Modeling characteristics of Qijiadao

The blade is curved and narrow, and its shape and posture are very close to those of Japanese Dao. Blades are divided into picks and flat knives. Pick means that there is a raised line on the side of the blade, and flat means that the blade does not have this pickaxe line. Under the special historical background of Japanese insurrection in Ming Dynasty, Qijia Dao changed its previous style, mainly reflected in the way and shape of the blade body, and began to have obvious Japanese style. The curvature of the blade increases, while the width of the blade decreases. The tip of the knife is not sharp, but the radian is very small, much like the early Han Dynasty hand iron knife. There is a thread pick in the middle of the blade, and the back of the blade is wired. The overall posture is very close to that of a Japanese sword. At the same time, the tip of the knife is in harmony with the Japanese knife. On the other hand, the tip thickness of Ming Qijia Dao is the same as that of the blade body, and the back of the knife is cut (both sides of the back are thinned) to reduce the overall weight of the blade without reducing the strength of the blade. This effect is mainly due to the different combat skills. Japanese knives pay more attention to stabbing, while China knives pay more attention to cutting.

Qi Jiguang said: "The blade is smooth, shoulder-less, advantageous and sharp" refers to the grinding method of the blade. The blade is V-shaped and the blade is smooth, which makes the cutting force of the knife stronger. This blade posture is close to that of Japanese Dao, but the tip of the blade stands out from the category of Japanese Dao. A more reasonable design is that Qijia Dao is better than Japanese Dao.

According to the literature, Ming Dao has iron frame, Japanese iron frame and detailed extension knife, all of which have a strong Japanese style. Literally, they are all hobs, but one of them is definitely a Japanese hob, so this Japanese hob is imitation or its shape is very close to Japan. Judging from the preserved objects, many knives named "Qijiadao" have picks, but they are actually closer to the "Japanese hob". Judging from the existing physical and written materials, "hob" is a kind of knife close to Japan, but there are different knives. Qi Jiguang emphasized that "the handle should be short and the shape should be curved ...", which in turn reflected that the real Qijia Dao adopted curved handle, while the posture of the blade was learned from Japanese Dao. Judging from the existing written materials, it is impossible to confirm the difference between the two hobs. There is reason to believe that the real Qijia Dao is a Chinese-style "iron frame" or a combination of Chinese styles.

Because the records in ancient books are not very detailed, and later generations praised Qi Jiguang's great achievements, this Japanese knife method is collectively called "Qijiadao". There are two main materials for Qijia Dao, one is iron, and the other is copper. The shape of handle fittings can be divided into three common types: square, four-petal melon, and eggplant with curved handle.

(1) Fang: This kind of fittings is the most common. The part on the handle is mainly an oval guard with a small hem. The front of the guard blade is oval, and the part facing the blade has a narrow and upright edge, some of which are vertical and some are slightly floating outward. Of the two parts on the handle, the tiger's mouth is called the edge, with a rectangular cross section and a trapezoidal edge. The tail of the tool is a fan-shaped cuboid called the tool head. There is a round hole near the end of the handle, which is used to thread the hand rope. One function of the hand rope is to decorate beautifully, and the other function is to wrap the rope around the hand, so the knife is not easy to get rid of in practical use, so the handle is mostly square and flat. The wood of the handle is generally cork and made into a rectangle. The middle is hollowed out to let the arbor pass through the wooden handle, and the end of the arbor is padded and riveted to the end of the cutter.

(2) Four-petal melon type: There is also a common block, commonly known as papaya block. The front of the block is a four-petal melon shape, so the block is also divided into two types: edge block and flat block. The vertical edge is very low, only 5-8 mm, which looks small and exquisite. Such fittings are generally in the late Ming Dynasty. Some draws are flat, thicker in the middle and thinner at the edges, usually made of iron. Some flat guard plates have a circle of piping on the outer edge, and the piping with complicated process will be carved. This kind of hand guard is relatively old. The flange under this kind of hand guard is generally oval, and the cross section of the cutter head is also oval, so that the handle is also empty, and the handle is mostly square and flat.

(3) The head of the handle is bent downwards to be eggplant-shaped: this structure is quite special. The cutter head is an arc-shaped iron sheet as a riveting gasket, and the arc-shaped iron sheet wraps the second half of the handle. The whole handle rolls down like a cloud, and there is a hand rope hole in the middle of the cloud. The handle narrows at the edge, and the edge is mostly oval. Most of the knife guards are four-petal melon-shaped hand guards, and most of them are made of iron, so that the knife stems are mostly narrowed rat tail stems, and the hand ropes are opened on the wooden handles without passing through the iron stems.

Generally, the iron shell is partially inlaid with silver, and there are many decorative patterns, such as Silver Dragon, Mi Zige, Swastika and Seawater Cliff. There are many gold-plated copper fittings, and some copper fittings are also made into high relief patterns. Blade forging is an important historical stage in Ming Dynasty. During this period, China Knife not only kept the traditional forging technology in China, but also began to learn more complicated forging methods in West Asia and Japan. Forging in this period is an era of great technological integration.

The forging of Qijia Dao is generally divided into two types, one is with obvious pattern effect, and the other is with no pattern. Both of them adopt the method of clamping steel in the blade body, and the length of the blade body ranges from 680 to 780 mm. The forged Qijia Dao with obvious pattern mostly comes from Shanxi and Hebei, and the pattern is mostly "flowing water" and "spin welding", and the forging process mostly comes from West Asia. The other pattern is not obvious, but the fine texture is irregular, so the blade is blue and white in steel. In this way, the two types meet the requirements of Qi Jiguang that "iron should be tempered more and blades should be made of pure steel", and the blades should be made of pure steel, so as to achieve both rigidity and flexibility as a whole. Judging from the existing preserved Qijia Dao, almost no Japanese forging method has been adopted. The biggest feature of Japanese forging is that soft iron is the core and blade steel is wrapped. The forging method is complex and has good performance, but the cost is too high. Because the Yuan Dynasty monopolized the technology of winding steel knives in the Song Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty always used iron steel knives with steel blades to simply cope with the goal of giving consideration to both rigidity and softness.

Qijiadao learned the posture of Japanese Dao, and the overall style has changed. The posture of the knife is an arc from one foot on the handle, which we call reverse. Some Qijia knives are relatively straight, with small inverse proportion, while others are relatively large, which should be related to the different scales grasped by craftsmen in different regions in the production process. The blade near the hand stop is wide, generally 28-35 mm, and it narrows as a whole at the beginning of cutting, with only 20-25 mm at the tip. The posture of the blade is smooth, and the reverse side of Qijia Dao is different from that of Japanese Dao. The arc of Qijia Dao is completely a section of a big arc, which will exert the greatest killing effect in the process of cutting. The Japanese knife is relatively straight near the tip. Qijia Dao is made of two materials: a shoulder pole and a pickaxe. The flat Qijia Dao means that the pickaxe line is relatively flat, but it shows slight performance. Ming army should learn Japanese Dao and adjust it according to its own characteristics. The Ming army did not pay attention to the polishing of the blade like the Japanese pirates, but paid more attention to the overall efficiency and manufacturing cost. This type of Ming Dao has very good overall strength and is very suitable for battlefield fighting. Therefore, Qi Jiguang and Yu specially compiled it. In the late stage of Qijia Dao, there was also a blood ditch on the Dao. This kind of knife was also used in the early Qing dynasty, and basically disappeared after the middle period.