Brian

Menuki seldom have mei..the top class ones sometimes do, but I think we see fewer mei than on f/k and tsuba. These are legit menuki, nothing too fancy and I wouldn't expect them to be signed. Price is fair. Not a bargain, but not terrible imho.

I wonder if there are any video recorded lectures or presentations given anywhere by any of the societies or members that they would be willing to share? I don't know how freely they would want to share them, but if there are any, can someone pm me maybe? Would be nice to have an area, maybe for certain members, where these can be downloaded or viewed.

Nothing there makes me even want to look further.

Mei won't tell you. As mentioned before, if you don't see nie, hataraki and hada, then it's likely not Tamahagane

You're a weasel, correct. But the distraction is a squirrel to a dog. Go sleep

Not necessarily true. Not everything he made was Gendaito.

STOP worrying about downvotes, and stop going off track. You guys are like a dog when there is a squirrel around

There are too many ranks, and not enough classes :-) So I added Emperor to use another one. But we still have some ranks at the bottom without names, and I don't want to call anyone Burakumin or Hinin

Request was made to change them to be more "Japanese" and fun. I had a heck of a time trying to research who was above whom, and what to call them. Hopefully I disn't make too many mistakes. I should have consulted with Markus

That would be a bot mean to those who only want to sell an item or 2...and probably reduce the number of people selling, which is a bit drawcard here. It would be an obvious move to increase numbers, but I don't think I want to go that far. May have to limit the number of listings though. But need to figure out how to manage that in the software. Can't monitor it manually. Need to do something though, as it is verrrry slow currently and we've gone backwards in terms of funds. But still ok. Still considering options. No take ups on the month-to month option, so we have to look elsewhere. No serious requests for increased upload sizes or resolution yet. Pm limits, we'll see if that has any effect. A private mei/oshigata database is set up, but would take a looong time for people to populate it with mei that are shoshin, so it would be a long term thing. But probably worth doing. How to select the main smiths to start with is difficult, and then we can branch off to the other smiths. Maybe separate military guys from the pre-WW2 smiths?

Just bear in mind that the blades in these export-type mounts are usually low quality, made for the Meiji export trade. Carving on this one isn't terrible, nicer than most. Blade looks like a shortened waki or something, but maybe traditionally made. Can't tell if this is ivory or bone. Very often they are bone.

Good video. Devin Thomas is somewhat of a legend when it comes to very high end Damascus steel, as used by Chris Reeve Knives and others. Their products are legendary. You gotta check out some of their stuff: https://www.devinthomas.com/

There is no such thing as just identifying oil quenched by any "dark line" in the hamon, or even those dark areas in the peaks. The darker areas are a hint, but really it comes down to gut feel and experience. Sometimes you look at a hamon and it just has that "feel" of it being oil quenched. No hard or fast rule, and it has to be taken in conjunction with other factors such as the way it's signed, the look of the hamon, hataraki etc etc. No easy way to tell from those pics. But if you are only really seeing a nioi based hamon and don't really see any nie or hataraki anywhere and no hada, you can start to think maybe it's oil quenched. Or badly polished.

No..clearly YOU don't get it Dan. Jean gets it perfectly.

I'm betting that is pretty modern.

No worries at all. There is some related info here: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/files/file/39-ww2-rikgun-jumei-tosho-documents/ and I am sure people will suggest more. There are other military docs out there somewhere.

Because of the size that cellphones are now taking pics, (we really don't need 24 meg pics) and the number of people trying to post straight from their phones, we constantly get people asking how they can resize their pics. There are far better ways than screenshoting your pics. So I have added an extra menu item at the top, next to donations. There you will find a number of websites that either do it online for free, or some free apps (iOs and Android) that you can download to resize and edit a bit. You can go through them and see which you like. Please refer people to them if they ask, and I can add more if there are suggestions. Brian

See? Just like this. I only highlighted a part of your post, and hit quote. Now let's do one from another post... Just like this. Yip...there are a LOT of features we aren't even using yet :-)

Leonidas, Trust me, in the 19 years that we have existed, there has been a ton of research, including original production instructions and procedures etc etc. on what exactly those stamps mean. If you search the forum you'll find hundreds of pages about it. The fact is, over the past few years, it is widely accepted everywhere that the sho and Seki stamp are on blades not fully Gendaito. And by Gendaito we of course mean the collector-assigned meaning, and not the true meaning which is just an era. To collectors worldwide, a Sho stamp means it is not fully traditionally made. That doesn't mean it can't be a high level forged and folded blade, but something about it isn't fully traditional. Doesn't really matter how the NTHK or NBTHK regard them, they only really became interested in wartime swords the past few years, and we have already demonstrated that with the right contacts or circumstances, full Showato will sometimes slip through the cracks and get papers. Doesn't change the facts. This is a nice one though. But I wouldn't call it a Gendaito.

I have made some changes to those titles, especially the higher tiers. I may adjust them as I learn what the caste system involved. Just a bit of fun.\ Unfortunately Gold member takeup is still very slow and although I am looking at other things, I have to give more incentive to upgrade. Private message storage limit for regular members is now down from 150 to 100 conversations. Gold members are allowed 500. I think 100 conversations is more than enough for most people, and if people clean up their inbox they should be fine. But if anyone needs more, Gold membership is a vast increase. I am going to fine tune a few other things. Upload limit/size is already much higher for Gold members. So the 3 meg per post limit is easily increased if people need it by taking Gold.

With that Sho stamp, you can be almost assured it is not 100% Gendaito. I would bet on oil quenching. That said, it does have hada and I suspect this is a high level Showato that was forged and folded, but something in the process was not 100% traditional and it therefore is probably not considered a Gendaito, but something in between. Looks like a decent sword, and would probably still paper on a good day. One of those "in between" swords we come across that is high end 'arsenal' made by a smith.

So resize?

Thomas, a good idea. But unfortunately not able to do that in the software settings otherwise I would have done that.

Jason, It's very easy. If you want to quote an entire post, just click the Quote at the bottom of their post, and it will auto fill that in at the reply area at the bottom in a block. You just type your response underneath that. If you want to just quote a certain section of someone's post (or even do multiple quotes from their post, or even from different people in a thread, just highlight the area you want to quote using the mouse or select feature on your cell. That will pop up a small block saying 'Quote Selection'. Hit that, and that section is added below to your post. Then hit enter for a line break between them (so you can come back and enter your reply) and go up the thread and do the same for other parts you want to quote. Highlight/select the text,hit quote that pops up. And so on...