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    Default Japanese Tool Glossary A-M

    Information provided by soatoz

    Aogami ichi-gou, ni-gou
    : Blue steel (correctly blue paper steel, named for the blue wrapping used by its manufacturer) contains very little P and S, but W (tungsten) and Cr (chromium) are added to make the hardening temperature less critical and to increase wear resistance for longer-lasting sharpness. But this means harder to sharpen as well. As in White steel, there are two grades of different carbon contents: #1, 1.2 - 1.4&#37; C, and #2, 1.0 - 1.2% C. There is one more type, called Aogami super (Super blue steel), with more W and Cr, plus Mo (molybdenum) for additional toughness and wear resistance. This also widens the hardening step, it can be cooled in oil (but better when cooled in water, although more difficult.) <-> Shirogami
    ara-do (short for Ara-toishi): Coarse stone.
    dai
    : Plane block. Usually Japanese white oak, or red oak.
    dai-gashira: the head side of the block
    dai-jiri: the bottom side of the block
    douzuki-noko: a special type of handsaw with the back to support the very thin blade. The very best ones are only 0.1mm thick. You can wrap the blade around the pencil. Used for very accurate cuts.
    funate gen-nou: a type of hammer popular in Kansai area (West side of Japan from Tokyo) which has only one side of the hammer flat to hit the nail. The other side is pointed and can be used as a nail set.
    futsuu-guchi: A kind of mouth for the plane's block where the mouth is opened wide showing the bevel of the blade. Cheaper way of making plane blocks. <-> tsutsumi-guchi.
    gen-nou: hammer
    haisu: Short of High Speed Steel. Sukemaru is the most popular Haisu chisel maker. Haisu chisels are not laminated.
    Inukubi: One of very rare high quality Tougou steel, along with Reigou. Inukubi means head of a dog. Although all Tougou steels are alloys, this steel has the characteristics closer to carbon steel. Easy to sharpen. Suitable for med hard to soft timbers.
    kamaji: Kama means boiler, Ji means the base -> "base iron using the iron that used be a boiler." Kamaji is a special British hand wrought iron that is over 100 years old. Most of the Kamaji material comes from ship anchors, boilers, building materials, and bridging materials from the 19th century. This iron, because it dates from a very early time, is largely free of such contaminants as sulfur, and weds, forges and most importantly grinds easily. This means easier Uradashi and sharpening. Kamaji iron has a beautiful grain similar to Watetsu, formed by the originally manufacturing process, which involved by folding the iron over onto itself. Blacksmiths run around the country to gather(buy) them whenever old battleships, buildings or bridges are dismantled.
    kan-na: plane
    kasumi or kasumi-shiage: The slightly cloudy without finish of the base iron, and no visible hairline on the steel part of the blade. This is unique to natural stone finishing.
    kataba-noko
    : handsaw with only one kind of blade. Douzuki-noko is a kataba-noko.
    katsura, kazura: The hoop of the chisel.
    kebiki
    : A marking gauge with a blade instead of a pin. Kinshirou brand is the most famous.
    Kezurou-kai: The direct translation would be "Let's plane" party. A contest where many woodworkers and carpenters gather to compete the thinness of the shave created by traditional Japanese hand planes. The thinnest shave created by the best member is as thin as 3 microns. You can easily read a newspaper through it.
    kiridashi: A kind of knife which the blade and the handle is combined as a design. There are many kinds of beautiful designs, most popular is the fish shape made by Chiyozuru Korehide.
    koppa (means something like "bits & pieces") A stone that is not square in shape. Usually much cheaper in price, even if the quality is superb. A good buy for daily usage.
    kuchi-gane (pronounced kuchi-gah-neh).
    The ferrule of the chisel.
    kugi-shime
    : nail set
    kuri-ko-gatana (or simply ko-gatana): A kind of knife which has wooden handle and a sheath. You can order just the blade and make a handle and sheath out of your favorite wood.
    ji-gane, or ji (pronounced ji-gah-neh without any accent): The base iron. There are Kamaji, Watetsu, Chain-ji. These are popular with expensive plane blades and are called "ren-tetsu (wrought iron)" as a group. Very old and expensive. Gokunan-kou (meaning very soft steel) is a modern iron that is harder to sharpen compared to the various rentetsu. Most of the chisels use gokunan-kou for the ji-gane, especially for striking chsels since rentetsu is too soft for them. Some paring chisels use rentetsu for ornamental purposes.
    Miki city
    : One of two major tool producing city. In Hyougo prefecture.
    Last edited by Groggy; 11th March 2007 at 03:18 PM. Reason: Update entries 11 Mar 07

