

I wanted to introduce to everyone here a new project that we like to call "The Lasagna Project." This project is pieced together from ideas that both Walter and I have had for awhile and finally put together.
I had a bunch of scrap pieces of steel, mostly high carbon and pattern-welded that were remnants from other projects in the past. We wanted to turn this steel into something useful but I did not want to do the usual "steel can and powder steel combo." So the idea of doing a wafer-like the Japanese teko-gane came to mind and we set to work. The name Lasagna comes 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 quenched the blade and 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 projects.

Steel bits 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 bits.

A little borax.

Some steel filings.

More assembly.

Paper wrap.

Into the forge it goes.

Some consolidation.

Working at the press.

By now it is a nice and solid steel bar.

This is the yaki-ire picture.

Overall picturte of the polished tanto.

Detail of the hada.

Detail of the habaki and koiguchi made of horn and sheoak.

Detail of the kashira end with a multi-faceted shape carved on zebra wood.

The zebra wood was chosen because it flows with the hada of the steel.