Meet Miyano Dai Endo (his professional name) known to many of those who were close to him as Yataiki. Like my Temple carpenter teacher Fujieda san, I met Endo san at a Japanese woodworking demonstration and seminar in southern New Hampshire in the early 1980s. Yataiki was the last in a long line of great swordsmiths. A swordsmith will typically only take on a son as an apprentice and while he and his wonderful wife were blessed with healthy children none were boys, so the traditions of his swordmaking line have now ended. The pictures below show the stages of the birth of a sword. These sorts of images are quite rare.
I spent a day making steel from scrap antique (pre-industrial) iron objects, such as an ancient iron pot, broken up carefully into pieces the size of half a fingernail, as well as old nails, some heated in the fire and stretched, others cut into 1/2 inch pieces.
After preparing the forge, we built a fire using wood charcoal and started adding in the scrap iron, a little at a time.
While a celebrated swordsmith, the bulk of Yataiki's blacksmithing income came from the making of woodworking saws. I have several of his blades and treasure them as great works of art. Here are some pictures of his saw scraping and tuning work area.
Yataiki was an Ai-to master, a No master, an Urusenke tea master, at the time these pictures were taken the president of the International Calligraphy Association (one often sees his calligraphy on commercial products to this day) a Go master of the highest ranking, a poet, perhaps the greatest blacksmith of his generation and the most gentle and generous man I have ever known. The sadness I feel at his passing is so easily eclipsed by the light he brought to my life and many others. I revere him above any other and from the time we met considered him my master, and was privileged to do so.
i am hopeful that with the injuries healing (becketts thumb) and the rotation being sorted out (dice-k /bailey returning)we will improve.