Robert C. Walker

Yes, Brian, time flies. Sadly not much time for Nihonto. Very busy dojo.

Can you please advise me on my options to get these fittings assessed? It would be lovely to send them to a Shinsa.

Mark, Very nice looking set.

I had someone recommend that I use some light oil on the tsuba to help with the rust. Is this an acceptable and useful thing to do to stop the active rust?

Hopefully these are useful.

I will upload a photo of the full nakago as soon as I can. Last time I tried I was unable to upload any images so I will try again tonight.

Nagasa 36.6cm Nakago 10.7cm Kasane 0.5cm Sori 1.1cm Motohaba 2.9cm

Thanks Reinhard. Definitely no signature on my blade.

Wow, Mantis Dude, good find! What catalogue is the image from? Certainly a very close rendition of the theme. I will try to find some guidance for how to clean up the rust and then see what it looks like. Either way, I have both tsuba.

I just returned home after a 5 day trip with no internet access. Thanks for all the discussion and comments during that time. I will try to take some more informative photos and I will post some measurements.

How would I go about "restoring" the peony tsuba? Is there some information on the web on how to do that carefully? I would love to find a guribori tsuba to match the fuchi kashira but the only guribori pieces that I can find are sitting in museums. They appear to be pretty rare.

Fair enough. The rest of the fittings are quite nice so I expect that the tsuba was changed at some point. Of course, we can never know why it was changed. Here is a link to photos of the fittings, including the original tsuba, that I still have. http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2164&p=14831#p14831

The only reasons were that it fit better than the original one and it looked better too. Someone described that one as a Yokohama dock special when I posted a photo.

A couple more just because I think it is pretty.

Here are some photos of my wakizashi, fresh from the polisher. I realize that they are poor photos but I wanted to get something posted. I will work on getting better ones. I am finding the boshi particularly difficult to photograph. I have been looking forward to getting the sword back so that I could study it and begin to understand all that I have been reading. I am working through describing the characteristics of the blade. I have not finished yet and I need to take some measurements but here is what I think I see so far: Tsukurikomi - shobu-jukuri Sori - Torii-zori O-kissaki with rounded fukura Iori mune with steep oroshi Nakago - Ubu, standard Nakagojiri - ha agari kurijiri Yasurime - kiri Jihada - ko-mokume & masame Hataraki - ji-nie Hamon - sugaha Boshi - It is really clear to the eye but I am stumped and I doubt these pictures will help