Denis V

Yeah, it’s more the lighting i guess. I went over it briefly, but it was already more or less cleaned. What i noticed however on the fuchi, is that the 3 stamps are not alined, but more in a triangle. The Nagoya stamp seems above the other two. All the other examples i have seen, have the 3 stamp one next to the other. Were they sometimes positioned differently? Does it have a meaning? @JP; don’t worry. And for your info, I also won’t try when I’m not high :- D

Ok, so after a lot of rubbing, i got one side finished and I’m feeling rather happy. Not sure if it’s the result or the fact that i’ve been sniffing nail polish remover all day... man, that stuff gets in your nose. So here it is; before and after. Let me know what you think.

Lol. ‘Rotten cream’ is the perfect name for this. It has a bleu cheese mould-ish color vibe going on. Thanks for the pic Steve. Restoration is rather fun, even if I still don’t understand why somebody would paint over it like that. I’ll try to post a pic of progress once one side is done.

That’s a great idea JP. Looks like you’ve done this before I’ll try it for sure. Merci beaucoup.

So, i started gently with q tips and nail polish remover (thanks to my wife) and it comes of with a bit of rubbing. I started on the menuki and the details start popping again. It will be hard to go into the deeper parts of the design but a toothpick might help? I guess I have a little project on my hands for the coming month. Just to illustrate a pic of the menuki on one side and on the other where i did the test.

Nice. Must look great all white. But like I mentioned, mine came with a ‘souvenir certificate’ for a British officer who received his sword in Malaya. Assuming that this is original, I presume they will have had no need of snow camo over there. So, I need to get rid of this paint and try to restore this sword to it’s former glory. It will not completely look like yours, that’s for sure :-) Very nice NCO sword by the way.

Hello Neil. So this is what it should look like. Chris made the comment that he has seen some wartime pictures of tsuka’s painted in white for some reason. PS: is your pic an original or newly restored one? Looks fancy.

I will Chris, thanks. Would you happen to have pics of a wartime white tsuka? Just to compare? Also it kinda looks like the security spring used to be painted as well...

Hmmm... this is an interesting point of view, Chris. Why would they have done this? Not for camouflage purposes as i can imagine. Unless they operated in China. But based on the souvenir certificate from the British officer, he got it in Malaya. I tried to scratch very slightly on a small spot, and the paint kind of powdered away. Could be an indication of old paint?! Anyway, if it’s original i’d rather leave it like this, but how to be sure? The paint is really silver color. Then again, if there was still original paint underneath; why paint over it and cover the nice details? That’s just stupid, no?!

Thanks. This is one of these things where you whish life was like a videogame where you just can ‘save’ before starting to mess around. Just in case ... :-)

Thank you for all the info guys. I believe I have a lot of experimenting ahead :-) Hope it will work out. Still happy with my sword as it came with some history. Would it also be necessary to remove the handle in order to fix this? I’m not sure I want to risc this as I have no experience with dismanteling NCO swords.

Merci JP I’ll look for the product or something similar. I understand your fear that the details have been sanded of, but on certain places it looks really thick like on the menuki. So I hope to still be able to recover the details. In general, does it affect the value of the sword somehow if all the paint is gone? What would be worse; new, awfull paint or no paint at all? PS: you’re right about the products. It’s always the best that go first. Try to find a descent weedkiller these days :-)

I was afraid of this. Always sad to see these kind of things. Well, never the less, it can only improve if i can get rid of some of this paint. I will start trying with aceton on a small part like you propose. Have you already done these kind of procedures with succes? Anyway, thanks for the great tip.

Well, this is it. My very first post on this site. I’ve been reading contents and collecting info for some time now, but this time, I could use some help. Please... I’m already the proud owner of some type 98 shin gunto’s and a couple of kai gunto’s, but never had an NCO sword. So this week I got a nice opportunity to get a rather interesting NCO sword. It’s an alluminium handle Nagoya sword with a leather covered saya ( in rather good condition). Next to this unusual feature, it also came with a war trophy certificate for a British officer and an old picture of the officer ( as I was told). Upon taking a closer look at the tsuka, I have a strong suspission that it has been painted over with a silver colored paint. It looks like it since it seems to cover the initial brown paint and also the thickness of the paint has blurred or covered the smaller details. Basically, my question is if anyone can confirm that it has been re-painted, and more importantly if it should or can be removed without damaging the original paint. I would like to restore it if possible, but am terrified to damage it permanently. If anyone has any experience with this. Thanks a lot for your help in this.