Some pics on the guard, I cut the hole with my Dremel and hammered it with a ballhammer.
Now it time to harden the sword.
I made a forge with some dirt and a pipe with a lot of holes.
And used a vacuum cleaner to blow air through it.
As a little experiment I just dipped the cutting edge in the cooling fluid, making the edge harder than the back.
And it happened that the sword curved like a katana :D.
I was told before that the japanese sword smith curved their blades like this, but I hardly believed it.
It works like this, The faster you cool something, the less it will shrink.
And when dipping only the edge, the back will shrink more than the edge, and then bend.
But this was a very good thing i think, because I really wanted a curved sword :)
Ironic isn't it, that the first sword I wanted to be curved but i got a straight in the end,
And now when trying to make a straight one it became curved.
Tempering :
After some quick sanding allowing the tempering colors visible, I put it back in the
forge to temper it (this was the only way I could think of since the pipe it didn't fit in the pipe i used before) .
I tried to get the hole blade about the same blue color.
After I grinded away all the oxidation with the belt grinder I started polish the blade by hand,
since there was some small unevenness that the belt could not reach in to without grinding down a lot more of the blade.
I use a piece of a hose, and sandpaper wraped on it, I start with 180 grain.
Here most of this side is finished with the 180 grain.