Just like the metal Hadori door trim in the Lexus ES F Sport saloon emulates traditional Japanese sword-making techniques, the spindle grille-shaped pinnacle of this object was created using a process called Damascus steel, which is also used in Katana sword-making.
It involves forging two types of steel together to achieve an incredibly strong alloy. “I really, really thrived in just seeing how much I could push this”, said Barker, “by continuously folding it over I was able to get one hundred and sixty-two layers of steel in that small space. It’s probably the hardest technique that I have to hand.”
Watching Will work in the intense heat of his Colchester forge makes you realisejust how incredibly physical and visceral being a blacksmith is. “Whilst steel is a very forgiving material to work with it still requires a lot of brute strength to get it to do what you want it to do”, Will adds, “you need to heat it up to 1,750 degrees Celsius to get it to a malleable stage, and you have to create a huge amount of force to bend it and twist it to the shape you want. It’s a lot of hard work to achieve what you wanttodo.”