Sukehiro 2Nd Gen, Real Or Gimei?

[terminus]

Hi I saw a Sukehiro katana for sale and the mei looks like echizen no kami sukehiro. However It doesn't have papers and seems too good to be true.

Here's the mei, all the black and white ones are real. The colored one is in question. To my untrained eyes the mei seems to fat in some areas.

 

​What do you guys think? 

[jason_mazzy]

to my untrained eye, it seems the last kanji has an odd down stroke in the middle, where the others have a near horizontal stroke. The kanji above that is an odd shape.

[cabowen]

The top few kanji seem too spread out. The shape of the gatsu character seems off. The center stroke in the last kanji (日) is pointing in the wrong direction.

 

I would think it is fake, but a fairly good one.

 

Sukehiro is one of the most often faked smiths. There are some mei that are really hard to tell. Fortunately, his workmanship is much harder to fake than his signature.

[jason_mazzy]

And Chris said what i said much better LOL

[1tallsword]

I agree there are many issues with this mei in my opinion, the first kanji horizontal strokes swoop wrong and are spaced to far apart, also the suke kanji is too fat at bottom, also mei looks cut to fat in my eyes...

[Edfest]

Interesting, the mekugi ana is placed differently in the questionable mei, also.

[Grant Lucas]

Here is one of the Swords I own . I was wondering if someone could let me know if the signature is authentic. It looks good to me but I am a bit of a novice.

[Mark]

my opinion is: a later copy made 1880-1930

[Grant Lucas]

Thanks.

I am new to this so it is hard to decipher things. What was the reason you think that date instead of 1600's?

The rust is pretty dark I didn't think it could get that color in so few years.

[Shugyosha]

Hi Mr Billion,

 

I don't particularly have a problem with the patina on the tang as the lighting can make a difference to how dark it looks, but for me the nakago jiri is shaped differently to those included in Fujishiro and to this example on Shoshin.com:

 

http://www.sho-shin.com/sukehiro.htm

 

So I'm a bit dubious, particularly as this is a rather big name but I'm not any kind of authority. If you can post some pictures of the blade people may chime in with some other views. 

 

Also, and sorry to be picky, but there is a forum rule about board members using our real names as opposed to our handles - there is the facility to set a signature up in the settings.

 

Kind regards, John

[Ryan]

Thanks.

I am new to this so it is hard to decipher things. What was the reason you think that date instead of 1600's?

The rust is pretty dark I didn't think it could get that color in so few years.

I can't comment much on differences in the chisel strokes or yasurime but my understanding is that sophisticated methods exist to artificially patinate nakago. ​

[Stephen]

on or going on ebay soon? background looks like known seller

[Grant Lucas]

Sorry about that I will try to figure out how to change to my real name. Thanks for the help.

[Grant Lucas]

OK I think I did it. It should display my name now.

Thanks

[SAS]

I realize that there are experts in the field to authenticate mei and workmanship, but i sometimes wonder if too much weight is put on looking at mei only without seeing the entire sword from multiple views. As a smith myself, I can see that after a hard day banging away at steel that maybe my fingers are a little sore one day when it came time to chisel the mei and it came out a little different. 3 or 4 hundred years later, people are looking at my work and saying it is fake due to some irregularity in the mei. Just a thought i frequently have when these discussions come up

[Grant Lucas]

That was perfect. I know that even my signature is never the same and I can see your point about sore fingers. Another thought in that line of thinking would be what if he hurt his hand that day and had a hard time signing.

All good points. I guess if a blade is good it is good and if it not it is cheep.

Thanks everyone for the ideas and thoughts.

[Stephen]

pondering, how may signed their own work as oposed to having hired or offspring doing the job. 

Steve i am about 100% sure the smith would not do it at end of hard days work, rather after sitting down with it after polish and see if he did want hisname on the work.