Making The Nodowa Horse Shoe Ring

A few years back I was visiting Ogawa Sensei in Nagoya, upon leaving his workshop he pointed towards a throat ring hanging on a hook near the staircase. “You should make one of these, they are interesting,” he said as I was making my exit. At first, I thought to myself that it looked simple, nothing more than a metal U hammered into a dome. Was I wrong!  The shape is rather complex and it took me a few attempts until I was satisfied with the result. By chance, The Samurai Art Museum had a Nodowa Tare that had lost its ring, so I volunteered to make a replacement.

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This is the museums original edo period tare that was missing its throat ring

I hammered out the replacement in 0.8 mild steel and worked out where the holes would be placed

The ring was now cleaned up by removing the majority of hammer marks and the edges refined

The ring was primed in urushi and then built up with kokuso to make it thicker and more robust

Layers upon layers of black urushi were applied and cut back to thicken the plate and to create a more levelled surface

The urushi is cut back using special polishing stones, each time the surface is sanded it becomes smoother

The surface has now undergone many coats of urushi which have been polished in between applications. The surface is now at around 2,000 grit

The ring is now completed and a gloss finish applied. i had to cut this high gloss back again as it did not match the urushi on the Tare

The komori-tsuke was made from egawa leather and silk ire-ji. It was rather untidy and needed some attention

I consolidated all the loose silk strands and re-gluded the egawa to prevent further damage occurring

The original komori-tsuke was only fixed in three points so I burnt-in some additional holes to ensure a closer fit when threaded

I attached the tare to the ring using deer hide

I damped down the komori-tsuke so that it would bend and reshape itself to the new ring

After adding some odoshi-ito the nodowa is finally completed and ready to return to the museum.

Nodowa