what type of Boshi is this?

[Ilovekatana]

This is a type of boshi I am not familiar with. It seems as though these sort of circular elements form the actual boshi line. This was the best picture I could take of it.

[John C]

Could it be an attempt at the one on the bottom right labeled Jizo?

 

John C.

[vajo]

looks all round no yokote, no kissaki, no lines. It looks like hamon runs out. Make another picture.

[Lewis B]

13 minutes ago, vajo said:

looks all round no yokote, no kissaki, no lines. It looks like hamon runs out. Make another picture.

I thought it was a tanto. 

[Ilovekatana]

its the hira zukuri wakizashi I bought from yahoo actions Japan from my previous posts. from what I saw while trying to take pictures of the sword it does not run off. I do not have a good photo set up or easy access to a dslr camera. This was taken outside during golden hour with sword in one hand phone in the other.  best I can describe it is a ko maru with round tobiyaki that have attached themselves to the ko maru temper line. Here is a picture, from the same session, that sort of shows the buildup to and beginning of the boshi.  edit: I've added a rough drawing of what the boshi looks like. sorry for the quality of the drawing I suck at drawing with a mouse. 

Edited March 21 by Ilovekatana

[vajo]

Joseph could we see the boshi and the blade in a normal picture?

 

[Ilovekatana]

I can try when I have time. I am not very good at taking photos of nihonto and as I have said before I don't have a setup. I also have trouble getting the right angle of light to view the boshi on this side, let alone take a picture of it. I have confirmed its there, but its tricky. Also to clarify, what do you mean by normal picture?

[vajo]

that way

 

 

[Ilovekatana]

sure I'll try to get the pictures during my next day off.

[Ilovekatana]

Small update on those photos. I tried and failed miserably. taking those type of photos seems to be well above my current photo taking skills.  Having no tripod and only a phone camera probably doesn't help either.

Edited March 24 by Ilovekatana

[gordpete]

It looks like a mistake. The smith tried to do a ko-maru and ended up with two tobiyaki in the middle of his bôshi. From the looks of the blade, jigane and hamon, possibly late Kotô. Given the way they were pounding out swords to meet demand during that period, mistakes happened.

[vajo]

what photos?

[Ilovekatana]

here are the pictures I managed to get. I for the life of me can't get a picture of the habuchi past the hadori from this angle.

Edited March 24 by Ilovekatana

[Ilovekatana]

here is an additional photo

Edited March 24 by Ilovekatana

[eternal_newbie]

Those last three are much better, thank you.

 

I'm inclined to agree with Gordon that this is a standard ko-maru, although with the better photographs I wouldn't go so far as to call the round-ish bits a mistake, just some additional nie activities (yubashiri or kuichigai-ba) that ended up looking a little strange due to the distortion of the kissaki's shape.

[Ilovekatana]

I figured I could include some pictures of the hamon and hada from the same session as the first boshi picture attempt. These were taken during golden hour using my phones macro focus. I personally love how the sword looks in this lighting. I also should add the sword seems to be tired.

[Ilovekatana]

here are some additional pictures

[vajo]

Looks like textbook Mishina boshi.

Good pictures.

 

 

Edited March 24 by vajo

[Ilovekatana]

So I decided to take pictures of the boshi on the other side. Apologies for the background as the one I used previously happened to be dirty and this was kind of spontaneous. I suspect this boshi is ko maru with some nie or yaki kuzure. I tried my best to get a picture of the habuchi. These are the best pictures I could get. 

[Ilovekatana]

here are the rest.

[Geraint]

Dear Joseph.

 

It is perfectly understandable that you are looking for the type of boshi but there is a problem.  When you read the texts they seem to suggest that there are discreet types of boshi and even that they can lead you to a specific smith.  This is sometimes true, the example that Chris gave of a Mishina boshi being a case in point.  Mishina being the name of the school.  In some swords you would certainly expect a specific boshi as confirmation of the smith however in many others this classification by type does not work.

 

To quote from Markus in Shinto and Shinshinto Kantei, "....on the omote side a shallow notare komi with a pointed and rather long kaeri, on the ura side a more sugu based notare with some ko gunome which turns into a jizo like and short ko maru kaeri. there is hakikake on both sides."  It is useful to think of the types displayed in text books as just that, text book examples.  What they are giving you is a vocabulary with which to describe the features of the hamon in the kissaki. (The same thing can be said for almost any other feature of a sword.)  With some swords the description might be short and sweet, something like suguha with komaru and short kaeri, sometimes not.

 

From what I can see in your photographs your sword does not have a nice tight nioi guchi running into the kissaki and so the description might be more convoluted.

 

Feel free to wax lyrical in your description of the boshi on your sword. 

 

I hope that helps rather than hinders.

 

All the best.

 

 

Edited yesterday at 01:20 PM by Geraint