Ken-Hawaii

Well said, Ian & Paul. I've had no response from any of the officers in my sword society, & I doubt it's because COVID killed them off. My sword mentor & I meet via Zoom whenever we find something worth sharing, & that satisfies 95% of my burning need for discussion.

Kirill, what you're selling could provide a member with all of the collection he/she will ever need! Should go quickly.

A Japanese katanadansu is made from kiri wood (AKA Paulownia) that doesn't mold. Rather than dessicant, which liquefies as it absorbs moisture, check out dri-rod dehumidifiers (https://smile.amazon.com/MAXSafes-Gun-Safe-Dehumidifier-Inch/dp/B09BF6XJY1/). Much safer for swords.

Until Tokugawa Iyeasu united Japan around 1600, swords were made to be used in battle. Blade made in Kamakura & Nanbokucho eras were often used in battles, day after day, & are considered to be the epitome of sword uality. Over the next few hundred years, most of the early superior construction techniques were lost because they were never written down, & hundreds of years of war resulted in many inferior swords. Look up kazu-uchimono. But I have a katana that was made in 1302, that looks brand-new, & it's certainly in better shape than I am! I've trained in use of the sword for almost 4 decades, & this is the blade I would use, if CQC (close-quarter combat) was necessary. I suggest taking the "Nihontos suck as swords" as the BS it obviously is.

Agree with Kirill. UPS isn't reliable these days.

We've never had a fire, thank goodness, but back in 2004, a gust of wind blew off our second-story roof, followed by 6.8 inches of rain. It took us 3 full years to get everything repaired/rebuilt/replaced, along with $335K of insurance money. It's a long & tedious job, & I don't envy you. Hope you have good insurance, & an agent who will work with you.

Xander, like Singapore, Hawaii is high humidity year-round. I live across the street from the Pacific Ocean, so I gave a lot of thought to protecting my blades. If you're going to be a serious collector, you might give some thought to acquiring a katanadansu. I bought mine from a fellow member, & it's provided perfect protection for more than 20 years. A much less expensive alternative is an anti-corrosion bag like https://www.amazon.com/Prevention-Storage-Protection-Corrosion-Moisture-Proof/dp/B07ZB4K1Y3/ I've never oiled or treated a tsuba, unless I see red (active) rust.

Welcome, Haig. Please browse over to http:// http://nbthk-ab.org/cleaning-maintenance.html to start understanding how to handle your blade. Please note that black rust is good, but red rust is active, & is bad. Please be very-careful how you clean the blade. It may be old & damaged, but, it's still a piece of history, & we, as caretakers, are responsible for not making its condition any worse.

Bob, you do know that the mei is the LAST thing you should look at, don't you?

Brian, please read https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/files/file/36-collecting-nihontō-–-what-how-and-who/ before you spend your money.

I think all new members should download & read

Buy a shinken from Cold Steel, & cut as often as you want. Mine has stayed straight & sharp, despite the many students who have used it to learn tameshigiri.

Amazon gets a bunch of copies, sells them off, & raises prices. But they'll get more in, & price will go down. Seen it many times.

Grey, with the supply chain as screwed up as it is, how is your house repair/rebuild coming along?

I've been using one of his knives for many years, & it's my favorite.

Yeah, Bruce, exactly what I was thinking. But I know that Kirill hasn't just been sitting back, & taking it easy, so how long would that stasis last?

I'm all for jabbering, but only if there's just a wee bit of knowledge behind those words. Yes, it's the same in martial arts, Tom, but there, we have a Sensei to lead us down "the path." With Nihonto, I just love handing a blade to an "expert," & asking, "Okay, what do you SEE?" I can't tell you how many times my sword mentor did that to me! Good points, Mark, but can you see interacting with other collectors, with no chance of learning more than what you came in with?

Chemical Engineer, Jean, but close enough. My Chemist wife wife will correct me, anyway! I think we're closing in on what's bothering me. If we were actually SMELTING steel, & able to purify it (vs just adding more carbon), then I would agree that Oroshigane could be as "pure" as Tamahagane. But I can't see how a hole in the ground can provide as many controls as a tatara. Maybe I should hide the jewel-like chunk of tamahagane that's sitting on my desk, front & center, so it doesn't remind me of its purity, whatever we define that as. Of course, my initial question was adequately answered by you, in that I wasn't familiar with the Oroshigane process. But rather than being suitably grateful, here I am picking on steel purity. Ah, well.

Is there any way that an Oroshigane blade is identified as such? I think that most collectors, including myself, expect a Koto blade to be created from tamahagane, originating from a tatara. Jean, you're making the case that my assumption is likely short-sighted. So, now I'm wondering how we can know the (for lack of a proper phrase) "original provenance" of a blade. Does it matter? Have they been papered by NBTHK? Thinking that one of my TH or juto blades may have originated from a (literal) hole in the ground is making me twitch!

Did he repair it? It makes me wonder whether having any non-tosho do a repair somehow degrades the blade, more than the original problem.

I was president of our local club, followed by my sword mentor the following year. We pushed heavily for education, with written agenda that could be studied before each monthly meeting. The response was anything but positive. It quickly became obvious that the majority of our 50 members just wanted to look at each other's blades, & jabber. The current officers read a few paragraphs from Yumoto's primer, & everyone seems happy. Tremendously frustrating, & neither of us are still members. I think that NMB is the wave of the future, & that we, as members, should find more ways to support Brian.

Thanks, Jean. That's very interesting, & I'm surprised I hadn't heard about it. So the Muromachi tosho used these Oroshigane Gama to create Shingane for Nihonto, right? I assume that Kawagane would require better control of the steelmaking process (i.e., Tamahagane from a tatara). Can this process be tied in with the Kazu-Uchimono that appeared during this period? There were a lot of factors that led to the demise of Kamakura blade techniques, & this sounds like one of them. In other words, since Kamakura tosho techniques were passed down through word-of-mouth, I'm hoping to eventually write a paper on how & why these techniques were lost in time, because there was so much else going on (like Daimyo demands for more blades, at any cost!). The quality of steel (or lack thereof) from this "field experient" process would certainly seem to be inferior to Tamahagane, & I'm getting a better handle on why several of my Muromachi blades have inconsistent jigane.

I understand the repurposing, but I'm thinking about early/mid Muromachi, when tosho were scrambling to make as many blades as possible. The tatara process isn't true smelting, as I recall, so would broken blades just be dumped in with the masa satetsu? That wouldn't allow for much control of the tamahagane. That may be the answer, based on sheer need, but I'll bet there was some type of processing after a battlefield was cleaned up.

Swords & other weapons broke, but how was the material reused? Tamahagane was too precious, a few hundred years ago, to just throw it out, but I've never seen any discussion on how it was reused.

Agreed that it's worth $750, but why buy a blade with unknown features or provenance?