Horimono Maintainance

[Peeti]

Hi,

 

Can anyone recomend how to maintain efficently the horimono on your katana? I feel that wiping the oiled cloth along the blade is not sufficent to coat the horimono. I even use cutton bud dipped in oil on the horimono, but still feel it is not working well on the really small horimono. Thank you very much in advance!

 

Peeti

[Stephen]

It should be more than enough if using Qtips, be sure to wipe excess or it will gum up your saya

[seattle1]

Hello:

While the term horimono tends to be used to refer to decorative carvings and kanji, the care of hi tends to also require care as both can harbor abrasive accumulated this and that. If uchiko is used, and perhaps even micro fiber cloths, great care must be used not to drag such material on to the blade surface or eventually the depth and density of the induced scratching will become obvious. Horimono and hi should be "cleared" before attempting to remove oil by any method from the blade's surfaces. A Q-tip is a good idea for horimono and hi should be done first, but not with a Q-tip unless quite narrow, and from their top terminus down the blade and not the other way around as the risk is always there to drag unwanted material into the kissaki area as is so often seen.

Unless humidity risk is high I would advise using no oil a year or so after any polish, and if an old polish, not at all.

Arnold F.

[SAS]

Polishers usually recommend frequent oiling for several months after polishing as far as i remember, due to the exposure to water in the polishing process. Excess oil should not be allowed to accumulate on the blade, however.

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

 

 Unless humidity risk is high I would advise using no oil a year or so after any polish,

 

A sword freshly polished is in a delicate situation and should take oil with a diminishing frequence. Asking the togishi after the polish about this matter is a good thing. He knows how that particular steel reacts.

 

Edit : Steve was faster,,,

[Jean]

What has written Arnold is true and is a rule of thumb.

 

NO HUMIDITY=NO OIL

 

In case of NO HUMIDITY

 

After a year the polish is not considered anymore as new. You can oil it if you want once every other six months the second year but that's all. Forget everything about oiling, if there is NO HUMIDITY.

 

I have never oiled my blades and I am living in Paris, Shirasaya are air tight.

 

If not necessary, oiling blades has only drawback, you have all chances to scratch the blade while cleaning it, furthermore it will lead to accumulation of oil in the shirasaya. Forget also uchiko on polished blades, best way to scratch a polish.

[Katsujinken]

What constitutes no humidity? Right now humidity in Paris is about 60%. Humidity in my apartment is around 20% in the winter and 40-50% in the warmer months. I use Fujishiro oil and a ZCORR bag (https://www.amazon.com/ZCORR-Corrosion-Velcro-Shotgun-Rifle/dp/B00A2SMVAC).

 

Probably overkill, I admit. But if I had to put a Koto blade through an otherwise unnecessary polish due to the appearance new oxidation I'd just about weep.

[SwordGuyJoe]

...I'd just about weep.

 

As would your wallet!

[Jean]

Michael,

 

You have a problem with your shirasaya if the blade was in old polish. All my swords were in pristine polish and have never been oiled and never rusted. At 50% humidity, a blade in old polish won't rust. Old polish does not mean the blade is not in pristine polish.

 

Edit to add: I have been living since my birth in Paris and been collecting blades for 40 years, so I have experienced it upon a few score of blades. I had only one problem with a blade which got a thin veil of rust which disappeared with uchiko but it was due to bad caring.

 

The fact that only one of your blade got rusted confirm this.

[Katsujinken]

Oh Jean, I didn't mean that I have had rust, just that I am ultra paranoid about making sure I never do. Your anecdote is a comfort, though!

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

Shirasaya are air tight.

furthermore it will lead to accumulation of oil in the shirasaya.

Shirasaya aren't supposed to have no contact with the blade other than on the mune ? You have to put a really exaggerate amount of oil to gum a shirasaya.

[Stephen]

I have received swords back with so much oil on then that i had to do the in out, wipe, in out  wipe until no more oil on blade !!

[Jean]

They are supposed, Carlo, but it seems it is not the reality as Stephen and myself have experienced. BTW, I remember an NMB topic about shirasaya stained with oil coming from the inside...in my case, it was around the monouchi

[Darcy]

Japanese dealers are also in the habit of not oiling their blades. 

 

I can tell you at least 10 times, if not more, I have spotted rust developing on their swords. Juyo, Tokuju, Jubi blades worth over $100k. Sometimes this starts an immediate flurry of activity with uchiko to remove the rust.

 

All of this is a destructive process. The rusting and the "fixing" of it not to mention that if you need to scrub rust you're also altering the polish and ruining that.

 

Oil is not a chemical that reacts with steel. There is no reason to not oil a blade. If someone doesn't oil a blade, they are just rolling dice. When the rust starts it won't be in any way that they can see it. When they can see the rust this means that the damage has already happened, and from here you are into control and recovery mode. 

 

It's a one way process, letting a sword decay. 

 

Oil is an insurance policy. 

 

I don't think it's good advice on the board for people to be saying don't oil a blade for a year, or don't bother oiling them at all. These processes can be fast if the sword was treated with abuse, but as in the dealer's case above, they are stored, showed briefly but live 99.9% of their life in a humidity controlled vault. In this environment they are slowly rusting. Very slowly. 

