My other blades.

[Nazar]

I decided to create this topic to share with you some of my other Japanese blades. Like Type 19 kyu-gunto, dirks and, maybe, Arisaka bayonets. I believe it wouldn't do any good to create separate topics for each of them or topics divided by types. The first thought was to name this topic "My lesser blades", yet that didn't sound right: even though these blades are of less monetary value than shin-gunto or kai-gunto, they are a significant part of Japanese military blades history and mean a lot to me. 

 

So I'll start with my latest acquisition,  the Type 19 dress kyu-gunto which became the second of this type in my collection. I was lucky enough to buy it locally for a reasonable price. I only received it yesterday, so here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

This sword is quite different from my first Type 19 sword and curious (at least for me) for three things:

 

First, it may belong to the type addressed as "beefy sword" in Hamish @lonely panet topic here: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/13294-type-19-kyu-gunto-dress-swords-i-love-them/#findComment-140257

 

Yet to check if this is so, I have to compare it with my another one Type 19 sword. Alas, these days I spend away from my collection.

 

Also, to me its blade looks to be stuck in between the Japanese and Western styles. The blade with its 3/4 shallow and wide fuller strongly reminds those of  Western 19th century cavalry swords while kissaki seems to be close to those of Japanese swords. 

 

 

 

Second thing, there are two seppa between fuchi and guard. Having seppa is not unknown for Type 19 gunto, but it's quite rare. Two of them make it even rarer. 

 

Edited August 21 by Nazar

[Nazar]

And third thing. It's my first sword with a Mon. In this case it's Maru ni Mitsu Kashiwa Mon (three oak leaves in a circle) which according to the Internet is very common. During a lazy half hour search I was able to find like five cases of using this kamon on gunto with three of them present on this very board.  It's also known as  Maru ni Makino Kashiwa, however I am not sure if this sword has anything to do with the Makino clan. If one takes a closer look at this particular Kamon, one may notice that the midrib (the central vein of the lead) is depicted not by one, but by two lines. Yet such depiction is not unknown. 

 

 

 

[Bruce Pennington]

This is an unusual blade for a dress sword.  I've only had 4 in-hand over the years (kept one) and was surprised at the variations, in size and in the finer details.  Apparently, there were lots of shops making these and consequently lots of variation.

[Conway]

@Nazar How thick is the mune? I have one with a similar style blade and also with an added seppa, but the blade is so thin almost to the point of being flimsy. 

[Nazar]

1 hour ago, Bruce Pennington said:

This is an unusual blade for a dress sword.  I've only had 4 in-hand over the years (kept one) and was surprised at the variations, in size and in the finer details.  Apparently, there were lots of shops making these and consequently lots of variation.

 

Indeed, there is a great variety of them. I was prepared for this fact as I have seen a few of them side by side some time ago. Luckily for me, that time price was so unreasonable that I walked away and was happy I didn't buy any.

 

 

53 minutes ago, Conway said:

@Nazar How thick is the mune? I have one with a similar style blade and also with an added seppa, but the blade is so thin almost to the point of being flimsy. 

 

Alas, my caliper is not with me at the moment. I have only an ordinary ruler to measure the mune. It seems that the mune is  around 4mm thick near the guard and around 3.5mm thick along the length of the fuller. Closer to the end of the fuller the mune gradually narrows and becomes 1mm thick along the unfullered part of the blade. I believe it in some measure copies design of service blades of Western style of that time.

 

 

[Nazar]

I returned to my collection for a few days. Checked the mune with a caliper. 4mm and 3.5mm are correct measurements. The zone of the mune from the end of the fuller end to kissaki varies from 1.5mm to 1.2mm 

 

And sure, I compared this Type 19 with my first one. The difference in dimensions may not be stunning, but it's quite significant. Here are some photos:

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

Forgot to add a picture of handles in comparison. 

 

 

When it comes to the sword condition, I enjoy it immensely. The sword is far from being mint and pristine, yet there is no extensive damage for the chrome plating of the blade. The patina on brass parts  is priceless. And there are things that I could address, which is superb. 

