Caring for tsuba

[Robert Housley]

Hi,

I am new to collecting tsuba. I bought my first earlier this year and I worry that I am not treating them properly. I have a few made of iron and one made of copper. I know that removing patina would be horrible, but I am wondering if the iron should be oiled, or maybe waxed. I tried searching, but I keep getting sidetracked by more tsuba images than I have money left to buy. I would hate to damage these pieces. Any advice, or search directions would be very helpful.

Robert H.

[Grey Doffin]

Hi Robert,

If an iron tsuba has active, red rust it needs to be fixed; search the board for numerous posts on the subject. If an iron tsuba is in good shape you don't need to do anything to it. The patina on a good condition tsuba is all that is necessary to protect it.

Soft metal tsuba, especially silver and shakudo, shouldn't be handled with bare hands; fingerprints can be left behind. Again, I don't think any surface protection agent is necessary.

Grey

[Antti]

Robert,

 

Some basic information.

http://home.earthlink.net/~jggilbert/Cleaning.htm

[Gasam]

Hi again!

 

I also do a lot of metal detecting. For removing red rust, some of my fellow detectorists use finely crushed nutshells in a tiny sandblaster to remove red rust without hurting patina etc.

Apparently this is very gentle the object, and removes red rust very effectively.

 

Just thought I would mention it, in case it can be a time saver if lots of red rust must be removed. Never tried it myself (hard to find small sandblasters I find :-) )

 

edit:obvoiusly the crushed nutshells is the ingredient that make this at all feasible. No blasting sand please :-)