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WTB Katana / Healthy blade / Any period considered.


Cornerst0ne

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Hello folks,

 

Looking for a sword under or close to 3500$. Must be in a healthy, reasonably polished condition. The sword will be used for iaido.

 

Major point of sale:

The nagasa MUST be at minimum 27 inches. Meaning from tsuba to kissaki its is almost 28in (min) preferably 29 inches.

 

Things like saya damage, no ito / no seppa, minor minor rust spots, etc will still be considered. Tsuka and blade must be in proper order.

 

Mumei is not a problem. Bo-hi / civilian mounts preferred.

 

Things that will not be considered are, any crack, rust pits, damage to kissaki, anything over a miniscule chip in the ha.

 

Please only respond if you have a sword that you are selling. Please do not suggest iai alloy bs, pual Chen or cold steel.

 

Thanks,

Hank

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Hank, NMB is dedicated to the preservation of Japanese swords, & using one for iaido seldom fits that goal. Has your sensei agreed to let you use shinken for training? If so, why are you not buying a modern blade for iai, rather than looking for Nihonto?

 

Ken

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  • 1 month later...

I have a shinsakuto I was using for iaido here are the specs

 

I am moving my interests over to fencing. As such I want to sell my recently purchased shinsakuto. I am trying to fund some fencing gear purchases. I bought this from Aaron Justice on his ebay site. Here is what he said

 

Added a tsukamaki, full rayskin wrap, a solid silver dragon menuki set, and a different silver wave theme fuchi and kashira from Fred Lohman. All for the same price as the last listing, which is an extra $300 value. The last bidder was unable to complete payment so it was finished and relisted. For sale is a mounted, very high quality tamahagane Shinsakuto. It is signed 備前国弘次作 "Bizen no kuni Hirotsugu saku".

 

Nagasa: 76.6 cm. Sori: 3.2 cm.

Moto-haba: 3.3 cm. Saki-haba: 2.3 cm.

Moto-gasane: 0.6 cm. Saki-gasane: 0.5 cm

 

That's right, the edge itself is 30.15 inches long, choji hamon, and a ko kissaki. Here is the list of customization done to it.

 

Brand new solid silver habaki, a very tight fit and thick walled too. New saya, black lacquer, buffalo horn, and stingray skin. The stingray is from two different species. One comes from a skate tail that has a lot of large nodes that looks like emperor nodes. There is also a brand new tsuka core, a mokko iron tsuba in water dragon theme, and a solid silver fuchi and kashira set in water dragon theme.

 

All work done by Randy Black, a professional koshirae maker.

 

This Shinsakuto is in full polish, has a gorgeous choji hamon. There are no flaws except for a small area of visible grain near the mune. It's not an open weld, or "fukure", the weld is fully closed, but just more visible than the rest of the hada around it. Otherwise this katana is perfect.

 

Since then the blade has been used for cutting a couple of times, one of which bent the blade a little. I have no experience straightening them out so I haven't messed with it. It is not really noticeable but there. Also the kashira was caved in a little from shipping.

 

I will post pictures tonight. I am asking $2000 for it.

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  • 1 month later...

I am *NOT* telling you what to do; using Nihonto for Iai is IMHO fine. My concern though is if you do tameshigiri, a traditional polish actually makes the edges dull.  I have some experience polishing "China-to" as well as antiques (e.g. bought a rusted blade for $400 and sold it polished for $1900 on Ebay), and my (limited) experience tells me that, if the edge is polished perpendicularly, even at a low grit like 2000 grit, it will hair-shaving sharp.  But if polished lengthwise, even if you take it to 8000 grit, and then transition into naturals which normally would make it even sharper (well, on woodworking tools anyway) it will still not get hair-shaving sharp.  IMHO if I may suggest, the problem is not that you may "ruin" a Nihonto; it's that you may end up with an iai-sword you'd hate.  To complicate matters even more: some swords are naturally more brittle.  This can be good for Iai: blades like this naturally get soooooo much sharper.  And finally, there are weight issues.... some shinshinto, man, they are really, really heavy.

 

So all things considered, I have a signed shinshinto (but nobody knows who he is) with nagasa of 27.5, with an unusually short tang which makes the blade feel heavy despite its total blade weight is somewhat low.  And another shinshinto with nagasa of 28.75, a somewhat straight and narrow blade.  I refrain from listing prices as my humble advice may deter you from buying any of above to begin with.  Please PM me if interested

 

-Caleb

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Caleb,

 

As Ken stated this site is all about the preservation. We suggest that nihonto be polished only by trained togishi.

Otherwise they are likely to be ruined. Not advisable to discuss amateur restoration as its advised against for many reasons. I am curios. You said you polished a blade and sold it on eBay, right? What period, school, smith was that blade?

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Nevermind, nevermind, nevermind...... Prudence advices me that I should never, ever reveal that I have polished swords in a forum such as this.  But my desire to help another fellow human being, by sharing what IMHO not many people know about the direction of the grind and its profound effects on sharpness, and why IMHO traditionally polished swords for tameshigiri is just a bad, bad idea...this foolish desire is now likely going to bring me trouble..... I ask humbly therefore that I can be forgiven for what I foolishly said.

 

But to answer your question: the blade was saki-zori, narrow and nagasa about 26", and a somewhat "standard"-looking mune, suggesting a Muromachi blades.  Tang was completely stripped of its rust, so in the unlikely event that you can buy a signed piece for $400, the signature was removed so identifying the smith is unlikely.  It had two holes...can't remember, about only 1 or 2 inches apart (again, definitely signifying non-Nambokucho work).  The hamon was suguha, but it was very wide.  That, coupled with the fact that it was both saki-zori AND the rusting on the tang was removed, I am of the opinion that there's strong likelihood the blade was retempered (lack of mizu-kage is negated by fact the rusting on tang was removed).  But its jihada was interesting: large mokume that's "slightly masame" that gives it a hint of nagare-hada...it was soft and somewhat poorly defined, though large.  i am convinced it was masame-kitae.  It lacks profuse chikei that is found in more expensive works, and i am convinced it was neither Bizen nor Soshu (since these are IMHO rather easy to identify).  Both me and my buyer tried to get as many people to look at it as possible.  I opine that in the unlikely case it was not re-tempered, it was a Yamashiro blade.  I don't have pics anymore, and I'd like to conclude by saying, I only polished cheep blades.

 

Caleb

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