Pincheck

Well, thanks for your help, I do appreciate it. Maybe you’re right, maybe it is Shinto. In some ways that may be a good thing, it means I’m less inclined to send it to Japan for polishing which would be a head ache removed. I mainly wanted to be sure I wasn’t sending a rare and special blade to the wrong person. If it isn’t very special it gives me more scope. I still have a hard time buying it’s Shinto though, but that may be wishful thinking. The steel is quite blue which suggests to me older rather than newer, O suriage which maybe isn’t definitive either way and where you see a wide nioi guchi, I see poor photography as on the blade itself it looks narrow and nie to me. I’m not sure I see utsuri either, just poor photography. But it does look uniform and featureless, (which is one of the reasons I like it), although a lot of that could be the poor polish, it looks like some of it was done with 80 grit. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Shinto blade that looks like this, but I have seen various koto blades that are reminiscent. My current wishful thinking favourite is mihara although I am probably wrong. Who knows, I could probably convince myself of anything right now.

If I am correct in thinking this is O suriage, it could have had a 33" nagassa at one time. I may be wildly wrong, but that seems awfully long for a shinto katana. Did shinto smiths generally make katanas that long? I assume some must have done.

This isn't my first sword, I've been interested in nihonto for a long time, but this is my first non-gunto so I've never had the opportunity to do any kantei other than Aoi Arts appraisal quiz (which I am just about good enough to discern koto from shinto or shin shinto), I definitely have a lot to learn. I'm aware of the Token society and have applied to join. I certainly won't be doing anything except cleaning and oiling this one until I know a lot more about it. It came in Gunto mounts, but had a silver foil habaki and a family mon on the tsuka so I'm inclined to believe that whoever had it during the war thought it wasn't junk. It's been polished with a brillo pad but what hada I might have been able to spot looks like this

Hi, new guy hoping for some help and advice on this one. It needs a polish and a shirasaya but I'm wondering if it's good enough to warrant a lot of expense. I think it looks fairly good but probably not shinsa worthy as it appears to have a patch of shintetsu. 27" nagassa, 1/2" of koshi sori, O suriage, mumei, shinogi zukuri, suguha with ko maru boshi, the polish is poor and hada is difficult to see, might be ko-itame. My kantei skill are not great and all I can come up with is probably koto, maybe yamato related. Any ideas?