Japanese Smoothing Plane KEIZABURO made by Master Keisuke Uchihashi
A look into his smithy

Keisuke Uchihashi`s factory is located in Nishiwaki-City, north of Miki-City. He was trained in a plane factory for five years in Miki-city and started his own factory in 2003. He was born in 1980 and so he is one of the rare younger blacksmiths.

Selected wrought iron is heated in the furnace for the Jigane part of the blade.

Forging the Jigane with the spring hammer.

Laminating Jigane with Hagane. For this forge welding process boric powder is used.

Laminatiing Jigane with Hagane at a heat of approx. 1050 ° C

This is how the blades look after laminating and before normalizing called "Yaki-narashi".

Blade is heated again in a special oven for normalizing.

What you see here is called "Yaki-Narashi" (= normalizing). The stress from the laminating process will be removed and the micro-structure of the steel is made finer by hand hammering. In the background the oven to prepare for normalizing.

"Yaki Namashi" (= stress relief annealing)

Rough scraping of mirror side.

Fine scraping of mirror side.

Blades after the "ura" is finished with the scraper.

Fixing of distortions with the hammer.

Filing of the sides.

Filing of rounded back.

Trimming of the edges and corners of the blade. This process is called "Mentori".

Kokuin-uchi (= Engraving)
Engraving is the last step before hardening and tempering.

Finished blades and chipbreakers.

Finished plane.