Samidare

Craft record

Notes from the bench

The steel began as iron sand from the Hii river, smelted in a clay tatara over three sleepless days. Of the two tonnes of tamahagane the burn produced, the smith kept eleven kilograms — the rest did not meet the house standard.

The blade was folded thirteen times, yielding roughly eight thousand layers, then clay-coated and quenched in water the smith warms to the temperature of a March river. The hamon that resulted is a suguha broken by soft descending strokes — the smith’s named pattern, "samidare," rain that falls without wind.

Polish took ninety days across two artisans of the Hon’ami line. The blade is mounted in plain black lacquer, deliberately silent, so that nothing competes with the steel.