Steve D

With help from @paulb I'm off to see Mike Hickman-Smith on Friday for him to have a look at the blade. Will be good to get someone to look at it. I'll report back with his thoughts...

A couple more pictures of the mune at the habaki and tip. Looks like very symmetrical all the way along the blade.

It's not a kaku-mune unfortunately, it's lori-mune as far as I can tell. I'll add some more pictures tomorrow as I'm away from the sword today.

Darcy has come back to me and believes the blade could be around 600 years old and should be worth investigating more. Has put me in touch with Ted Tenold with regard to getting a window polish done to determine school and maker. "Right now it's a lottery ticket, and we can help reveal if it is a winner."

Yeah, wasn't sure that would be what you meant 😆 It's 4.2mm

Approx. 17.3mm although it's a fairly smooth curve rather than a sharp line.

I'm trying...😆

And I have, at least, some shiny blade:

Thanks Bruce. Habaki removed (quite easily with wood & gentle hammer). Maximum Sori is approx 11.25mm, (3.6sun?) (measured with a digital vernier on a CNC machine bed) at approx 360mm from the tip. Roughly the centrepoint between the tip and mune(?) That would make it a torii sori?

Stunning 🙂

Might try in on the old French sword 1st...

And some measurements:

Just thought I'd add a few more pictures to this. Had a good look over the blade and, hopefully, there's more surface rust than pits for the majority of it (not that I have a trained eye of course). What are your thoughts? It certainly 'feels' like surface rust if I scrape my nail along it..

Thanks 👍

Thanks for all the replies guys. I'm in the Midlands so not near the sea and not aware of any salt water. There was a scabbard but that fell to bits a few years ago. I've just another look at the blade and the it looks more like surface rust rather than pitting so, maybe, not as bad as it could be. I'm only a few days in to trying to understand the blade and get a grip in the different names of all the pieces so there's no rush from me to do anything drastic with the blade. My plan is to see if I can get someone Paul recommends to have a look and go from there. Hopefully it will be good news but we shall see. I'll update as I find out more. 🌲🌑🌲