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  3. #2
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    Default Japanese Tool Glossary N-Z

    Nagura: A special kind of stone to dress the surface of a polishing stone. It is used to create a slurry of fine particles, before using hard stones. These stones are very fine, and feels like chunk of baby talcum powder. There are various stones called nagura, but there is only one mountain in Aichi prefecture, that produces true Nagura stones. The stripes of redish brown and pure white of these stones are very beautiful.
    naka-do (short for Naka-toishi):
    Medium coarse stone.
    nokogiri (noko)
    : handsaw
    nomi: chisel
    ooire or oiire Nomi: Bench chisel. About 23cm long.
    osae boh: The steel stick inserted in the block, holding the chipbreaker.
    osae or osae-gane: chipbreaker
    ryouba-noko: handsaw with crosscut blade on one side and ripcut blade on another.
    Sanjyo city: One of two major tool producing city. In Niigata prefecture.
    shiaga-do (short for Shiage-toishi): Fine polishing or finishing grade stone.
    shini-suji:
    "Dead line" meaning the metallic line that doesn't interfere with the sharpening.
    These will bring down the price a little since the looks of the stone isn't as good. shinogi: bevel (eg. Shinogi-nomi = beveled chisel)
    Shirogami ichi-gou, ni-gou: White Steel (correctly white paper steel, named for the white wrapping used by its manufacturer) is used to make tools that can be sharpened to an excellent edge with good quality natural stones. It is a carbon steel with only very small amounts of the impurities P (phosphorus) and S (sulfur). It has a very narrow range of temperatures for hardening (Yakiire and quenching), and thus requires the blacksmith to be very skilled, especially for #1. There are two forms of white steel with different carbon contents #1, 1.2 - 1.4% C, #2, 1.0 - 1.2% C. <-> Aogami
    shira-gaki: A special type of knife used to mark the wood instead of by pencils or pens. You can avoid small rips and chips by sawing or chiseling on the line. Mainly used by cabinet makers. Comes in right and left.
    suita: A very popular type of stone which has a very strong cutting strength, and usually lighter in colour. Favored by woodworkers and carpenters. It is the name of one of the layers from each mountain. Usually a finishing stone is refered to by it's origin. eg. Nakayama Suita. Nakayama is the name of the mountain.
    suji:
    Metallic line running through the stone, that could scratch the surface of the blade. Usually these lines could be dug out with nails. Stones with suji is significantly cheaper, so if there aren't to many of them and if you don't mind the extra work to prepare the stone they are a good buy.
    Sumitsubo
    : Chalk line (Ink Line)
    tama-hagane: The very rare and very expensive special steel used for swordsmithing. The following is from Wikipedia. "The smelting process used is different from the modern mass production of steel. A clay vessel about 4 feet tall, 12 feet long, and 4 feet wide is constructed. This is known as a tatara {tit-ara}. After the clay tub has dried, it is fired until dry. A charcoal fire is started from soft pine charcoal. Then the smelter will wait for the fire to reach the correct temperature. At that point he will direct the addition of iron sand known as satetsu {sa-tet-sue}. This will be layered in with more charcoal and more iron sand over the next 72 hours. 4 or 5 people need to constantly work on this process. It takes about a week to build the tatara and complete the iron conversion to steel. When the process is done they will break the clay tub and take out the steel bloom known as a kera. At the end of the process the tatara will have consumed about 10 tons of statetsu and 12 tons of charcoal leaving about 2.5 tons of tamahagane."
    tataki Nomi: Carpenter's chisel. About 28cm long.
