DaveT

No tsunomoto either, so Mr Whippy couldn't even be hidden with a large maedate.

I drew this over the weekend from a photo I took at the Watanabe Collection in Tottori. The helmet seemed to have been hammered from a single sheet of iron. It was very thin towards the top. Anyone know the name for such a helmet? Baigyo no hachi (Shell Shape) or Dog turd.

That Daimyo fellow on ebay had one of these some time back. It was void of all those lovely go faster stickers. There must be a few of these, as the other one did have surface cracks? Would look great as a motorbike helmet, or even a Farscape villain for the SyFy channel.

Hi Robert, I've been attempting to contact you. I too operate a katchu restoration studio, located in Northamptonshire. I'm mainly self self taught through years of experimentation, trial and error. I outsource any metal work and keep mainly to either lacquer work and lacing. I must admit that Ian and Jock got me started on this journey when they were restoring items in the past. I have been professionally trained in urushi application. Unlike you, I lean towards commercial restoration as my clients are on limited budgets, where traditional restoration is completely unviable. Keeping it authentic is costly. My view is that any material used is modern, I source printed leather, kanamono and silk odoshi from Japan, but try to use vintage asa, chirimen silk etc. I do own a personal collection of some 30 gusoku, Kabuto which makes for an excellent resource of study should you ever wish to view them. Hope we can meet. Dave

hope this helps, but I spotted that the hair on this is folded with a small insert, paper, bamboo splinter? horse hair works well. The few times I've restored hair I've started from the bottom and encapsulated each row with a heavy sabiurushi layer, 20 parts urushi. its worked well. I guess you could use an epoxy glue to save a few weeks?

I've just seen a Yahoo crime listed. Very nice armour, but even the sangu is being offered as single items. I'm sure they use it to trap the buyer into paying over the odds to "win' the set. They probably are bidding against one item too, just to ensure the inflation. Makes me wana be sick, I hate it.

Plug em, especially if it's Sugake. I use sheep skin to lock the braid in place. It keeps the shape nice too and prevents the pull you get from the weight of the lames etc. I did write a lacing guide for Toraba, but that's gone now due to the forum being closed down. when I get time I'll do one for here. Lacing is a pain lol. this gessan took me 14 hrs and 40 meters of 7mm blue odoshi. Dave

Raw lacquer as the base. I think they cut corners with urushi layers for most katchu compared to art objects like wooden Tupperware. I've seen leather and hemp glued at different levels too, no rules. The main pog layer is made from a mixture of raw lacquer and dried clay. Its fun to work with. Here are two photos of a Momoyama Hotoke-Do I'm restoring, as you can see it's made up from lames that were pre-drilled for another armour in Kebiki style, probably intended for a gessan? I've removed the outer layer in one pull, very nasty. The base seems to have no urushi layer as a primer, a leather of paper layer has been glued there and as separated through movement as I can see any water damage. Trust nothing, if it's got pog or tatashi-nuri slapped on it's probably there to hide something. I've bee amazed at how many items have really awful flaws hidden beneath the surface. The wearer of this Do would have come out real bad at Nagashima lol.

I think leather armours are being completely overlooked by collectors. As Ian said they were expensive back in the day. Weight wise, well I have three Nerigawa Gusoku, one Kuroda Clan (Photo attached) is heavy, it's the heaviest armour I've ever handled and its 98% leather including the kabuto. The other is a Yukinoshita-Do, all leather, but about he same weight as my iron one. I did however replace the odoshi on a dou about 3wks ago, that was super light. So my 2 cents is buy a good one with hardly any damaged if you can, and store it correctly. The main issue with leather is the de-lamination of the lacquered layers from the sub structure. Once an armour has got wet and the sabi urushi is damaged it's going to fall apart. I have some photographs from the vaults of the Watanabe Collection of an outstanding armour, completely junked due to damp storage. (I can't post the photo's because they are the copyright of Trevor Absolon). Dave

Hi Ian, it's been a long time. Just so you know I'm no longer married to Trevor. I not writing off the recycling, as that Oda armour I have you clearly pointed out, was made up new and older parts. It makes sense to grab what you could back in the day, and we know for a fact that the gear was very expensive. I just think that most were given the make-over during the period. The odoshi is going to rot at some point, but it doesn't make the year of manufacture alter. So as a collector, just because it's matched doesn't indicate it's late. And that was my point. There's without a doubt too much focus on matched suits with the collectors community, I've got a few composite suits that that look the nuts. Dave

So cobbling together kinda says by definition that they were originally made as sets? Why would a armour maker produce an odd set? Why would a customer commission one. Sounds like BS to me.

You know looking in from the outside Cowboy's is a pretty accurate comment. However I can assure you that was never the case, hence the very reason why Mr Hopson joined the team. Not only did Jock add kudos, he also knew the staff and made the project more comfortable. The comments were posted to the Toraba forum and aimed at it's armour loving community. I find it rather amusing that some folk are naive enough to believe that I would deface an original screen with a marker pen. Joking aside I'm a dedicated collector as Ian can validate, however I have a silly and poor sense of humor. For the record every item was treated with the utmost care and respect. We were at the museum for nearly three weeks. The establishment was clean and tidy. All non displayed armours were kept in storage. Nearly 80% of what we opened were mixed up and some were rotting as the underground storage was clearly unsuitable. I didn't see 300 armour boxes in there either. It took us some time and energy to convince the owners to allow us to re-match the mixed items. All in all, I felt that we left the collection in better order than we found it. Trevor has released the first book, my name is present but apart from taking the photo's I had nothing do with its production or the soon to be released second volume. Dave Thatcher