Brian

Naginata poles are usually slightly oval if I'm not mistaken, with yari being round like this? Just wondering if that's somewhat of a rule.

Suggest you convert them from Apple .heic format to regular jpeg. No-one wants to deal with heic

Good job Dale. Let's get this back into a nice .pdf, and I'll upload it to the articles section.

Fascinating!

Use a .177 airgun cleaning rod. Brass at the end usually, you can heat it, hammer it and shape it into a sharp hook. Stiff enough to move around and sometimes it's enough to attach a coarse screw at the end (braze, solder etc) and screw it into the paper and extract.

Yeah, but remember that they have been doing gimei for hundreds of years,.

The brief answer to this is no...there are no laws around this at all. The only thing that can resemble that, is the regulations against exporting the top levels of papered swords, such as that described here: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/23644-juyo-bijitsuhin-export/

Welcome back! Gave us a scare there. I noticed a lack of posts from @Stephen lately too, but I see he has been logging in, so I assume he's ok and hibernating. Good to know people are missed when they disappear. You need to at least get a carrier pigeon Dale!

I'd guess around $2000-2500

Relisting what? If you mean listing stuff that is available elsewhere in Japan, eBay doesn't care.

Not sure why it matters. But this person is who they say they are. Certainly resembles trolls from the past, but in this case he's a troll of a different tribe.

Maybe of interest. Tatara_and_the_Japanese_sword_the_science_and_technology.pdf Study_of_Microstructures_on_Cross Section_of_Japanese_sword.pdf

Just my opinion, but I'd say $600 total for your purposes would be a fair value

Yeah, for a change we get to say "NOT a copy" Nope..genuine and decent antique Japanese sword. Look after it.

No..I do believe he is what he says he is based on a few tests...a Turkish scholar more interested in new ideas than Nihonto. He's all over the internet with various different interests and theories. No matter, was but a blip on the radar.

The reading of the mei is unfortunately irrelevant. As Moriyama san said, this is a clear Chinese fake. I suspect the whole thing including the koshirae. I'll leave it to others to point out why, but there are numerous things, including the way the kanji are cut.

Bruce, I can access Warrelics no problem. Sounds like your ISP is having issues.

Not sure, but might have to be logged in to view that forum. Try this one, a forum that went to the new software. The light/dark switch is at the bottom https://codenamejessica.com/forums/

One thing I'm excited for in the new software coming in months, is the easy dark/light and other theme selections. For example (and this won't be our layout, but the same feature) check out https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/ At the bottom left, click the dark/light button....that should be similar to what we'll have.

Looks old to me, I don't think it's a repro. But it could easily be cut down from a longer gun or rifle. Seems to have been a pistol for a long time based on the wear etc, but not sure it's worth much more than a rifle in that condition. Let's just say I would be happy to own it if the price were right, parts all seem legit.

Ok, we're not going down this road again. There is enough info here for people to make up their own minds. Let's not drift off in another direction.

What Chandler said. Also, very useful to do a traceroute to see where the data is being lost. Use a site such as this one: https://tools.keycdn.com/traceroute Put in www.militaria.co.za or 156.38.200.30 and it will show you the data from various places in the world, and then you can see where the data is being lost along the way. You can usually see which "hop" is experiencing issues. Sometimes it is somewhere else in the world. Your work network and your cellphone network likely use different routes, so one of them can be affected while the other is working fine. If the loss is at the last 2 or 3 hops, you know the servers in South Africa are having a hiccup. If somewhere else, you can see it's not the server, but some other place along the route.

Definitely not a forum issue. Can only be that side. Maybe DNS issues with your ISP or temporary routing issue. Can't really explain it.

Personally, I think it's modern

Not a serial number, but assembly numbers to keep all the parts together. No relevance to where it was made in the timeline. But nice if all parts are matching numbers.