    Tougou-kou: Tougou steel. Very famous steel brand started by Kawai steel shop in 1878. These steels were imported from UK by Kawai, who has foreseen that difficult to produce/use Tama-hagane will be taken over by the high quality western alloys. These steels are no longer being produced. There were 11 labels. Reigou(#0) and Inukubi were the two best label for highquality tool making. The modern replica of Tougou-reigou, which is as good as the original, is simply called with this name as well, so need to check which Tougou-kou it is when buying. But the modern replica is only used by Yokoyama Kunio from Miki.
    Tougou-reigou (or just Reigou): Tougou #0. The very best Tougou alloy steel. Almost non-existing and very difficult to forge. Only few can use this steel. Sakata Kenji (who has already crossed the river a while ago) and Yokoyama Kunio are the two best blacksmiths using this steel (maybe there aren't any others?) They are very close friends. Now Yokoyama is the only blacksmith who can handle this steel. He received the remaining tougou-reigou stock from the son of Sakata recently, and now producing super high quality tools out of them. And for some reason these tools are the cheapest out of all Tougou-reigou tools. His 72mm plane is about $900, while others' start from $2200. (BTW this is my most favorite steel. Although it is quite expensve, there is almost no timbre this steel cannot mannage to plane, from the softest to the hardest. It is just awesome. If I can only own one plane, this is the one.)
    toishi: Sharpening stone. There are ten-nen(natural) toishi and jin-zou(man made) toishi. There are coarse to fine for both of them, but usually jin-zou is prefered when it is coarse and med stones, and ten-nen for the finishing. But the fine grit jin-zou toishi is getting better and better, they are good enough for most of the daily works. But the finish(looks) of the blade is much better with ten-nen toishi. (-> kasumi)
    tsutsumi-guchi
    : A kind of mouth for the plane's block where the mouth is opened to the least so that most of the blade is concealed. Finishing plane's mouth is usully tsutsumi-guchi. <-> futsuu-guchi.
    ura: the back of the blade
    ura-dashi: a technique to bend the steel by tapping the iron with corner of a hammer part of the bevel, to make the tip of back of the blade touch the sharpening stone. You need to be careful not to hit too hard and break off the steel, but not too light that it doesn't bend at all.
    ura-gane: chipbreaker
    ura-oshi: Flattening process of the back of the blade. The most important process of sharpening single sided blades.
    ura-suki: the back hollow
    watetsu: Wa means Japanese or Japan, tetsu means iron. Watetsu is very soft iron that is made as a byproduct when smelting Tama-Hagane. Watetsu are gathered reusing tempered nails and hinges from the 17th and 18th century, since Tama-Hagane is not produced anymore, except for the rare occasion when the swordsmiths prepare for themselves. The base iron is preferred to be fragil as possible (a little harder than lead is considered to be the ideal), watetsu is perfect iron for planes. A tool that uses Watetsu is very easy to sharpen. It is highly valued among Japanese carpenters. Watetsu has a beautiful grain formed by the originally manufacturing process, which involved by folding the iron over onto itself. Blacksmiths run around the country to gather(buy) them whenever old temples and houses are knocked down. It is a proof of the highest quality tool. When you look at it from right in front without any thing reflecting onto it, it looks cloudy or dry. But when you look at it from an angle reflecting something onto it, then you can see how polished, mirror like and wet it looks. This characteristic cannot be brought out with synthetic stones, and this is the part of the reason Japanese worship the natural stones. Without them Japanese swords can't express their beauty at all, and neither can the tools.

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