Fire Spirits

So someone brought up that it appears that its likely tegu belly skin based on shape and coloring, which I agree with. Tegu are native to south America. This creates my theory that a Japanese immigrant living in South America (also learned today that there were MANY) needed to restore his sword and did so as an amateur without the proper knowledge on the wrap. Just my two cents, please reply if there are any other theories!

Good to know, thank you! I had spoken with someone a few minutes ago actually and they said the larger one is definitely post-edo and likely rewrapped in the US based on this as well. Good to know of possible Chinese origin though as well as I didn't really consider that a possibility before, but it does make sense.

That is definitely a possibility! Hard to say, but i know these scales look a bit smaller which is kind of odd. No menuki unfortunately. Possibly removed if it was re-wrapped? Was kind of odd to me as well.

Here are the rest of the photos! https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_VYBE-Z_rgaOCQBjsCXSfrTC7koWxCO6

Hi all, I am extremely new to collecting anything nihonto related, but I was curious so I attended a show nearby to me yesterday. Fantastic show and it really kickstarted my interest in them. I picked up two old incomplete or damaged tsuka simply because I liked how they looked. However, I had a couple questions about them I'd like help with. First, the first one is an odd skin to have wrapped around it, so I was wondering if anyone may know what kind of skin it could be and what the significance would be with that. Second, I am wondering if there's anything I can do the assure the wrap on the smaller one does not unravel, I don't necessarily want to tape it like someone did to the larger one. Third, if there is any way to know the approximate age of these? The person I bought them from said likely late 1800s but I would definitely like to try to pinpoint it a bit better, especially since the smaller one appears to be significantly older. Any help is appreciated! Link to photos in comments due to file size limit.