RichardP

https://www.toukenkomachi.com/index_en_antique.html

Gorgeousness and gorgeousity!  
Sure LOOKS like a pre-Meiji daimyo’s kake—to my ignorant eyes—but that seems like a heck of a claim to provenance…

On 12/9/2021 at 11:08 AM, DTM72 said:

I plan on building one like this, using curved bamboo as the tail.

Never knew tachi kake came in such a variety of forms!

An attention-getting companion piece to the standard deer-antler katana kake might be a tachi kake made by articulating a deer spinal column, using the pelvis as the base, with its natural “cup” to hold the kashira…  

Another one here:

https://www.nihonto.com/11-11-21/

Any pics of the boshi?  (Dunno if wakizashi from this smith/school were characteristically signed katana-mei, but hopefully we’re not looking at a katana that’s been shortened from the wrong end.)

Hi Matthew!

The sori (curvature) on this blade seems pretty dramatic.  Extreme sori—coupled with a rough looking tang—is a potential indicator that a blade has been re-hardened (a blade that’s gone through a fire and lost its hamon may be put through the hardening process again without first re-straightening it, resulting in the existing curvature becoming exaggerated).  Or the sword could well have been made that way, or your camera is distorting the amount of curvature, or I’m just seeing things…

As a rank newbie, my observation is worth very little and if your post was in regards a potential sale I wouldn’t have stuck my nose in at all.  But if you’re just conducting research for a friend, the possibility of “saiha” is one you might explore, even if only to rule it out.  Lots of posts about it on this forum, here’s one:

Hey all!

Here’s a link to an old post showing construction of the display cabinet:

Cheers!

Just received this beautiful hanaire, purchased from Axel Roovers’ website (qualitychanoyu.com).  His original pictures of this piece are far better than mine, and can be seen here: https://qualitychanoyu.com/2020/08/28/toko-kaneshige-bizen-vase/

Axel was great to deal with and was attentive through the whole sales process, including shipping from the Netherlands to the US—I’d encourage anyone interested to peruse his website!

Is this the koshirae known as the Good Taste-Cutter?  
 

Looks fantastic!  
What does the door look like?  It would be great if it were built of absurdly heavy timbers, with a thick bolt you could drop into place from the inside, like on a fortress door.  Then it could double as a safe room—by the time any intruders battered their way in, you’d be kitted up in yoroi and ready for battle...

*Edit* I see you’ve got a modern door with locks—well, I suppose you could go the practical route🤣

A possible course of action you could propose to the seller is for the two of you to settle on a mutually agreeable polisher, and then send the blade to him.  
If the polisher determines it to be a scratch, you agree to assume all of the associated costs of having shipped the blade to the polisher, and of having the scratch addressed if you choose to do so (since it seems like the scratch, if that’s what it is, was factored into your purchase price).

If the polisher determines it’s an hagire, seller agrees to pay all the costs of having shipped the blade to the polisher, as well as giving you the option of a partial refund or return, along the lines of what John proposed.

On 6/24/2021 at 11:47 AM, ckaiserca said:

My wife doesn’t want me to build one. She says that if I build one with extra spaces that I will just want to fill them up

I thought I was being sneaky, but yes, my spouse immediately detected my ulterior motives as well…

On 6/7/2021 at 1:51 AM, shakudo said:

Hi Richard,

Just for interest was any info given on the tsuba? NBTHK or one of the others?

Personally I think it is a great piece and anyone would be happy to have- pm if you want to be rid of it!!! Hahaha! As others have said good nanako and extremely well done dragons- great scales! Enjoy Mike.

 

Hi Mike-

Thank you for your appreciative comments, but no, NBTHK doesn’t provide any info as to their reasoning—so it was nice of Geraint to give some thought as to the factors that might have guided them.

5 hours ago, Geraint said:

The fact that it came back as gimei is a disappointment, most of all to you but I think all of us love it when a story comes good.  I know that it's easy to speak after the event but if nothing else your post made me really look at the tsuba and particularly at the seppa dai.   

Thanks so much—while the results were a disappointment, it’s nice to get some idea as to what features might have guided the shinsa team’s decision.  

Gimei.  
Dang...

Covid seems to be creating delays as well—I submitted a tsuba for the kodogu shinsa back in January and have yet to receive results...

30 minutes ago, Shugyosha said:

Great choice of wood which must have been hell to work. 

Not hell at all—I don’t have any veneer bags, or an air pump or anything.  I just cut the veneer, taped it to some MDF and rolled heat-activated veneer glue on both it and the plywood substrate.  After a few hours, a second coat to each.  The glue dries to a firm, plastic-y consistency.  Then you mate the pieces and iron them with a clothes iron.  
https://www.veneersupplies.com/products/Better-Bond-Heat-Lock-Veneer-Glue.html

Cost of entry is so low that if you have any interest at all in veneering, there’s no reason not to get a bottle of heat-activated glue (and a roller, and a veneer saw) and give it a go...

11 hours ago, PNSSHOGUN said:

the joinery is superb

Perhaps until you look behind the curtain—then:  buh buh BUMMM....

Nothing but butt-joints & brackets.

(The brackets have been countersunk with a router so as to avoid tangling up the drawers, but that was my only concession to professionalism.  All you need to build this box is a table saw and a router.  And a drill press helps.)

On the underside of the gunsafe’s lid, right at the mouth of the drawer, there is a 1/4” metal flange set at 90 degrees that I drilled through.  I attached an aluminum led light strip bar (https://www.superbrightleds.com/moreinfo/aluminum-channels/micro-alu-led-strip-channel-universal/2039/)by drilling and tapping the bar laterally to accept #4-40 socket head screws.  Three screws hold the whole assembly in place, and I don’t lose any more headspace than the flange was already taking up:

The gunsafe came with a little led light set in the inside of the drawer face, but I removed it and installed different lighting.  I used a diffuser filter and amber light gels to tint the light a nice candlelight color:

Hi John, I got the hardware from Morikuni.  

Thanks everybody for such nice replies!  I just fetched a better camera, here’s some clearer pics:

(The veneer is Tamo wood, by the way: https://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-3/tamo)

Foam interior replaced with birch ply, and sword racks out of basswood.  A Gunsaver dehydrator bar is mounted between the two racks.  

The bottom drawer is built around this under-bed gun safe: