wich maintenance set?

[Reinier]

hi,

 

as i'm about to buy my first blade i need to get me a good maintenance set including all the necessary tools.

 

what is the best set available and what is a good place to buy it?

 

i've heard/read about fujishiro and namikawa sets being good.

 

is there also a place for nice affordable sword stands?

 

thanks.

 

Reinier

[Rich T]

if so, you won't need uchiko. Just a good cloth and quality oil. The high quality photographic lens cleaners are excellent.

 

Kits are notoriously dodgy, low grade oil, lower grade uchiko and cheap tissue.

 

Uchiko for swords in old polish should be bought from or recommended by a good polisher. Again, the photographic cloth or non scented/printed toilet paper is the go for wiping down the blade. Good quality gun oils are probably some of the best products on the market. The choji oil in kits is low grade with clove oil in it.

 

Just some random thoughts from a tsuba guy :-)

 

cheers

[Henry Wilson]

Hi Reinier

 

All you need is a jar of choji oil, one of the brass hammers and a good supply of good quality non-sented tissues. As for the uchiko powder, I think it is a bit of controversial subject sometimes. Personally speaking I do not us the stuff as from direct experience it dulls a new polish. I use a microfibre cloth I got with the last TV I bought to wipe a blade down when changing the oil. I get my choji oil from the sword museum in Tokyo and I think 3 part hammers that are available are the most useful.

 

This link might be useful

 

http://www.satcho.com/supplies.htm

[Reinier]

opinions seem to vary a lot so it thought it best to buy all and try different methods.

 

i was just ordering a couple of different types lenscleaning clothes while you were typing your reply (;

[Henry Wilson]

Reinier wrote

 

opinions seem to vary a lot so it thought it best to buy all and try different methods.

 

I think Rich T and I managed to post similar posts....

[Reinier]

ok i have ordered white cotton gloves, pure alcohol and lense cleaning cloth.

 

now i need to find good oil and tools to disassemble a sword.

 

where can i buy this oil: "I even

use the oil Token Shibata and Mr. Fujishiro sells that has no Choji in it. It is thinner and clearer than oil with Choji added, and it's cheaper"

[WoodbridgeGaijin]

Namikawas kits are of excellent quality, but I agree with the microfiber solution.

In a sense the microfiber takes the place of Uchiko because it cleans the blade so well.They never scratch the blade and seem to leave just the right amount of oil. As for the Mekugi nuki...I would definitely go with Namikawa, and in my opinion gun oils work great but most of them smell pretty bad,and some of them have silicone carriers and petroleum byproducts. After a while the silicone will seep into the joint of the saya and release the glue and I have seen sayas where the petroleum byproducts have attacked the lacquer. If your saya has an actual Urushi finish, your good to go, Urushi is incredibly resilient. I recommend mineral oil for the blade if you don't want to pay for top quality Choji.

Val Giardina

[Jean]

Hi Reinier,

 

Three things to consider/check :

 

Where do you leave in Netherlands?

Is the air very damp?

How is your blade stored? Shirasaya or scabbard

 

If the air is not damp (like in most of our western country when not living by the seaside) If your blade is in shirasaya, an advice : don't oil your blade.

 

I am living in Paris and I have never oiled any of my blades and none got rust.

 

If you can avoid it, never oil a blade. Generally with central heating, the air we are living in is very dry.

 

 

[Reinier]

i live in the netherlands which is notorious for it's humidity.

to make things worse i live between the north sea and a giant freshwater lake

[Jean]

Reinier

 

Tough luck

[kazarena]

i live in the netherlands which is notorious for it's humidity.

to make things worse i live between the north sea and a giant freshwater lake

Hi Reinier,

 

I live in Ireland right on the sea coast. So I guess humidity levels are somewhat similar to Netherlands. Just for comparison, there's a de-humidifier running in the room downstairs (where I keep some blades) and it extracts about 3 litres of water every 3 days

 

After some reading and thinking about the best way to preserve swords I chose to use choji oil (at least for some time. I might try not to use it), fine photo lens cleaning cloth and pure alcohol instead of uchiko. It works perfectly for me so far

 

Regards,

Stan

[BenoitD]

As for me,

 

I buy a piece of white flanel tissu (3 X 6 feet), wash it in cold

water without soap at gentle cycle and let it dry by itself.

I then cut it in 1 X 1 feet sheets (18 sheets). You can the fold them

in two and you have your cleaning sheets of tissu (very cheap).

 

For oil I use top quality sewing machine oil. Just a little.

 

Uchiko is made of a fine powdered whetstone known as uchigumori-to.

It is an abrasive. Use as less as you can to remove the old oil.

If used too often it could result in slight scratches and over time the

texture of the jitetsu will lose its brightness (It happened to me).

 

BenoitD

[w.y.chan]

I uses Fujishiro cleaning kit for 10 years and the polish still maintained like it was new, as in most thing the key is use clean soft tissue free of additives, no recycle paper. The Fujishiro uchiko as far as I know are not made from uchigamori stone, it is soft and dont scratch.

Alchohol is very good especially when removing old oil that had build up over the years, it can also get rid of dried oil you cant see that has become more resilient to uchiko even microfibre lens cloth cant shift.

What I find after using alcohol the blade can repel some light oil particularly choji and beading may occur. However I am not sure what is the long term effect of frequent usage of alcohol on modern polish can cause, would it bleach away the nugui one day?

Choji oil is very sticky especially when dried and can become resilient to lens cloth wipe though you may not see it. If you do decide to switch from one type of oil to another wipe the old oil off with alcohol, mixing traces of different oil may cause discolour and cloudiness.

 

Obviously others may experience different things?

[BenoitD]

Could there be a chemical reaction between alcool and the mounting of the sword (Habaki, seppas, tsuba ...) ?

 

An interesting link.

 

http://www2.una.edu/Takeuchi/DrT_Jpn_Cu ... uchiko.htm

 

BenoitD