When is a sword blade "tired?"

[katanako]

I have noticed that on ebay, some sellers do not show the bare blade at the Ha-Machi (edge notch) and leave the Habaki (collar) on. Is it because they want to hide the fact that the blade has been sharpened or ground down to a point where the edge notch no longer exists? And if this were so, would the blade be considered "tired?"

How desirable is a famous maker blade if it was tired? Is it really a turn off?

Thanks!

[John A Stuart]

Hi katanako, I am leary when this is the case. If the seller refuses to send a pic with it removed, I would be suspicious. John

[katanako]

Just as I thought! Thanks John!

[Grey Doffin]

If a sword has been polished so much that the ha-machi has disappeared the nakago can be reshaped; metal can be removed from the nakago ha, to make the sword appear more healthy. It's not possible to know how many old blades have had this done to them. You can't say, if the ha-machi is gone the blade is tired and if it still exists it isn't; it's more complicated than that.

Tiredness refers to the condition of the blade's skin: coarse grain, openings, blisters, or core steel showing through. A sword with no ha-machi can be tired or not and a blade with a ha-machi can be tired or not.

That said, it's always better to have a ha-machi and I would be leery of an ebay sale if the seller doesn't show the machi.

Grey

[katanako]

Thank you Grey-san and all those who replied. This board is great!

Novices, experts, and those in between sharing their comments and knowledge!

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

a very good exemple of a blade which is tired and that the nakago is rechaped:

 

[katanako]

Thank you Jacques!

 

HENRY

[mike yeon]

Jacques,

 

That blade you show isn't tired and the nakago has not been reshaped. It's made by masashige from the sengo school. The nakago is a classic example of a tanago-bara (fish belly) that the school is known for. The hamachi does look like it's been polished down over the years though. You see this a lot in koto tanto.

 

Tired as Grey mentioned usually is exemplified best by the condition of the skin. Shintetsu or core steel showing in places is a good indication but there are always exceptions to the rule. A hizen blade with small areas of shintetsu wouldn't be seen as tired just because of the shintetsu as the school was known for forging blades with thin skin.

 

Ware or openings do not always indicate tiredness either. Ware can simply indicate forging flaws. If there's a perfect storm of shintetsu showing, a lack of hamachi and many grain openings, then you can conclude tired.

 

mike

[Jacques]

Hi Mike,

 

This blade is tired and th nakago was rechaped Why?

 

first You have a yakiotoshi and Masashige had never done one, also you have a kakedashi in the koshiba.

 

Masashige was a great smith and when a blade is well done it's from the point of the kissaki to the point of the nakagojiri; look attentively at the part from the ha-machi to the first nagago-ana, it's not really well done.

[mike yeon]

Ahhhh, now I see.

 

Can't tell if the hamon falls off into yakiotoshi from your picture. I assumed it was simply thin by the hamachi. The nakago though looks fine to me. I still say it's not tired. Definitely seen its share of polishing but not quite tired.

 

Is this your blade? Hard to say tired from pictures. Do you maybe see something in hand?

 

mike

[Brian]

A agree on the points you show, but none of these indicates tiredness.

In English convention, tired reflects core steel showing through once the blade has been polished down too much.

Yes, over polishing can lead to kakedashi (hamon running off) but usually tiredness (in the way we usually use it) indicates shingane showing through.

There isn't any on this blade, so although the hamon runs off, I am not sure if we would call this tired in the conventional sense.

http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/shingane.html

Some interesting points there...maybe even contradicting some of the idea we usually have.

They also use a phrase "Muku" but I am unsure what they mean by that.

 

Brian

[remzy]

i thought that blade "tiredness" was relating to severly modified sugata due to amount of polish it received, so i suppose it is the same as with the core steel showing. Altho a blade might "look" tired if it has a very ground sugata even tho the core steel doesnt show. This is just my two yen anyways!

 

Remy

[Roland]

Hm, may be this is a typical newbie's question but... is it possible to reactivate a hamon which was "lost" by overcleaning? Would a Toshigi be able to do so?

[Brian]

Roland,

 

In cases like this, the hamon runs along the edge of the blade. If the edge is ground back through too much polishing over time, the hamon line goes off the edge of the blade. This is a fatal flaw, and no amount of polishing can bring it back, since the hamon does not exist in that area anymore..it is off the edge. It can be retempered, but that is a flaw in itself.

 

If you are talking about a hamon that is just not very visible anymore through incorrect cleaning, it can indeed be professionally polished to show again, or repeated uchiko over time can start to show it again.

But that means it must still be there in the first place, and just obscured.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Brian

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

Shintetsu or core steel showing in places is a good indication but there are always exceptions to the rule

 

According Kokan Nagayama and some others like Harvey Stearn the tsukurikomi like Kobuse or Makuri were invented in the late Muromachi (around 1450), so many koto blades which are folded never show core steel and seems never tired even though they are also fine as a cigarette paper.

 

This can be interesting and instructive

 

An other koto tanto (muromachi) for comparison, this one is healthy.

 

[mike yeon]

Right, which is why I said there are exceptions. Good article JD. But the masashige blade is not tired. I however am...

 

my

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

Ok as you want, but i keep my opinion and i'll not buy it.

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

Hi,

 

Shintetsu or core steel showing in places is a good indication but there are always exceptions to the rule

 

According Kokan Nagayama and some others like Harvey Stearn the tsukurikomi like Kobuse or Makuri were invented in the late Muromachi (around 1450), so many koto blades which are folded never show core steel and seems never tired even though they are also fine as a cigarette paper.

 

 

We already duscussed this on Swordforum International, but seemed to

me you weren't comfortable in accepting other points of view.

(You stated Hirazukuri can't have Shingane but a REALLY knowledgeable

member of this board clearly saw it in a Tanto of mine, Mino , Muromachi).

 

Anyway :

 

Nihonto Koza, about Ko-Bizen, page 145, Koto vol. III

 

 

If you read thru the Usagiya site provided you'll see it's belived

that Shingane was already present much before the dates Nagayama and

Stearn quotes (according to you...).

Thinks to Soshu Kitae too. To arrive at such a Kitae

needs several stages before. ALL the Kitae started from 1450 ?

 

I totally skip on evidences about Nara/Heian, Japanese-made Chokuto

that already had Shingane as Japanese pre-WWII studies about this

matter aren't exactly easy to find and to approach with.

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

 

I say nothing.... they say. you must write to them and say "sorry but you are wrong".

 

An other exemple.

 

 

 

http://www.k3.dion.ne.jp/~j-gunto/gunto_147.htm

 

 

Read also the connoisseur's book of Japanese swords (Page 33) and Comments on the Construction of Japanese Swords by Harvey Stearn, BUSHIDO: An International Journal of Japanese Arms, Vol 2, No. 3, January 1981.

 

 

 

 

You can believe what you want, it's not my problem.

[kaien]

The answer is, a blade is tired when it get's anything under 4 hours of deep sleep. Naps always help