WWII bring back - ID help

[Bruce Pennington]

Quite peculiar! Two options:

1. Grab the tsuba on both sides with both hands and rock the tsuba . I have dislodged stuck tsukas that way.

2. The barrel screw at the top unscrews. If it is through a hole in the nakago, removing it will free the tsuka. You will have to bend the sarute enough to get it off first. To have a hole that high is unusual for this type blade, common in Type 3, or contengency, blades. I would try it though.

[alamo]

None of the suggestions worked unfortunately so I got a block of wood, put the tip on it and pushed down a number of times. I wasn't stabbing the block but just pushing hard.  Hope this wasn't a bad thing to do.

 

See the picture.  Looks like the holes are close to lined up and I can start digging out the rest of the peg on the other side. 

 

I do need to remove the sarute. I has always been loose too, it's not screwed in.  See the picture. 

[Bruce Pennington]

Nice move, Tom! Now we wait!

[alamo]

Ok, I dug some more peg out and and finally tried pulling on it and it came right off.  I lined all of the parts in order that they were on there.  Right to left.  The first part taken off being on the right. 

 

The wood on the scabbard is split. 

 

The tang is very dark. I couldn't see any markings on either side with a magnifying glass and flashlight.  Maybe I need to clean it off.

 

One of the holes (the 2nd hole) is pretty off, or is that normal? . 

[PNSSHOGUN]

Your sword is certainly old, we would need to see close up pictures of the blade in sunlight to help any further as the Nakago is quite mangled. The colour of the rust would make it a few hundred years old at least.

[Bruce Pennington]

DON’T clean the rust off the nakago. It’s one of the primary ways of judging age. I’d clean the green stuff off the tsuba, but be careful to only affect the green. I found out the hard way that the tsuba and seppa have colorations that come off very easily. You don’t want to lose that.

 

I think there probably was some kanji where the end if the nakago is, but has been cut off when the nakago was shortened. Cool blade and agree with John, quite old.

[alamo]

That's interesting about the blade. Do you think the other parts as old?  Or was the blade re-used?   I'll take more pictures of the blade per John's suggestion and I won't clean the Nakago

 

There's still one part on the blade (the habaki?), I assume that comes off. It slides down a bit but I encountered some resistance so I left it on. It appears there might be the beginnings of a split on it, I'll try to take a picture of that. 

 

I'm a bit leery of bending the sarute any more to get it off but that does need to be fixed. It looks like it is supposed to screw in the other end but I'm not sure how that would be done.

 

My goal here is to get it cleaned up (the parts that should be cleaned), make any possible repairs, put the seppas on in the correct order and do whatever I can to preserve it.  I think I need to go slow on this, not having done this before. I've mostly worked on surplus rifles and pistols to completely disassemble and clean them up but this is new to me. 

 

Any suggestions on what to use to clean the green off the tsuba?   

[vajo]

Did i read hiro ?

[16k]

If there are kanji, I can’t see them, but that blade is old, o-suriage (the original hole is probably the one near the tip of the tang) and maybe slightly machi-okuri. Would be interesting to have a picture of the whole blade to see the su gâta. If you can, try and have close ups also of the tip, the Hamon and the Hada, if they are visible at all.

[Brian]

I think someone had an old blade, and had a set of fittings, and just jammed them together to make a sword. I don't think they were originally together when it was in WW2.
They drilled holes to make it work.
Time to get everything adjusted to make it all fit nicely and a complete sword.

[IJASWORDS]

I agree with Brian, I was being polite by not commenting that the fittings are not a matched set. And the blade has been modified to fit a Gunto outfit.  

[Dave R]

"" He got it on Okinawa, from pile of captured swords.   ".

 

Given a provenance like that, my first thought is a quick and dirty last ditch fix to take into combat, and the second is a quick and dirty assembly by the US military on Okinawa.... The latter I can well believe, we know some US personnel were sword hunting, what is more credible than rapid dismounts to check for valuable blades, and equally rapid reassembly! 

[vajo]

Why they should dissmble it?

I think like Brian and Neil that this sword is built from parts together. Btw the suriage and the nakago ana looks terrible made.

[David Flynn]

I don't think the blade is altogether that  old.  All the holes are drilled.  My impression is, last ditch put together.

[alamo]

 Would be interesting to have a picture of the whole blade to see the su gâta. If you can, try and have close ups also of the tip, the Hamon and the Hada, if they are visible at all.

 

I'll take some out in the sunlight this week when the weather clears, rainy lately.

[alamo]

Given a provenance like that, my first thought is a quick and dirty last ditch fix to take into combat, and the second is a quick and dirty assembly by the US military on Okinawa.... The latter I can well believe, we know some US personnel were sword hunting, what is more credible than rapid dismounts to check for valuable blades, and equally rapid reassembly! 

 

Probably the former.  As I recall the story, my Dad didn't pay or trade for the sword and the purpose of a soldier assembling a sword would be to make a buck off of it by selling or trading it. 

[Bruce Pennington]

Ok, Tom, we'll wait for your pics.

