Civilis

Thank you all, for the tips! Getty's was already on my list for general purposes. Will keep an eye on Nanka Token, but will need some luck there. We're in LA for just a couple of days after which we'll drive to Las Vegas. Escondido will be to far of route I'm afraid.

Hi All, I'm traveling from Europe to LA (and Nevada) next month and was wondering if any musea are worth visiting from a Nihonto point of view?

Thank you all for the tips, I think I'm going to order a couple of the suggested books.

@Travis Looks pretty interesting. Does it consist of only the Boston MFA collection? Since I already have a lot of high resolution pics of those.

@Mariusz, review sounds interesting, thank you @Stephen, I have some Christie's catalogues and looking to buy some more, but most are offered second hand through amazon, but are not offered by amazon themselves, so shipping can not be combined.

I have the Nagayama book among other "beginner" books like Yumoto. Does the Nakahara add something to those? Is there a tsuba equivelent for the Nagayama/Nakahara, I'm also interested in film/photo so a book with nice pictures would be oke too.

I have to order something small trough amazon.co.uk and I was wondering if you guys have any tips on relative cheap nihonto or tsuba books to combine shipping with. Doesn't have to be a wealth of knowledge inside, some eye candy books are welcome too.

Haven't seen this topic earlier and I realize it's an old one, but any chance this tsuba is for sale?

Dank je, I will try to find those in my local paintshop, although they look pretty Japanese

Lol, well the problem actually is that it is washed away pretty easily, so tell the misses not to worry

Had my first go at drawing oshigata a couple of days ago. I used Art Graf Black Carbon (see pic) for the nakago and a number of different pencils for the rest of the sword. I thought the Art Graf Black Carbon worked reasonably well, but since I have no other expierence, I was wondering if there are better materials to use which are available in the West? I was not able to find black pine wax or someting remotely similar.

Nice but difficult exercise, I came close on two of them using my limited knowledge and very limited resources, which makes me very satisfied. At least glad to see my answers weren't utter nonsense on all accounts . I tried to be the first to answer because in an earlier one of your quizzes I feld very biased based on the answers already given. Maybe next time you could use a poll type of structure or answers via PM, maybe that way you get some more participants too. It also suprised me a little bit to see that so little of the real veterans on this forum took a shot.

I found it to be very difficult, so does everybody else apparently or they are all sleeping late But I feel like sticking my neck out today and as a novice I off course have little to lose. So here we go. I think nr 3 is the oldest and Awataguchi school next is nr 2 and Rai school then nr 4 Soshu school most recent nr 1 late muromachi Yamashiro or Yamato school If I have one right, I would be very satisfied...

Thanks Brian and Alan, wasn't easy but acetone did the trick.

Kunitaro san, I thought so to on first sight, but it appears to be soldered. Will try the acetone tonight...

There is gold colored paint on these seppa and habaki. Looks bad, not original, can and should it be removed?

Oke thanks for the correction, the sayagaki looked pretty poorly done so no suprises so far. The yari and the sayagaki looked very familar to me, maybe I saw it on a dealersite or ebay a while back.

Won an auction yesterday for a wakizashi, got a yari as a bonus, or maybe the other way around Been trying to decipher the mei, I got Yoshi Nao so far, am I right? Also there are a couple of more kanji on the sayagaki, any help on those is very welcome.

Picture of the fakes for entertainment purposes. Haven't seen the tanto, but I'm sure it's a fake too.

Here a pic of the full blades. The one in the leather covered saya is the mumei one, top one is signed Noshu ju Mori Kaneharu and has a seki stamp. No detail in both of them.

Thanks all for your help. I too did not think it was a fake, except for the weird nakago. Fittings and saya and blade itself look genuine. The other gunto with the seki stamp looked genuine too. The wakizashi and katana from the same collection were in my opinion very thin and light, but looked genuine too. Just didn't make sense to me how a collector can own 6 or 7 very bad fakes besides a few genuine nihonto. Also the swords have not been properly taken care of. Put me in doubt about the rest of the collection. Still have some doubts though..... I attached some more pictures also of the other swords, if something comes across to any of you as fake please let me know...

I have two additional, poor pictures of the sword. Gunto mounts look genuine, only the tsuba lacks a little detail in my opinion. This sword is part of a collection from one person, together with the swords I put up in the translation assistance part of the forum (one seki stamped signed gunto and a wak and katana) and a collection of seven obviously recent fakes/repro's (damascus steel, edged hamons, gold painted habaki etc.) which is worrisome. The wakizashi and katana are in reasonably nice koshirae, all blades are out of polish, so little detail is visable.

Wow that's fast, thank you very much. Any ideas on the harsh shortening of the second one? Looks very recent and poorly done, sharp edges. Also the nakago looks to be dripping in oil.

I thought this nakago was a little odd looking, with that curve in the shinogi. What could this mean, maybe a fake or machined blade? No mei, no stamps or signs of removed stamps on the nakago. Any ideas?

I've been trying to decipher the mei on these three swords, I think I got some kanji right but I'm not sure. Can someone correct me and fill in some blanks? Much appreciated. First one is a Wakizashi, very thin blade, I think the first kanji is "Ju", second "Oku", third "Kami", can't figure out the last two... This one is a katana, also thin blade, shortened in a very harsh manor, very bad picture. I have trouble getting a good look on the kanji but I think the third kanji reads "Kami", the last one "Yoshi" maybe? Last sword, a gunto with a small seki stamp. Second kanji looks familar but I really can't make out any of the kanji on this one Hope someone can help a bit....