Kronos

Anyone?

I believe this to be something along the lines of bing able to draw the sword quicker than your opponent would think possible given the length of the saya. There's probably other reasons as well and I look forward to being corrected if this is not the case.

Seems good to me and the knots are quite tight but thought I'd ask a second opinion. How much do these usually go for btw? Edit: the colour is a bit off in the photo, it's a much more chocolate Brown irl but the photo was taken in sunlight.

So it arrived yesterday after a few delays and I'm more than happy with it and have finally gotten around to taking some photo's and giving it a bit of a clean. Please feel free to share your opinions and I'm interested in knowing anything about the Tsuba as well. Photo gallery is linked here:http://imgur.com/a/cQ7Or/ Shinogi-zuruki, Iori-mune, Ubu, 1 Mekugi-ana Signed Yasutsugu Motte Nanban Tetsu Oite Bushu Edo Saku Kore Dated: Kanbun Shi Kinoe Tatsu Nen Ni Gatsu Kichi Hi (A lucky Day in February 1664, year of the Dragon) Nagasa: 68cm Motohaba: 31mm Sakihaba: 24mm Kasane: 8/9mm Sori: maybe 12mm Jihada: can't make this out in the current condition but it seems very tight. Hamon: Suguha with some notare Boshi: looks to be Maru but I can't see the turn back as it's obscured. Nakago: Kengyo Nakogojiri, Katte sagari yasurime The second image shows the only flaw I could find that may not polish out, it's a strange little pit with some ware attached, the steel is a very dark colour that may not show in the photo's but this matches what i've read about the smith. I'm also very interested in the Zodiac addition to the mei as it seems a little out of place and I don't recall seeing one like this before. Thank you all for taking a look.

99.7%+ so should be fine. It seems to come in two types, 70% and 99% so always get 99% and there's no problems.

Hmm, Soap and water makes me nervous, think I could just skip straight to IPA as I have a few litres of it laying around?

So my new Katana arrived today which I'm very happy with (no hagire/not tired :D) however the Nakago has chalk like stuff in the mei that I presume the auction house used to highlight it, there's some strange waxy gunk kind of like old oil mixed with dirt on it as well as active rust that needs attending to.. What would be the best way to deal with this without taking off any of the black rust etc I'll try to post some good pictures of the blade when I have time either tomorrow or friday. Forgot to add the Tsuba has red rust as well as very old dust as if it's been in someones attic for 70 years, how would one deal with this?

It seems reasonable to me that if they were handed out to US servicemen then at least one of the 14 the Honjo Masamune was with would of turned up by now. So we can probably rule that out which leaves either they are all together in a collection in either the U.S or Japan or have been destroyed. If it's the former I can see them turning up sooner or later when it gets handed down to a generation that would want to sell for whatever reason or realize what they had and return them.

Last.

More photo's

So I've been looking for something for a while now and having missed out on some very nice pieces I think I've found something worthwhile that may turn out to be better than expected although I did take a bit of a punt on it. Signed: Aoi-Mon Yasu Tsugu Motte Nan Ban Tetsu Oite Bu Shu (maybe Edo Saku Kore? but kanji that are too faint to read). Looks good for 3rd gen mainline to me, the work I can see seems to match as well as far as I can tell without polish> Would like opinions on this and any flaws or tiredness people spot. I won't be able to get better pictures until it arrives in a week or so. I haven't really translated the date yet although I think it's 1664 or so. No idea about the Habaki kanji. Nagasa: 67cm Total length 89cm

Bump. Both still available.

That's the oldest one still in existence isn't it? I would love to practice it if there was anywhere nearby however it's too rare outside of Japan unfortunately. Pre Sengoku and as we know the Japanese like to adhere to things so it probably hasn't changed much if at all in that time so is an excellent source of information.

bump.

Hard to tell the Yakidashi from the photo's. Could be as Chris says or maybe it's just a bad photo and the notare carries on?

If they do change the papers then it would be a good opportunity to modernize. In that scenario they need to be seen to be doing something about the forgeries by making all new papers easily verifiable. A paper change will be interesting as with hozon papers get the same stigma that kicho papers currently seem to have?

They should just create an online register where NBTHK members can look up all the papers. I'm sure it'd sell a lot more memberships plus we'd have a good source of oshigata for every swordsmith I imagine it may be a lot of work to digitize them all however.

Shameless plug: I have a copy of Connoisseur's in the for sale section

http://www.nihontoantiques.com/fss145.htm This should be 3rd or 4th gen going by the dates. I can't read the Kanteisho so can't confirm. This also shows Oshigata from 3rd gen but not sure on the source: http://www.nihonto.us/TERUHIRO%20WAKIZASHI.htm

First gen is Momoyama. A very nice and tempting Tanto, if I weren't saving for something else I would consider it. The Mekugi-ana looks a bit small to cover the rest of the mei. There were a couple of smiths just called Tsune listed in Hawley's, could it be one of them?

I don't like that Koshirae at all, it looks...manufactured... For me it depends on whether I'm getting a good deal or not. If I'm paying full whack for the blade and Koshirae then I wouldn't be interested usually, but if it's a good price then I'd prefer original period koshirae with anything I purchase. What I'm trying to say is as my main focus is blades it doesn't seem good practice to spend considerably more than the market value for just blade and shirasaya but if there's a deal to be had then why not.

I've had to pull Hawley's from ebay as it wasn't showing up outside the UK site and other listing problems so my apologies to anyone who bid/was going to bid. I think I'm just going to leave it here for now so final price reductions as follows: Hawley's Japanese Swordsmiths Revised: £250 (About $400) including worldwide shipping (would you pay any paypal fees?). Connoisseur's book of Japanese swords by Kokan Nagoyama: £100 + shipping and paypal fees.

I should know the answer as I saw an almost identical papered Tsuba a couple of days ago for sale, can't for the life of me remeber which school it was though.

I would say Umetada but it seems to be lacking in quality.

Could be nice but can't tell without good pictures. Maybe koto