NotANinja

Well done Manuel! Very skillfully crafted and looks fantastic! Forgive me for the possibly stupid question but to submit tsuba to this competition they have to be traditionally made right? Must have taken days to do all that carving by hand!

I sincerely hope so Rohan!

Some rudimentary menuki but I love them!

Thank you Jussi for the in-depth reply! It's exciting to me there aren't any other examples you can think of with the hi only on one side! And just to be clear the measurements I took for thickness are at the mune, not the thickest part - that's more like 6 and 4mm like your ko-uda naginata. Do you think they both might be ko-uda? It's a shame it's out of polish in it's current state!

Habaki doesn't fit super well, it's a two part cat scratch copper habaki that looks a bit battered...

Here you go Jussi, measurements are on the images, hopefully this helps! Do you know why the naginata-hi may have only been on the one side?

Thank you Sam, that's all very helpful information! I inted to get it polished I think, and will update the thread when it is! But that may be some time away yet

Yep no that makes perfect sense, I shall leave it as is!

Ah I see, to prevent further deterioration could I put some clear spray on varnish or will this damage them further? Just the tosogu, nothing else.

Yes I think you're right about the sugata Sam, although Tensho is almost certainly right too about it having lots of polishes. The kissaki does flair out slightly and looks like it used to more. Hopefully I'll be able to take it to someone way more knowledgeable than me for them to see in hand next month if life doesn't get in the way! And then I'll report back with that they think! Any ideas on age Sam? Thank you!

I know I love it, totally wasn't one of the main draws for me haha!

Well I can guarantee you have more expertise than I, I have only been studying/collecting for just over a year at this point! But yes I agree that I think it might be koto. I'm not interested in it's monetary value, I just generally think myself more (and this may be the wrong word but I can't think of the right one at the moment) privileged I suppose the older the object is, and the more of a responsibility I have toward it for preservation. To put it crudely I suppose you could say in my opinion the older the cooler haha! And sorry what do you mean the tosogu are gone? There are pictures of the fittings which I think are rather lovely attached.

Ah you're probably right about the 'battle damage'! I might still choose to believe it's that though 😉 I plan to send it to a togishi for proper restoration yes, how old do you think it might be if you had to give a rough ballpark? Mid/late muromachi?

Some more images of the blade

Hi everyone, here is a blade I recently picked up that I think is a naginata naoshi. The nagasa is 40cm or 16" and is 52cm or 20.5" overall. The positioning of the naginata-hi on the nakago relative to ubu naginata leads me to believe that the length we see here is possibly roughly 4"/10cm(?) shorter than when ubu, making the original nagasa possibly ~60-65cm or ~24" long - is this a fair assessment? As grain or hamon sadly can't be deciphered at all in your experience how old do you think this piece may be? Blade profile is shobu-zukuri I believe. Other than the above I think it has some lovely koshirae (although the saya is pretty battered) and the blade has quite a lot of battle scars to it, or so I believe.

Yes it is a shame, because it's got a very interesting hamon in my opinion. The sad bit is I don't think there's a boshi, and one on side the hamon is about a cm wide, but on the other it's down to possibly a millimeter at most in places. I don't have any sentimental attachment to the blade personally as I bought it because I liked it's koshirae, but I will probably take it along to a meet-up here in England at some point and see what people think!

I'm always sad to hear about neglected blades, it pains me to imagine them lasting for so long being cared for just to end up like that at the last. This one in particular isn't worth it I don't think for a professional polish as there's no boshi that I can see, even if it possibly does have good age to it. Ofcourse if funds were unlimited then I'd get it done but sadly they are not!

Hi All, I bought this blade recently mainly because I really liked the tsuka and thought it unusual. I've made a post on this here: This post is on the blade itself. It is sadly not in the best condition and seems to have had moss or mould of some sort growing directly on the blade as well as rust. The areas that are polished are almost mirror polished which is strange to me, I think someone must have tried to acid polish it in the past. Either way it has been polished tonnes in it's lifetime as there is almost no hamachi left and little meat, with the hamon on side running very close to the edge. Anyway, here are the specs: (I think) O-suriage, by the notch on the end of the nakago, the single mekugi-ana and the file marks seen on the munemachi. Iorimune, shinogi-zukuri nagasa: 21" / 53cm Sori: 0.5" / 1.5cm kissaki: 0.95" / 24mm Motohaba: 1" / 25mm Sakihaba: 0.7" / 18mm Motokasane: 0.2" / 5.6mm Sakikasane: 0.16" / 4mm Tori-zori with a small kissaki lightweight and thin blade. Hada is mokume in the places I can see it, with visible nie in places Hamon starts off midare in nie deki and then suguha-ish. It goes very very close to the edge on one side. The yakaba is absolutely filled with sunagashi(?) and visible nie, with dark black lines running through it. I'm thinking that it's koto based on the following reasoning: O-suriage meaning original length must have been much longer with a much deeper sori 2.5cm+, polished many times over the years, SO much activity in the hada and hamon. I believe koto blades sometimes started off midare at the bottom and then went suguha? Could be wrong on that but I think I read that in connoisseurs. Sadly, the hamon looks to run off the tip in some lights

Apologies Jean, you can see a better photo on the post Sam linked to.

The exact same nakago in fact! That was the post I made to get some info before ultimately deciding to buy it

The blade is a strange length. It's definitely been shortened in the past I think by quite a lot and polished many many times to the point it's very tired, probably beyond saving and the hamachi is about half a mil out from the nakago, really tiny. Nagas is just over 21" and there's a notch in the nakago from what I presume is the time of shortening for what purpose I don't know - perhaps to indicate that it has been shortened? The menuki seem very strange to me, almost like they've been salvaged from something else by cutting them off something with the random background shapes.

I would agree with that, looking at it up close it's definitely too random to be something man-made. some kind of laquered fish skin would be my guess.

Yes I thought it was pretty unique, nice to know no one here (so far!) has come across this style before. I would agree on the tsuba, it looks amateurish, and the mei looks like someone who doesn't know how to engrave/doesn't have the proper tools had their go at it and I would know because I am a jeweller who's not very good at hand engraving yet!