I'll say up front, I'm no nihonto expert, nor a age/era one either. But look at the cross-section of this hole. That rust layer is THICK. The 3 holes on an old blade simply tell that it was refitted that many times over it's life, which is not unusual. That one offset is really odd, but the strange reshaping of the nakago may go along with that part of the story. Odd though.

Tom - on the barrel screw, the picture you showed is the male side. It should screw into the female side of the other half on the other side of the kabutogane. Is there another half? On the green stuff, is it rust, or glue of some sort? I use a steel sanding sponge. It looks like a plastic sponge, but it's made to sand steel. You can very carefully work the specific area of the green stuff. When you put it back together, the order is simply dictated by size. The larger pieces are against the tsuba, and size down as you go, on both sides. I would keep the leather one because it goes with the saya. I wouldn't be bothered by the mismatch. Like someone said above, things get loose over time, and whether on the battlefield or post-war, seppa get added to tighten the fit. I've added some to a couple of mine that were missing seppa. I've got some spares I could mail you, if you like. Use what fits, then mail the rest back to me. PM me if you want to try it. These family blades were donated and/or bought by the thousands throughout the war. Newpaper articles went out to the public asking for donated swords. Govt orders were sent out specifying size and pricing. It doesn't surprise me that some may not get a high-quality refit for the war. There are many gunto circulating today, that have been thrown together by a collector or seller. And like Dave said, some G.I.s grabbed blades w/o saya, and searched until they found a saya that fit well enough. But, bearing in mind your father's story, I see no other explanation than poor war-refit, or battlefield repair.

[alamo]

Tom - on the barrel screw, the picture you showed is the male side. It should screw into the female side of the other half on the other side of the kabutogane. Is there another half?

 

Yes, there is a female end.  I'll have to figure out out to connect them somehow.

 

On the green stuff, is it rust, or glue of some sort? I use a steel sanding sponge. It looks like a plastic sponge, but it's made to sand steel. You can very carefully work the specific area of the green stuff.

 

The green stuff is corrosion, green rust like you see on copper.

 

When you put it back together, the order is simply dictated by size. The larger pieces are against the tsuba, and size down as you go, on both sides. I would keep the leather one because it goes with the saya. I wouldn't be bothered by the mismatch. Like someone said above, things get loose over time, and whether on the battlefield or post-war, seppa get added to tighten the fit. I've added some to a couple of mine that were missing seppa. I've got some spares I could mail you, if you like. Use what fits, then mail the rest back to me. PM me if you want to try it. 

 

Thanks for the offer of seppas.  We'll see how it goes when i reassemble it. 

[Stephen]

Nakago may have had a threaded bolt for kyu gunto mounts. Please remove that hunker of a thumb print in time it will corrode. More pix of the blade its self please.

[alamo]

Please remove that hunker of a thumb print in time it will corrode. More pix of the blade its self please.

 

Thanks, it's gone.  I took the pictures right after I got the tsuka off, cleaned the blade afterwards.   More pics coming

[vajo]

I thought i see a kanji, but there is none i think.

 

 

I would like to see some pictures of the blade. There is a suguha hamon. The shape looks not bad to me. Could be a late muromachi / early shinto blade.

[alamo]

That's some great photo work Chris.

 

Here's mine again, enhanced a bit. 

[alamo]

I took it out on the back deck and took some shots.  More in a bit 

[alamo]

Taking decent photos is difficult.  The sun, shadows, reflections, etc.  Hope these will suffice.  You can see where I was tapping on the nakago to drive out the peg, not realizing the hole was not lined up.  Grrr...

[ChrisW]

The blade looks nice... the nakago looks mangled to me though. Extreme case of a last-minute put-together back in the day?

[Stephen]

More likely repurposed from bolted kyu gunto nakago.

[ChrisW]

That explains the part that looks off. I've never seen one with a bolt.

[IJASWORDS]

Bruce, the issue of provenance is a very touchy subject. The word of a seller, grand dad/uncle/father is not necessarily reliable provenance. I would never trust it unless backed up by original documentation, such as the permission slip signed by an officer to bring back a wartime souvenir. 

So to me, word of mouth provenance means little or nothing (certainly where value is concerned). 

That said, there would certainly be sentimental value to the family of the soldier. 

I am not making any judgement on this sword, just a general comment.       

[Stephen]

Other image out ther

 

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/20206-altered-for-kyu-gunto-mounts/

[Bruce Pennington]

Bruce, the issue of provenance is a very touchy subject. The word of a seller, grand dad/uncle/father is not necessarily reliable provenance. I would never trust it unless backed up by original documentation, such as the permission slip signed by an officer to bring back a wartime souvenir. 

So to me, word of mouth provenance means little or nothing (certainly where value is concerned). 

That said, there would certainly be sentimental value to the family of the soldier. 

I am not making any judgement on this sword, just a general comment.

 

Neil, my thinking too. And we all face this in this hobby. If the OP was selling, then his story would easily fall into that category - trust the blade, not the story. But if he's just a guy with his dad's sword, and wants to learn about it, I would give him the benefit of the doubt. In the end, only the sword knows!!! Ha!