Paul Champagne Died of a Heart Attack

[johnnyvirgil]

I don't know a lot about the composition of the sword but by mono-steel, I assume you mean there's no iron core with sandwiched steel, yes? I am definitely no swordsmith, so I can only tell you what I saw when I watched him make the pieces. (Bear with me on the "non-technical" terms I'm sure I'll use!) It started out as black sand (iron ore?) that he gathered along the shore of an upstate NY lake and dried out. He dumped it a little at a time into a vertical chimney with a pretty good charcoal fire roaring in it, and ended up with a chunk that looked like some kind of meteor rock at the end, which he busted up into smaller pieces that he pounded flat. He stacked all the flat stuff and melted it together somehow in his forge, hammering on it until he ended up with a billet. The next time I saw it, it was in the shape of a katana, and he was putting some kind of clay on it. I didn't see him quench it, but I know it was water quenched. He gave it to me in what he called "rough polish" to fit for the saya, and after the fitting up was done, I gave it back to him and he finished it up. He did this one in leather because he always wanted to try it. I'll try to pop off the handle to see if he stamped it or inscribed it in any way. I wish I knew more about it. I'm just glad he never sold it.

[bond_fan]

It sounds like he made his own tamahagne (Steel) from the sand and folded it accordingly to billets.

My friend Francis Boyd, also makes folded steel swords and the process you describe with the making of the billet sounds exactly like what he does with the finished steel, except Francis does not use iron sand, but rather certain varieties of scrape metals. He will have all these welded together little billets attached to a metal rod like thing and heat the billets and hammer them out while folding the steel to the desired shape.

Another smith that has used self made tamahagne is Jesus Hernandez, but he even told me he will buy it from people pre-made to save on the cost of doing it as it is time consuming and can be expensive.

[Scott M. Rodell]

Unfortunately, the last sword Paul was working on, a jian with a horse tooth pattern was never finished. When I spoke to Paul just after his heart attack, I misunderstood him & thought it was done. As it turns out, he only completed only a prototype mono-steel jian blade & short test blades. Fortunately, the test blade was heat treated & it is being ground to mount as a test cutting blade. Philip Tom is going to polish the test pieces so we can see the process Paul was working on to get the horse tooth pattern just the way he wanted it. When those are done, we'll post photos. I am also working with Paul's wife to make the blades he left behind available to collectors & practitioners (he left a variety of European & Japanese blades behind), I will post some of those pieces as well once I've polished windows on them.

Here it the last blade Paul forged, but had yet to grind to shape-

[bond_fan]

Thanks laoshi for posting that photo.

[Scott M. Rodell]

Though Paul's been gone some time now, it's not unusual for something to cause me to remember my good friend...

The last blade he forged is a jian. It is all mounted & polished now, so the owner asked me to practice test cutting with it. Needless to say ti handles quite well. Today I practiced mostly duo cuts on old growth bamboo with Paul's jian.

[bond_fan]

Nice Cut! Can we see photos of the finished jian as well?

Thanks!

[Scott M. Rodell]

Nice Cut!...

With jian with historically accurate, radiused cross sections (instead of polished to a flat diamond cross section) one has to hit with a bit more power. Also, given that the edge is not quite as sharp as a flat ground blade, if your edge angle is off, it is more likely to skip off a hard target like bamboo.

Paul's blade with Phil's polish provided for a clean cut through 2" diameter, old growth bamboo, even with the radiused edge...

[bond_fan]

But how about pictures of the actual sword?

[B.Ko]

bond_fan

the sword used these fittings

http://www.sevenstarstrading.com/html/h ... ejian.html

but without the black background, and I believe the scabbard was dark green/black polished rayskin