Preparing the shobu-zukuri style blade
Steel construction is Sandwich style. Core (edge) steel is hard. And the outer steel is soft.
Core steel : 14 times folding of hard and dense steel pieces.
Outer steel : 8 times folding of coarse quality steel pieces.
Clay designing, heating, and quenching is done by the customer.
Clay diesigning
Just after the quenching work
The clay popped off in the water. The heating temperature might be too high to keep the clay on the blade for the quenching work.
Polished out
Hamon is made of large particles (nie). The hamon becomes wider around the middle part of the blade, and the temper line (hamon particles band) also becomes larger there. Some lightning patterns (kinsuji) also appear in the hamon. The popping off of the clay in quenching work might be an accident, but the total taste of hamon looks like so-called "Soshu style", though.
Hamon sketch
A sister of this blade what is hardened by our smith => 2022 October in the page "Actual polishing practice by an aprentice"
It may be interesting to compare these two blades thinking about how the heating temperature influencse the hamon.