Tanto

Tamahagane, which in Japanese literally means "jewel steel" or "precious steel", is a type of steel made in the Japanese traditional way. Tamahagane is made by smelting iron sand in a clay furnace called "tatara" and mixing it with charcoal to produce steel with various carbon content. This very laborious process takes as much as 3 days. After the smelting process, the tatara is broken and the steel bloom or "kera" is broken and swordsmiths segregate and collect the steels with various carbon contents.

Making a blade from tamahagane requires high level of expertise from the swordsmith. Swordsmiths will laminate the different types of steel collected from the kera to create a sword which has a hard edge, soft core and springy sides.

Ryan1278 is a tanto with a blade made of Chinese tamahagane. The blade of this sword is hazuya-jizuya polished to bring out the beauty of the blade. It takes a polisher several weeks to do the entire polishing process. The tsuka is made of hardwood and fully wrapped with one-piece genuine rayskin. The tsuba, fuchi and kashira are made of iron and with silver imbedding. The saya is made of hardwood with dragon engraving. Black buffalo horns are used as koiguchi, kurikata and kojiri.  The sword is fully customizable.

Tanto or short sword is a Japanese blade used by the samurai class of feudal Japan. It dates back to the Heian period and was mainly designed for stabbing but can be used for close quarter slashing. Women would sometimes carry a tanto concealed in their sash or obi for self-defense. 

Eventhough only in a shirasaya style of mounting, this tanto is one of the very attractive blades in our inventory. The hada is clearly visible in its folded steel blade. Its saya and tsuka is covered in polished mother-of-pearl and shells and give a unique glow of random colors. The kashira, fuchi, koiguchi, kurikata and kojiri is made of polished, brown buffalo horn.

Ryan1263 blade is made of 1095 high carbon steel, full tang and sharp. The tsuka is made of hardwood, wrapped with genuine rayskin and synthetic silk ito. The tsuba is alloy. The sword is fully customizable, the fittings can be changed.

The blade is made of folded steel which is folded forged 14 times, so it has grains.  After coloring the grains are more obvious. The saya and tsuka are made of hardwood. The tsuba is iron.