My Homemade Samurai Katana:

The Blade:

I take a metal plate (1 meter length, 7 cm wide and minimal 5 mm thick), spray it with trace lacquer or mark with a permanent marker. Draw or scratch the outline of the katana.
If it looks fine, I use an angle grinder with a cutting disk to roughly cut out the shape of the metal plate. After that I use an abrasive grinding disk to grind it down to the markings. For the last part I’m using a hand file or it is much faster to use a drill with a round sand disk on. If the outline isn’t done correctly, and not fluent you can get a “wavy” cutting edge after filing down the sides.When the outline shape has been finished, I spray trace lacquer on both sides of the blade. As soon as the lacquer has dried I draw the desired shinogi line, and the “cutting edge” using a pair of compasses. For the cutting edge I draw a line through the middle (lengthwise).After that I use the grinder (with the abrasive grinding disk) to grind down the cutting edge. For the last part I use sanding disks, grid 60 to 180. (With a rubber backing pad)As soon as one side is equally diagonal I use my angle grinder to do the same with the other side. I will be doing this until an edge of approximately 1mm thick remains. When the edge is 1mm thick I proceed with a hand file, to prevent grinding it down to much. If you grind beyond the drawn line and you look down the cutting edge you will see that the cutting edge is undulating instead of a nice straight line.

The Handel wrapping i looked up on the internet and did it by trial and error. I basically used what I can find, like the dragon came of a necklace. Haha!

I use the following procedure for making a tsuba:

I take a piece of a metal plate (5 mm.) and draw the desired model on it. After this I drill holes were I want to remove metal. (for example the nakago-ana). When the holes have been drilled I use locksmith files to make the openings in the desired shape. The last step is filling the outer limits of the tsuba. As far as final finish is concerned, there are several options, for instance: One could polish the tsuba, or polish the tsuba and heat the tsuba with a blowtorch; the metal will turn blue, or pound it with a hammer for an irregular pattern (combat tsuba)

 Finished Katana: Bloody Sharp!