kusunokimasahige Posted August 9, 2007 Report Posted August 9, 2007 Hello all, while cleaning my sword today i looked at it in better light, those of you who know my earlier posting know which sword i mean... and i found out that it is highly likely the sword was retanged once... there is a hardly visible hairline between sword and nakago.... and also the discoloured metal on the part where the nakago goes into the blade itself was typical on the image I have pointed out the hairline and the discolorisation. Now this repair looks very very skilfully done, with great care not to damage the blade itself in any way... this could also explain the difference in tang filing you see near the hairline. Also one of the reasons for me to think it has been done skilfully is that since a sword gets retanged in this way the strenght is preserved due to the outstanding rib (mune strength is preserved). Now of course the signature on the Tang is Minamoto Masayuki, and hence you could say two things... either the tang was put there as a forgery, or the blade might well be a Masayuki, which has been re-tanged with great care to preserve the sword, after which the original smiths name was written on the tang to state who the blade was by.... I know that only polishing by a good Togishi and submitting the sword to Shinsa would give "definitive" information, however i was wondering wether retanged blades are at all subject to shinsa.... my other question is whether there are more swords in existence which have on one point in time been retanged, from old samurai swords to shinto and shinshinto swords, leaving gendai out of the picture at this time... anyone care to shed some light on this? Quote
Darcy Posted August 10, 2007 Report Posted August 10, 2007 The sword would fail shinsa if the nakago were replaced with a signed nakago. That is usually done to take a more valuable smith, possibly part of a broken blade, and attach it to a less valuable sword and then upsell it as a result. There is no real good reason for removing the nakago of an original sword. Furthermore, I am unsure if the technology existed to do this without having to retemper the sword after as the heat involved to weld the piece would very likely cause changes in the crystalline structure throughout the sword. They can do this now... and if the lines are really clean and it is difficult to see, I would be thinking that this is a more modern forgery than anything else. Sadly the only way the sword would receive a paper would be to cut off the false nakago, create a new nakago basically through suriage, and submit the piece this way. Of course I don't recommend doing this, but I think that there is zero chance that if this sword had the nakago replaced that it would get papers. I think you should go ahead and submit your sword and get an opinion this way if the nakago is legitimate to the sword. Quote
kusunokimasahige Posted August 10, 2007 Author Report Posted August 10, 2007 Thank you for the info Darcy! well i will first let the thing have a polish as soon as i have saved up enough to bring it to a Togishi. also i will try to lightly sand the discoloured spot by hand to see wether or not it is indeed what I think it might be... (not on the nakago! mind you.. its underneath the habaki) KM Quote
mike yeon Posted August 10, 2007 Report Posted August 10, 2007 I know at least on the NTHK rejection (pink) worksheet, re-tanged is listed as a fatal flaw and a reason why the blade got pinked. I've seen a handful of re-tanged blades and all were attempts at creating a forgery. As Darcy mentioned, there's no good honest reason to do this to a blade. There are blades that are hundreds of years old with whithered nakago that are structurally sound. If the reason was to indicate a mumei blade was made by a particular smith, a kinzogan mei would have been an easier route. To be honest, I'd think twice about spending $1500 - $2000 on a polish. Unless you're in love with the blade, I feel it might be money better spent on a new blade without issues. Best of luck KM! mike Quote
pcfarrar Posted August 10, 2007 Report Posted August 10, 2007 We need a photo of the nakago. You mentioned previously that the sword was in gunto mounts. It is highly unlikely that a Japanese Officer would go to war using a sword with a welded nakago, unless it was very skillfully hidden. I once in my very early days of collecting had a katana with a welded nakago. The nakago had a genuine sukehiro mei :lol: Quote
mike yeon Posted August 10, 2007 Report Posted August 10, 2007 Hi Peter, I once in my very early days of collecting had a katana with a welded nakago. The nakago had a genuine sukehiro mei Was the blade it was attached to a genuine sukihiro? :D Sometimes with these things a genuine blade is damaged beyond use/value. The nakago with the sho-shin mei is removed and put on a lesser sword. mike Quote
Darcy Posted August 11, 2007 Report Posted August 11, 2007 I also would not spend on the polish until I knew for sure what the deal was with the nakago. You should be able to bring it as-is to an NTHK shinsa and see if it gets pink or white, then make your decision. Or just get the polisher to give an opinion before doing so... just make sure they are not the type to say "O sure it's great don't worry," so they can bill you :-). Quote
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