Making a Hori Hori – Japanese gardening trowel

In this video both the new arrivals to the workshop this year – the fly press and the Kity Bestcombi are called in to assist in the creation of a gift for someone special.
The Hori Hori is a Japanese gardening trowel quite different from the usual western style, not least in that it features a sharpened edge and some vicious teeth!

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hello welcome back to the workshop so I’ve got to make a present for somebody and that somebody is into gardening and Japanese things so the obvious choice is to make a Japanese gardening Trail a hor Horry Horry is the Japanese word for dig so this translates as a dig dig which if you think about it it’s a more sensible name than gardening Trail if you’ve not seen one before H hry looks something like this so it’s a cross between a conventional Trail and a big knife I think that’s the easiest way to describe it there are loads of people online selling these things so they’re not hard to come they are rather expensive for what they are but I guess most of them have been imported halfway across the world I looked through loads of photos of H hores to get an idea of what appeared to me aesthetically um and then started drawing some out I then started adding a bit of a a leaf shape and it ended up being a bit more like a Roman Gladius or um uh a bronze AG sword and then I just returned to something much more H H like and this is what I’ve come up with a very archetypal H hry design this is going to be the front and this is going to be the back so we’ve got a blade that’s made of um high carbon steel 3 mm steel I’m going to start with and that blade extends up into the handle to about here um that’s going to be a hole for hanging it up that’s going to be a pin and a pin and this bit here it dips very slightly this bit here is um serrations and then it’s sharpened here and up there and then these are depth measurements for when you’re planting so I’m going to try and make these marks and stamp some numbers on it as well people seem to love these hor hores and I think one of the biggest advantages they have is they’re just made of nice steel um compared to a normal Garden Trail I’ve had a whole bunch of garden Trails over the years and they all break up at the same point this point here in fact this is what I started using for gardening uh Builder Trail and again it’s just made of nice proper steel um by proper I mean high carbon steel opposed to whatever Garden TRS are normally made of and usually for me I’m going to be starting this project with some actual knife steel that I bought from a knife steel stockist I do have some saw blades but this material is just too thin and then I’ve got things like the leaf springs or farious rust but that’s all way too thick and I’d be there all day thinning it out down to 3 mil whereas this happens to be exactly the right thickness from the off so we’ll go with this this is 80 crv2 which is a really nice knife Steel the other nice thing about using a known steel is the it takes all the guess work out of the heat treatment so for instance on this bit of um o1 steel the entire recipe for heat treatment is here on the packaging now normally the first step is to light Forge Chuck the steel in and kneel it to make it as soft as possible before starting to work on it but this stuff is supplied and kned so we can skip that step and go straight onto layout now I could cut this shape out with a pair of scissors and glue it onto the metal and use that for as my template but it’s such a simple shape what I’m going to do instead is to lay it out straight onto the metal by doing that I can ensure that these holes are dead centering so blade is going to be 247 I could have gone with a Full Tang but half Tang seems to be the traditional way of doing it so this will be one solid piece of wood with a slot cut through it for the to receive the blade and then pinned with two stainless steel pins I’ll drill the holes next because that’s nice and straightforward and then we’ll have a think about the serration I’ve never made serrations before but I’ve got a bit of an idea [Applause] I have here some chainsaw files and I think I can make I can use these to make the serration from there to there give myself a bit of a head start with the angle grinder and then we’ll form them in with this with four eight I’ve marked out every 4 mm along there and every other one will be the dip and every other one will be the peak now different designs of H H have got different ways of going about their serration well some of them don’t even have serration but the the one I like the most the Bonsai hor Horry um has got the both the bevels and the what you call them the cutouts for the for the serration are done on the back so it’s a single bevel that goes from about here right around down there there and then it’s filed from here so I’m going to do that which means I got to put that marking on the back here then on the other side on the front here this is where we’re going to put the curve and put the graduations and what’s just occurred to me is that if I rough in the bevels first I’m going to have a lot less material to hand file so over to the sander and we’ll do that change your plan just as I was heading to the sander to take that material off of here I suddenly thought actually we need that material as support when we put the crease in here on the front so I’ll leave that for now but we will go to the Sandro and just clean off this oxide layer and then stamp in the graduation points stamp in the numbers then put that crease in then we’ll take the bevels down then we’ll file in the serration I’ve got to do this clean up now because once the graduations and the numbers are stamped in there I don’t want to sand it anymore after that I not sure how well you can see the texture there but I quite like that at 80 that’s a 80 grit I’m going to leave it at that it will of course go black when we heat treat this there’ll be a black oxide layer Left Behind which will be the final finish now over to the fly press for some stamping then I’ve got this little kit to do the actual numbers I got this for punching the chassis number into Kermit the land dver course I was able to actually