 

I didn't know how many time I could spend on the sword, so I started with simpler things. I lightly cleaned the dirt from the brass parts using toothbrushes slightly wet with soapy water. In some places I used brushes wet with isopropyl. It was only light touches  with the goal to not to disturb the patina and remove only main depositions of dirt. Turned out, those dirty spots were hiding remnants of "gilding". Then I sorted the wire on the grip. It took longer as the wire got tangled and I had to figure out which coil was first, second and so on and so forth.  I worked using tools from my extended weapon cleaning kit. They look like the tools for dental work and have hooks of different configurations. I also made an improvised wooden micro spatula to straighten wire by chasing it along the grip. 

 

And talking about grip. It turned out that it has no leather wrapping. There is only wood, very nicely finished and lacquered.  I checked my other Type 19 and its grip is also just a laquered wood. It's quite a discovery for me. 

 

Here are some photos "Before and after":

 

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

Few more photos...

 

 

 

 

[Bruce Pennington]

Excellent result.  I always clean mine to remove dirt and grime.

[Conway]

8 hours ago, Nazar said:

Then I sorted the wire on the grip. It took longer as the wire got tangled and I had to figure out which coil was first, second and so on and so forth.  I worked using tools from my extended weapon cleaning kit. They look like the tools for dental work and have hooks of different configurations. I also made an improvised wooden micro spatula to straighten wire by chasing it along the grip. 

 

Did you re-align the wires without loosening the backstrap? The end result looks great!!

[Nazar]

13 hours ago, Bruce Pennington said:

Excellent result.  I always clean mine to remove dirt and grime.

 

Thank you, Bruce! I try to be gentle even with grim because in some cases it provides an additional visual effect to the piece, making its features more prominent. It's similar to oil washing and weathering that people do to make scale models more realistic, only in our case the artist is a time itself. 

 

5 hours ago, Conway said:

 

Did you re-align the wires without loosening the backstrap? The end result looks great!!

 

Thank you, Conway! Yes, I realigned it without taking off the backstrap. I believe the possible reason for it becoming loose is the shrinking of the wood. Once it got out of the groove it coiled and tangled. Luckily,  the wire wasn't broken and there were no overbents and suchlike things. The end of the wire seemed to be still securely fixed into the wooden grip too. So I put the wire back in the groove, straightened bent sections and slightly tightened it. In result there was only a small loose section at the rear. I S-shaped this section to provide tension and tucked under the backstrap. 

[Nazar]

So, my next task was to straighten the metal shell of saya. Its end section was quite battered.  I didn't like how the sword's blade fits saya when it reaches the damaged area. It looked like there was an attempt to straighten it but it only made things worse as it resulted in battering of the mune side of saya. 

 

First, I had to safely remove wooden inserts from the metal shell.  Here is a photo for those of you who are curious about how it was built. In the case of Type 19 there is no real wooden saya inside of metal shell. Like some European  swords it has a veneer inserts. Two for each side of the blade. The outer pieces that are in contact with saya metal shell are very very thin so they took the form of the shell's inner shape. The pieces of veneer that contact the blade are thicker. As you may see from the photo they are very dirty so it was necessary to remove them for cleaning. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

Alas, the outer strips of veneer are so thin that there is no way to clean them properly without damaging them. However I managed to remove rust depositions from them using a small scraper from my toolkit. As for the thicker pieces, I cleaned them as best as possible. 

 

 

[Nazar]

As for straightening of the metal shell. It was by far the most difficult from all the straightening I have done so far. It's not only because I have to operate in a tight space and very far from saya throat. The main issue was that  someone's previous attempt to straighten it damaged the mune ridge which is mostly impossible to fix using only  3D printed inserts. The other thing was that whoever did it, this person's efforts (involuntary) changed the curvature of the 2/3-4/4 end part of saya so the sori of the saya became slightly more than the sori of the blade. I had to use a wooden block (with groove for saya cut in it)  as a base and rubber mallet to address this issue. All in all, the result is far from perfect, tbut fitment of the blade became quite nice. Here are photos of how it looked before:

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

And here are some photos after. I considered the black oxidation in areas where nicker was stripped to be healthy and inactive enough to leave it alone. To protect the metal shell I treated its inside and outside with Renaissance Wax. 

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

And we are mostly there. Leather washer that sits between the sword guard and the kuchigane began to fall off the sword as soon as I drew the sword from the saya. It had an open crack in one place so the only thing that was keeping it in place was grease. Here is how it looked.

