The making of a shogun's armory usually involved several stages. The first thing the blacksmith would do was to get materials such as wrought iron or steel for forging The second stage was to forge and shape the steel into either a chestplate, helmet and a pair of chausses (leg armor). The third stage is polishing using mirror polish, and decorating the armor to make it look presentable. All these steps in the shogun era took around a year.