Supporting foolish behavior?

[chris covington]

Hello all,

 

I have been thinking a lot about supporting foolish behavior. This is what I mean. Is it bad to purchase a sword from someone who has destroyed it, just to save a few parts or does that purchase validate their action and make them likely to do it again?

 

Years ago I bought an uchigatana from a guy who knew nothing about swords. The blade was taken to a grinding wheel and isn't really worth the steel it is made from anymore. The nagasa is about 24 inches and the nakago is only about 5 inches. The tsuka was about wakizashi length (just enough room to fit one hand on it) with brass/bronze Higo fittings. The ito was brown and lacquered but mostly falling apart. The same was black. It was trash except for the fuchi, kashira and menuki. There was no tsuba or habaki. I gave the guy something like $50 just to save the fittings. I also told him that he devalued an antique that might have been worth considerably more if he hadn't decided to give it a redneck polish (I didn't use those exact words to him). He swore it wasn't worth anything because it was old junk. At the time I was happy to save the fittings. Having recently found the blade in my boxes of stuff I started thinking about this more. Did I validate his foolishness by giving him money for something he ruined? Was this the best action to take? If I hadn't bought it maybe he would have realized he made a mistake? Or maybe he would have just sold it to another person like me? Maybe he thinks this is okay behavior because he made $50 off of it. But had I not purchased the "sword" from him I'm sure the menuki would have been lost as the ito turned to dust. What would folks here do?

 

I've included a photo of the mei. The whole sword looks like the nakago. I can't make out the kanji very well, the first one looks like Tomo to me (?). Any thoughts on the mei? Sad sad old sword The other question is what the heck do you do with a sword that is this poorly damaged?!? It is beyond repair.

 

Thanks for reading!

[ROKUJURO]

Chris,

 

you cannot prevent people from doing silly things, and probably we cannot save the world from going down. Hopefully you got some reasonable TOSOGU parts for a few bucks, and that's it. I don't see it as supporting foolish behavior.

 

If the blade was definitely ruined beyond repair it could still serve for scientific research purposes. Sometimes you find the information on a NAKAGO that the steel of a TANEGASHIMA was used to forge the blade. While this is sad on one side, smiths have always recycled steel, and I for one would be happy to use steel from such a blade to forge something else - maybe a TANTO - from it, so that it is not lost.

 

The MEI could be TOMOSHIGE, but I am no expert.

[Rich S]

Chris -

 

I don't recall who said it originally, but the quote goes:

 

"Never under estimate the power of human stupidity"

 

Rich

[Dr Fox]

Chris

 

What he did, he did! You can not alter that. But turn it around when you say he could do it again, he is more likely to seek you out if he does find something else, another $50 touch yes please. You could have done yourself a favour.

 

Denis.

[J Reid]

I'm sure he learned his lesson during the moment when you told him that you would give him $50 instead of $5000 for it, because of what he did, and now second guesses bringing out the belt sander. Keep up the good work chap.