Sword's hi painted (or lacquered) red

[JakeNYC]

(1830, and with a sword this time)

[drbvac]

"""EDIT TO ADD: Ah.....Thanks to Barry, I seem to have this archived from his wonderful cd's he sent me.

This discussion goes back about 7 years!

Haven't sorted it out, but the same old folk are still around 

Might provide some insight, maybe none of it is true. Worth a read though."""

 

Read through this old post from 2009 and was very happy to see many of the authors replying to the original question:  Old names - great guys, Ted Tenold, Louis Skebo, Ian Bottomly, Jim Gilbert, Carlos Tacchini, Richard Turner, Jean Laparra - Amazing !!!!11

[Bugyotsuji]

Yes, a very interesting thread here. 

 

Jake, part of the problem is the limited number of colors/colours that an ukiyo-e artist works with. Notice that 藍 ai (indigo) blue is used here and there, including to indicate steel on the blades. Not very accurate, but we accept the convention and get the general idea.

 

I suspect that much more can be written about the usages of the various traditional 'reds' in Japan.

小豆

紅花

赤

紅

朱

臙脂

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_colors_of_Japan

There are 98 here:

https://irocore.com/category/red/

 

[DoTanuki yokai]

On 12/5/2009 at 10:49 AM, IanB said:

Here is a slightly different take. Lacquer is an aqueous medium and hence will not readily adhere to steel which is hydrophobic. When armour is being lacquered the plates have to be heated to a temperature above 100 C. so that it sizzles when applied. This effectively bakes the first bonding coat onto the metal. Presumably the same had to be the case with sword and yari blades. I can imagine many would hesitate waving a blade over a charcoal fire to get it hot enough.

Ian Bottomley

Mhh im confused, I thought if you heat Urushi over 65celsius it will start to destroy the enzymes that are needed to harden. I have also lacquered many metal surfaces  with lead free modern red Urushi and it definitely feels like red has no problems to stick to metal. 
I have also lacquered the bohi of my Iaito that was polished and the Urushi was easy to apply. Urushi with different colors react different because the color itself interacts with the Urushi. I will try other colors on polished surface to find out what’s going on  

[DoTanuki yokai]

I will update the post after polymerization and im fully aware of the uglyness of the black layer and think the answer why they use red could be this easy ?

[waljamada]

Personally, I love them.   Have two katana and a Wakizashi with red urushi bohi.  The first katana has a darker shade of red while the other two blades have the brighter red in the second katana.  Always thought there had to be more to these than just covering a flaw.