save the original so I’ve not used these I’ve just run that through the sander just to take the very edge of the sharp bit off because we want a line rather than a cut and while I say I sanded a bit of one the off cut so we can tast it because this is high carbon still it may well need to be heated up before we can make a decent impression even even with the um the Y of the fly press here but I’m going to try cold just to see what happens that third one yeah if I put a bit room behind it will do it cold yeah that’s it so mark this match the center line to [Music] that good I’m happy with that now now some numbers problem I got now is I’ve got nowhere of holding this number punch in the fly press here because the receiver in here takes this size takes inch stuff and of course that’s way smaller so if I put that straight in there it just flaps about there’s no way of gripping it so I could just hold it in place but of course that kind of defeats the point of having the fly press the point of the flly press is not just it’s a massively strong but it’s nice and square as well it’s a good Square headit so pondered it for a moment and I’m going to make up um something that will hold a tool holder for these little things so it’ll hold a number punches letter punches and other punches I guess the rest of the toiling ha I mostly made from using um inch nuts and bolts and there’s one of the bolts left over and I think I can use this if I mount this in the LA drill a hole in it there that this can go in like that and then maybe put a hole in the side with a grub screw if it needs it we’ll find out in a moment [Music] [Music] that’s that got a 5 mil hole in this flat drilled through the side there tap it out to six [Applause] so now the number punch will go in now we’ll hold it so the bottom of the punch indexes nicely with this screw and then I’ve just sanded a flat onto here so that this will help index to that by indexing I just mean lining up nicely uh let’s do a test o crispy that came out rather well now there’s a bit more forging to do we got to put the crease in it yet so the trail this is the front of it and it needs to be dished slightly that way and I’m thinking I can use this this tool here this fling tool and there’s a forer I use this this is actually a mold for um pouring aluminum into I’m essentially using this mold as a um suede block and then this is going to push into that I will I’m not just going to go for it so the idea this drops down come that way that will go in there and we’ll get the shape that we want after all this cold forging I’m going to need to normalize the metal otherwise when we come to heat treat it it will go in a um funny directions because of the stress is building up but if we normalize it it’ll be fine let’s try it out with this this bit course normally I’d hammer in the curve but I don’t want Hammer marks in it [Music] yeah it’s starting to V up a bit which I don’t want it to V too much yeah I don’t need as much as that out of it so I think this technique will work that’s not quite working the way I want it to it’s because I I’m trying to get the metal to bend in two directions to give a slight curve that way but also that way and it’s much harder to get that curve in so it’s only doing one of the curves essentially what I’m saying is we need some heat just to soften the meide o what I’ve gone for is to make it flat here flat here and then Scoops up just a tad at the end and it very much has a it has a trough in it here which Fades away there it’s subtle and I’m sorely tempted to put more in there but I think that’s about ride or no I think it is actually ride so that’s good we’ll go with that so now that’s it with the press and the forging I think so I’m going to normalize it now I’m going to bring it up to a nice bright orange and let it cool down and that will relieve the stresses that we smacked in there doing that it’s almost at room temperature now so I can carry on get back to what we were doing before all that uh all that forging stuff and now it’s to get the bevels in and then we’ll cut the serration so I can just about make out where I scribed it on the back here and I’ll go with that [Applause] [Music] so that’s the bevel’s roughed in that’s I’m not going to go beyond 80 git at this point but I have taken it to an edge all the way around now for some hand firing [Music] f [Music] that’s it of course it’s not sharp yet but does look vicious well so far I’m I’m really happy with it actually it’s coming out exactly as as planned um so I’ve done two normalizations on this so far I’m going to do one more and then we’ll be ready for heat treatment it’s cooled down almost to handleable temperature so we’re ready for heat treat I’ve got my olive oil out always use olive oil just cuz I’ve got lots of it and as you can see thanks to the temperature in here it’s almost solid I’m going to heat up this bit of angline Chuck it in there and my aim is not just to make this liquid but to get it up to 40 or so degrees some somewhere around there and that’ll just make it more effective as a quenchant so once we’ sorted out the olive oil then I’m going to put the blade in there and get it up to a nice orange and I’ll let it soak at Orange for a little bit pull it out there straighten the oil and quench it and that’ll take it from being a in its current state to overly hard in fact brittle hard and then we’ll put it in the oven and temporate for an hour or so for still as intended it’s good in that direction I thought for a moment we had a bit of a Twist in there but it’s we don’t it’s actually just right few always a bit nerve-wracking the um each Tre so when it’s quenched it doesn’t Harden immediately it takes about 60 seconds and during that time you can tweak it a little bit happily we didn’t have to at all I’m just brushing off the loose oxide layer while it’s still warm I’m going to let that air cool down till it’s handleable and then it’ll be tempered so before I temper it though I I’m going to I’ll do a hardness test and see what we’ve got it up to this is a hardness testing kit um appropriately Le it’s Japanese as well so these um hardness is measured in Rockwell and these are all these files are made to a very specific hardness so if they can scratch it then it’s below