JCKang

I will have to walk this back a little, I did learn two things from my calls: 1, there was a habaki issue which they had to fix, and that the timeline was "mou chotto" 2, my wife, a native Japanese speaker, didn't know what a habaki or many other sword terms were.

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I don't think the phone calls helped at all, plus you might have to speak Japanese.

Unfortunately, cannot seem to upload pics because of size

Do you mean a naginata/nagamaki reshaped into a tanto? I have one.

I bought two swords from him in the past: a nanbokucho Tegai Kanetoshi tachi which was a hozon but had him submit for TH, and a hozon zaimei Takada which was to have koshirae made. From there, it was mishap after mishap and a periods of ghosting via email. I had to call a couple of times to get any update. In all, it took nearly two and a half years from purchase to delivery. That said, the descriptions on his website didn't do the swords justice, they were both in amazing condition.

Hello! I'm an acupuncturist and a long-time practioner of martial arts, and started collecting Longquan swords; but late last year acquired a gunto from patient who had bought it form a local WW2 vet, who'd taken it from a battlefield in Okinawa. The hamon was absolutely gorgeous, but there was no signature on the nakago. from pictures, Ray Singer believed it was a gendaito. Recently, I bought an unpapered Nobusada Wakisashi. I had no idea if I could trust the seller, but I loved the polish job on it so much, I figured what the heck. Then within days, I bought a late muromachi katana from Aoi-Japan, just because I liked the longer nagasa and deep sori. Now that I've put the horse before the carriage, I'm here to learn more. Hoping to either find or organize a group in my area (Richmond, VA), and I will be at the Chicago show later this month!