 A documentary on how the samurai sword was made

 Samurais were considered heroes of japan

 Samurai swords are perfectly engineered for close combat, considered soul of the
samurai
 Samurais are like the knights of japan, they live by a strict code of honor "Bushido,"
that demands discipline and unfailing loyalty.
 MICHAEL NOTIS (Materials Scientist, Lehigh University) a samurai sword expert
 This remarkable weapon reveals a highly developed metal-making skill that dates
back more than a thousand years, to 900 A.D.
 Embedded deep into the material of the blade are different types of steel, each
contributing to the sword's deadly effectiveness and its unique design.
 There are two types of blade weaponry. One is a piercing instrument, an epee, or a
fencing foil, for example. The other is the saber or the Japanese sword, where you
slash. You use your whole body force, your upper body, in order to apply the largest
force you can.
 In the small village of Shimane, in southwest Japan, they still make the metal ore for
samurai swords the same way it has been done for centuries, in earthen smelting
furnaces called tataras.
 This special steel called tamahagane is made from iron ore sand, collected in local
rivers, and charcoal.
 Akira Kihara is one of the last remaining tatara masters in the world. He won't sleep
for three days and three nights as he watches the furnace create steel that is the
quality needed for the world's sharpest swords.
 Rick Vinci, a professor of material science at Lehigh University, says that just like in
cooking, the ingredients of the metal can make all the difference.
 Steel is composed of the element iron and the element carbon. The ancient Japanese
could physically see iron, but they had no idea what carbon was. They understood
that charcoal was needed for the process, but they didn't understand charcoal as
carbon. Carbon wasn't discovered as an element until just a few hundred years ago.
 The hard part is keeping the oven cooking just right.
 In the very hot center of the furnace, the iron and carbon combine. This process
happens at the atomic level. By nature, iron atoms bond to one another in a specific
geometric arrangement. When heated, that structure changes form. Iron actually has
 two different forms that it takes: a low temperature form, in which the atoms are
arranged in a particular way, and a high temperature form, in which they are
arranged a little bit differently. There's actually more space between the iron atoms
at high temperature. But when this high temperature form cools quickly, it contracts,
and the carbon atoms become trapped in between the iron atoms. If it does that, the
iron can't fully assume the structure that it would like to. It will be distorted by virtue
of the fact that the carbon atoms are lodged into these spaces that are really too small
for them to fit into. And that kind of form of steel—iron and carbon mixed together
—is very, very hard, very, very strong.
 In the traditional smelting process, the metal ore never completely reaches a liquid
state so that the steel ore, or tamahagane, will not be uniform in its mixture of iron
and carbon. Some parts will have more carbon, some less. These different mixtures
of steel will become very important in the engineering of the sword.
 More carbon makes the steel harder so that it can hold a sharper edge, but too much
carbon makes the steel brittle, and no samurai wants to be caught with a broken
sword.
 In engineering, there is a limit to how hard you can make the metal before it
becomes brittle. The standard test for measuring this is called the Charpy test. Here,
a large pendulum is used to break a sample of metal. Hard metals don't bend, so they
break more easily. A metal that resists the energy or force of the pendulum and
bends before it breaks is said to be tough.
 The ancient Japanese swordsmiths used religious ritual as their process control to
make sure that each and every time that they manufactured this same object, it was
done exactly the same way. They didn't have science to do it, they had religious
ritual.
 Ken Kraft, a professor of religion and an expert on medieval Japan, says this
reverence helps explain why the sword is so important in Japanese culture. And in
Japan, the gods could be found in any natural object, including waterfalls or trees or
a mountain. So it wasn't a big leap for them to think that an object as powerful and as
beautifully made and as reverently made as a sword could have some sacredness to
it. It is that sense of the sacred that drives Master Kihara.
 by looking and listening inside the core of the tatara that it is time to break up the
furnace and extract the steel ore.
 Once the ingot is cooled, it will be broken into small pieces. This process helps to
sort the steel. Pieces that break off easily are more brittle. Parts that are more
 difficult to break apart are tougher. The most skilled masters are those that can
deliver the best quality of both types.
 With the curve of the blade, if you are doing that slashing motion, it actually makes
it possible to move the blade in an arc, which is what you want to do when you slash
something
 Sakurai is a small town, not far from the fabled city of Kyoto and home to Gassan
Sadatoshi, one of Japan's most renowned swordsmiths. Gassan can judge from the
texture and color of the raw steel just how much carbon is in it. Brighter pieces have
more carbon. Heating softens the steel for hammering so that the pieces can be
formed into one. The hammering also drives out most of the remaining impurities,
called slag. Molten slag can be seen in some of the dramatic sparks as it is squeezed
out of the steel by the hammering.
 The steel is pounded flat and then folded time and time again to thoroughly mix the
iron and carbon. Gassan gauges the concentration of the carbon by the way the steel
bends.
 How good a job did the ancient blacksmiths do? With modern tools we can see.
Using a special electron microscope, trace amounts of unwanted elements like
sulphur or phosphorus that would weaken the steel can be detected.
 Another thing that is happening in this brutal pounding of the steel is that the shape
of the metal, all the way down to the atomic level, is changing. Because every time I
bend it, I create lots of microscopic defects inside, and the more defects I have, the
stronger the material gets.
 The final stage of the forging process will harden the steel to hold its razor sharp
edge. It is done through a dramatic step of heating and quickly cooling the steel to
lock in the carbon. This process, called quenching, will accentuate the hardness of
the high-carbon steel but has little affect on the tough, more flexible, low-carbon
steel.
 Master Takeshi Hon'ami is a 14th generation sword polisher. He will spend several
weeks bringing the forged steel to a brilliant luster. It takes a lifetime to master this
trade. Even learning how to sit isn't easy.