that if they can’t it’s above that I’m only wanting to scratch it where we’re not going to see it so up here that skating 55 there’s that and 65 yeah that’s sken I want for this because it’s not a knife it’s not like a kitchen knife or something so I I’m going to temper it a bit more than I would usually so let’s take it down I want it somewhere in the high 50s so to make it a tad softer than normal we need to go a tad hotter than normal so I’ve set this to 250 and I’m going to put it in for 2 hours and as is tradition put some spuds in as well for [Applause] dinner that’s it after 2 hours in the oven at 250° and it’s it’s a nice black let’s see what we’ve tempered it to so I’ll start at 50 I’m hoping 50 will skate over it yeah so we’re above 50 55 so according to the um recipe I suppose you call it um we should be at 57 yeah cuz that was I I think we are cuz 55 is skating 60 here is biting in so we are somewhere between the two so that’s good that worked out I need to bring this to a final edge of course but before we do that let’s put a handle on it next up then we’re going to need a handle it’s going to have a look in woodworking corner and see what we’ve got in stock under the workbench here I’ve got some random lumps of interesting looking wood because it’s all been here for years it should all be well seasoned now of course this handle doesn’t have to be super strong in itself um but I mean not like a hammer handle or an axe handle or something like that so I don’t need something like oak or Ash I could I could use u u is a very pretty word if that comes across but it’s it’s quite reddish in color let’s cut into this and see what it looks like lovely bit of wood some really interesting patterns there I can now do is use the kitty the comie machine flatten off one side and then we soore it up [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] that’s now the thickness that I want it and these are these surfaces are parallel to each other that’s that’s what all that was about just work that might just work but these bits here AR supposed to be like that there’s supposed to be a curve so we’ll get that in first with the [Music] grinder now I can use the banda cut out these bits um and then we’re going to cut a slot in there to receive the Tang that’s not good that blade’s not very straight is it B well I’ve cleaned up the cut and I’m just not happy with it this it’s a loose fit and I think well just look look at it there it’s once once it’s all glued up you’ll see the glue there’s just yeah there’s no there’s no recovering from that this pieces are G to that that’s that so that means that the table saw wasn’t set dead Square I thought it was at zero and it wasn’t so as far as I can tell that’s cutting through now it must have drifted out I don’t know when anyway hopefully we’ve got enough left in this block to make another one have another attempt got Ross in there right let’s go for a chunk of cherry I’ve not opened this up for many a year but uh we’ll see what’s in here [Music] [Applause] [Music] splits this will do this is the oak that I made the um ax handle from that is sound yes I’m sure of that there’s no splits in here let’s go with Oak going going through all of them [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so I tapered these so they can fit in easily um they’re over length so we’ll sand them off when we’re done and I sanded them so that the um epoxy that we’re going to use has got something to grip to [Music] I’m just going to glue the pins I’m not going to put any glue anywhere else this is 5 minute arite and it’s been in my pocket for about 2 hours otherwise it wouldn’t come out of tube on a p like this it’s proper cold it’s a pretty good friction fit so the epoxy is just just to make sure ready that’s it for now right it’s 5 minute poxy but I’m going to leave it for a good hour or so at least the epoxy is well and truly cured and we’re approaching we’re approaching the home straight so nearly there there some tidying up to do essentially so I’m going to cut these off flush now and then we’ve got to make the wood match the metal on the sides here andly make it a bit more bit more ergonomic [Music] I’m getting the shape right around there so we’re matching the oak to the steel let’s do the same here [Laughter] [Music] good the shape is there now I’ve got to shamp for all the corners all the edges [Music] [Music] that’s the shape I’m after so remember it’s not actually a knife it’s a TR this boxy Square section yes it’s very grippy and I’ve shamer all the edges so that’s the way I want it final thing then sharpen it now this is going to be tricky as well cuz I I want to put an edge on there but I don’t want to lose the black worn out 80 grit and I’ve taken it to an edge all the way around now I’m just going to refine that edge with a well we’ll see how high we go 120 next [Music] cool Final thing is just a coat of oil think use some Bard lined oil handle and I’ll put some on the blade as well Lin it all on a rag theoretically it is self-combusting but it does have to be all scrunched up to do that and considering today is around about 4° and drizzling I don’t think anything’s going to combust and there we go it’s as close as I can get to an authentic Japanese H Horry so we’ve got the serans there sharpened edge here and the graduations there they came out pretty well I think and top marks to they fly press for that and I did manage to sneak in a touch Mark as well I’m quite happy with the outcome and it was mostly an enjoyable process we had a couple of hiccups with the wood but got there got there in the end and I’ve learned to do a couple of new things on the combination machine as well um using the slot M for horizontal milling and I’ve also learned to always check the table saw is square so zero is actually zero that was a moment right I’m going to give this another coat or two of lined oil let that dry and it’ be ready course question is will it dig yeah I reckon I reckon it will obviously I’m not going to test it because this is a present I’ll let the recipient test it out well I hope you’ve enjoyed watching me make a h hry and of course I hope the recipient of the H hry enjoys it too and if she does you might be seeing it in future videos but cheers for now for