 

And we see that on American found swords that have their rust spots, as well as Japanese found swords, that a sword could be stored for 30-40 years with no oil and then after this time just have a few blooms of rust on it. That rust is highly damaging but it was also a very slow process. 

 

But it's like cancer. By the time you see it you are in reactive mode. It's better to be in prevent mode and never have to deal with the problem.

 

Also, I have had swords go to Japan and then come back with rust on them because someone removed the oil then nobody oiled them again. Juyo blades of my own. Believe me it is upsetting.

[Darcy]

They are supposed, Carlo, but it seems it is not the reality as Stephen and myself have experienced. BTW, I remember an NMB topic about shirasaya stained with oil coming from the inside...in my case, it was around the monouchi

 

That was probably from me. 

 

The owner had extremely heavily oiled the blade and also stored it vertically.

 

If the shirasaya is cut properly the grain is straight grain, like masame. That means a good piece of wood was used for this purpose and it was used properly. Because there are not always good sources available sometimes, you see a bit of itame style grain. 

 

Wood is not very absorbant when you are trying to penetrate it at an angle to the grain. So you can put water on the masame style surface and it will mostly bead, eventually it will soak, but it won't penetrate down. You will see it spread horizontally. It can only slowly enter the fibers, but once entered, it spreads longitudinally fairly quickly.

 

This is because a tree is a machine meant to move fluids up and down the tree along the grain, and there is no advantage to fluids leaking out willy nilly on the transit.

 

If you heavily oil a sword and store it vertically, the oil will slowly flow to the kissaki and then it will accumulate there in a pool. If it is a well cut shirasaya at this point the pool is accumulating and facing end grain which is very absorbant, the direction the tree would have wanted to make fluids flow. So, out it goes, soaks the entire end of the shirasaya and comes right out the other side.

 

If a shirasaya is cut from a poorer grade of wood and you see itame or any other types of cross grain predominant in the construction, then this means that the jihada of the sword may be facing some end grain, even at an angle, you will get the same problem. Think of them like straws, if you pack all the straws against the sword aligned masame style nothing can get into the straws very easy. As soon as you put them at an angle to the steel, now the straws can conduct oil off the blade, literally sucking it off the blade. This is not so good for the sword.

 

As well when a shirasaya is made with masame style grain, humidity cannot penetrate very easily on the sides but just at the end grain. This slows down deformation of the shirasaya and makes it more stable through the seasons. If you have a variety of grains with end grain exposed through the side then the shirasaya will deform at different rates throughout the shirasaya and also it will deform more than one made of all straight grain. Maybe not so much as to be noticed but this is what is going on. 

 

Good clear straight grain is very useful. So is burl wood. The areas in between introduce problems. If you ever saw a fence with a hole in it because a knot fell out, the weakness between the rest of the wood and the knot, as well as the knotwood increasing in size more and faster with high humidity and then shrinking faster and more in low humidity is what eventually makes a knot drop out of the wood. Basically it wiggles itself free over years.

[eternal_newbie]

Also, even if your home environment is 100% humidity free (which I doubt, unless you live in the Sahara) - you still need to breathe, and your breath contains moisture. So unless you're holding your breath or wearing a gas mask every time you view a blade - chances are the rust will set in. Depending on your environment you may not need to re-oil for a year instead of every 3 months - but the oil should still be there when you're not actively viewing the blades.

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Well intentioned advice in response to a question about oiling blades can obviously differ. I doubt we are going to have the time or resources to conduct an actual experiment under controlled conditions to settle this long standing issue. For those who use oil under any circumstances, and I do endorse it on newly polished blades for at least a year, it is obvious that the surface should be covered only to a minimum thickness. You will find that after oil is put on it will tend to be unnecessarily thick and the next step should be to wipe the blade with a correctly laundered piece of flannel cloth. That is a classic step and will minimize the film thickness and eliminate subsequent beading which promotes the running Darcy refers to.

 Arnold F.

[Jean]

Each time I look at my blades, I avoid heavy breathing on them nor I speak to anybody. They are all wiped before being putting back in shirasaya. No problem in decades.

 

Paris is not Tokyo or Japan by the way. I have seen the way dealers in Tokyo are manipulating blades, I must confess that most western collectors are much more carefull with their blades.

[Jamie]

I live in An extremely dry environment in the us and I use oil always. I think Fujishiro s is best. Extremely thin coat, but it's always there. Like insurance as Darcy points out.

[Brian]

Oil your blades. Very lightly, but oil them. There is NO reason not to. Don't have great dripping blobs of oil sitting on the blade...but really....saying you shouldn't oil at all is not very responsible.
You can't tell if you breathed one tiny glob of saliva onto your blade that will cause a pit mark. Or if your house will get a water damp problem due to a pipe leaking in a wall. Numerous reasons. Just oil your blade with a decent and recommended oil very lightly and give it a wipe. No reason not to...every reason to.

[w.y.chan]

Almost every swords I bought from Japanese dealers are not oiled or with very old dried oil. The last couple had rust beginning to form. I had to treat it with alcohol and in a "oil bath" for 6 months. I had horimono buried under hardened uchiko and also layers of gunge. After oil treatment the difference is light and day.

 

 

Wah

[Renech]

Hi just curious if Renn Wax is a good alternative it has been used on WW2 German swords and daggers or is it different for Japanese swords oil is better?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Wax

 

Rene Chavez

www.foreignvolunteerlegion.com