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Bruce Pennington

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Everything posted by Bruce Pennington

  1. Here is a list of his "pinned" articles: Master Index for Reference Articles by Nick Komiya
  2. A few folks have been asking for a cover page and an index of pages for the Stamps Doc, so I've done it! Version 7.0 includes my discovery of something Slough had known all along - the Yasugi Steel Co. stamp which is found on the blades of 3 smiths so far: Kanemichi, Katsumasa, and Masafusa. Sorry for so many edits. But that's the beauty of digital documents, the new one's can simply replace the old ones on our devices! The new version is posted on the NMB Downloads page here:
  3. That is the same dilemma I have had tracking numbers on all the other blades. There seems to be a lot of numbers coming from RJT army program blades, but like you said, not all of them are numbered.
  4. Here's Nick's take on the sunburst: " The rising sun you show in the photo is basically in the army configuration, while the illustration you put beside it is the police type with a much smaller orb. Police rising suns consistently had a tiny orb in the center as shown below. Regarding the staggering of the ray lengths, the army's version did change size and designs several times after 1880, so a 2 length version might be one such later version. However, 3 ray lengths had been the standard norm since the institution of the Order of the Rising Sun, so a 2 length variant would be highly irregular."
  5. Anyone that has a Mantetsu with serial number beginning with TSU ツ is likely to have one. Hard to precisely pinpoint these, but the serial numbers beginning with SO ソ, TSU ツ, and NE ネ should be right around the time.
  6. Thanks Mal! I figured it would come out to something like that, a figure of speech. We do that in English, too. I sure wish we had a couple of the smiths from back then to talk these things over with. I, too, suspect some of these hotstamps are tied to forges and steel companies (like the Yakugi Steel Co.). But most smiths ran their own forges, didn't they? Were there large "company forges" where several smiths did their work, and the company forge had a hotstamp they put on everyone's blades? Why would a smith allow a steel company to put their stamp on his blade, unless he worked for or at the steel company's forge. Or possibly, he got the steel from the company at a reduced rate and in return they got to "advertise" on his blades?
  7. Same guy, named changed over time? If they were different guys, I wonder about the kao. One is really blurry, but they seem to be the same.
  8. I've seen this hotstamp a "hundred times" yet it just struck me as intentionally exaggerated. Am I right? A blade couldn't have been in the fire 100 times in the making, right? Or am I understanding the phrase incorrectly?
  9. Neil, I don't see that one in my Stamps survey. Is it dated?
  10. You can see more examples of these beginning with post number 17 on page 2 of the following discussion: https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/Japanese-militaria/nlf-gunto-discussion-672281-2/ the discussion previous to that post does not apply to your sword, so don’t get thrown off by it.
  11. Very late war - black painted tsuka, and one-piece Fuchi-seppa. I’ve seen these before.
  12. Must be nice to have your own “Komiya”. Ha! so do you think this is purely army, or is it police with an army emblem on the backstrap?
  13. Interesting. Same ray-pattern just showed up on this one: https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/Japanese-militaria/sword-identification-781190/
  14. The document demonstrates the level of Intel, research, and planning that went into this raid. That last page you posted shows a great deal of information they had on each of our ships!
  15. Only 2 I have decent pics of: This one is on my star-stamped Kunitoshi This one seems to have that same pointy leaf like your first one, but was on a standard RS, non-traditionally made gunto.
  16. I would enjoy as many pages as you would share! Quite a document you have there, Neil!
  17. Mark, I had contacted Richard Fuller for permission to use his charts about stamps for my stamps document, and he sent me the Errata sheet at that time.
  18. I have a blade that had several dings in the edge where someone had whacked something really hard (like metal). You can't see the burrs in the photos, but they were there bad enough that I couldn't do uchiko without the paper snagging and ripping on the burrs. So I used a fine file to take the burrs down. On the mismatched saya, that is really quite common. We see more of those at the forum than matched ones, and I have one too. Regardless of how that happened, they are both WWII history are were part of the war. I would care for it with the same respect as with a matched set.
  19. Cal, Be sure to read these threads on the subject: and https://www.warrelics.eu/forum/Japanese-militaria/government-Japan-will-now-act-intermediary-case-you-wish-return-war-relics-families-679338-2/ I am no expert on the subject, but while the effort is good-hearted on your part, I've read mixed reviews on returned items. Sometimes the effect is healing, providing closure; but sometimes it causes anger and more pain. Sometimes the guy sees his item on ebay the next week after going to great pains, time, and expense to make the return. But in the end, I suppose it's like the story I heard - 2 guys walking by a wino-beggar. One guy gives him $5, and the other questions him about it. He says "It's in my heart to give. It's up to the beggar how he uses my gift."
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