Interesting hamon pattern or NOT?

[RichardY]

Can anyone tell me what is that wavy line close to the HA ?

This is a Mumei late bizen katana.. 

 

Its a beautiful blade and I was trying to identify the blade with reference to a book I recently got (THANKS RAY!!!)

and I found that weird wavy line..

[PNSSHOGUN]

Looks like Sunagashi 

 

https://markussesko.com/2015/05/29/kantei-3-hamon-boshi-1/

 

[Rivkin]

Yes its interesting and unusual. The hamon profile reminds one of late Muromachi. Strong nie activity like this in combination with nie hamon was seen in shinshinto and in late Muromachi, Momoyama included - some Bizen smiths at the time experimented with hard nie which forms ara nie, kinsuji, sunagashi etc..

[Jacques]

I don't think it's sunagashi (too far from nioiguchi), I'd say it's a tempering problem.

[Franco]

Looks like sunagashi.

 

One problem here is that things could look substantially different in new polish.

This polish does this sword no favor.

[The Blacksmith]

If you enlarge the picture greatly, I think it shows sunagashi too?

[nulldevice]

28 minutes ago, The Blacksmith said:

If you enlarge the picture greatly, I think it shows sunagashi too?

 

I believe I was seeing the same when I enlarged the picture. The dark line in particular though appears to be something like sunagashi but IDK if its lighting or angle or something that would make it appear dark while the rest appear light and be to be the same color as the nioiguchi much like typical sunagashi you'd expect. This looks darker in general and additional angles would be nice to have. 

[CSM101]

Sunagashi

 

 

[RichardY]

On 6/6/2025 at 12:14 AM, Rivkin said:

Yes its interesting and unusual. The hamon profile reminds one of late Muromachi. Strong nie activity like this in combination with nie hamon was seen in shinshinto and in late Muromachi, Momoyama included - some Bizen smiths at the time experimented with hard nie which forms ara nie, kinsuji, sunagashi etc..

 

Thanks alot for all the information .. I thought it was sunagashi but it seems to be only this part ..

This sword was identified as a late bizen circa late muromachi blade

 

On 6/6/2025 at 1:52 AM, Franco said:

Looks like sunagashi.

 

One problem here is that things could look substantially different in new polish.

This polish does this sword no favor.

I'll have a look later in detail and grab more pictures .. but you could be right .. it was sent to be polished as the condition was not that nice before.