Japanese Sword Polishing
Sword polishing process is considered even more important than the forging process. There are needed more skills and experience to correctly polish a sword than to forge one. Polishing is what distinguishes professional sword makers from amateurs. You can easily determine the quality of a sword by closely watching the ridgeline down the middle of the blade. When talking about Japanese swords it is called Shinogi.
When studying this interesting theme I decided to mainly refer to Japanese swords. I discovered a very rich tradition of sword polishing. This reaches beyond technology and becomes an art. The experts came to the conclusion that the methods of polishing described in those old documents didn’t considerably differ from the modern ones.
For example, a Tanto polishing involved methods like:
- polishing with finishing stones (Migaki and Uchigumori);
- inger polishing with tiny stones (Narutaki);
- polishing powder (Tsuya and Nugui).