 

 

 

Making a new washer is a simple matter and is  a question of the suitable piece of leather. However, if it comes to keeping the original part (even so battered) or making a replacement, I am all for giving the original part another chance. So I sourced a piece of thin leather and made it even thinner by scrubbing off some material from the "hairy" side.  I also sandpapered the smooth side so it started looking like the back side of the original leather washer. Then I glued the original washer to this piece of leather using Titebond Hide Glue. I let it sit in the vises for a while. I used a flat plate for the "new" side and rubber jaw with some close lining for the "old" front face to provide pressure without damaging the washer. And here is result:

 

 

Edited Saturday at 06:47 AM by Nazar

[Nazar]

Maybe this old leather washer wasn't worth putting effort in it, yet for me it was the only way to proceed. Here is how it looked being  put in place. 

 

 

I treated the chrome plated blade with Renaissance Wax too. I didn't put the wax on the handle though. By that I finished this small project. It was very nice to work on this piece. The result doesn't differ too much from what I got in the beginning, but that was the general idea of the project.  Yet, I believe it became a bit more tidy and even looking, while fitment of the blade improved by far. 

 

 

[Nazar]

I slightly modified my stand and it became the "Japanese blades only" stand. I arranged blades on the stand solely according to my aesthetic preferences.  For my European swords and some shorter blades I already built another stand, identical to this.

And no, I didn't become completely mad and went on a buy-all-swords rampage. It just so happened that some of my doings of the last winter finally fruited at more or less the same time as I "caught" a couple of Japanese military blades on the local auction. By doings I mean two topmost Nihonto. The sword that sits on the very top of the rack became my first papered Nihonto. It's the katana of Chiozoru (Echizen Rai) school  and it has everything to do with wakizashi placed below and this very forum. Yet, those blades are for sure not for this topic. I also believe I have to find a traditional stand for them, maybe an old one, or if modern than at least wooden and well made.

 

[Nazar]

Life likes to make unexpected turns. Luckily, not all of them are unpleasant. The place on the rack occupied by kai-gunto saya was reserved for a future Type 32 sword. Yet it so happened that I stumbled upon another Type 19 kyu gunto on a local internet auction. The price was a steal even taking into account its far from perfect condition. So I bought it. This sword is of "smaller breed" and equipped with a comparingly rare blade of european type. So it would fit perfectly into the Type 19 section of my collection. 

 

Here it is. It's quite hard to shoot photos of chrome plated blade. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nazar]

The condition of the sword is far from perfect. It seems that it was stored improperly for quite a long time. The saya metal  shell (nickel plated) became rusty.

 

 

 

 

Yet the leather washer that sits between guard and saya throat preserved the chrome plated blade. Even an artificial "hamon" is clearly visible. 

 

[Nazar]

The brass parts have large spots of what appears to be verdigris. This thing would be hard to remove. The wire on the grip is broken in a few places.  Yet, from my point of view these things are not disadvantages, but rather a silver lining as I got another small project. 

 

 

 

 

 

[jesup]

How do you remove verdigris? (I have some on a naval koshirae)  And should you?

 

[Nazar]

40 minutes ago, jesup said:

How do you remove verdigris? (I have some on a naval koshirae)  And should you?

 

 

This sword is not an antique brass statue, therefore my belief is that verdigris has no place on it unless it provides some artistic effect. As we may see, the effect is far from artistic, therefore, I will remove verdigris . I'll try not to disturb the natural patina. I'll use nylon brushes (like a toothbrush with shortened bristles) and laundry soap (comes in bars) for the starter. Some toothpicks and improvised scrapers made of bamboo sticks will be applied as well. 

 

However, this case is likely to be an extreme one. Therefore I'll buy some 10% ammonia solution in the apothecary. One has to use it very carefully as it may remove not only verdigris but the nice looking patina too. And sure, the work that involves ammonia solution is better to be done outdoors. A wooden stick with a bit of fabric on one end is the tool for this work.  One has to dip it in ammonia solution and make sure it's not too wet so there would be no dripping. Then one has to rub verdigri spots with this tool. It would be more tricky with textured areas on the grip. 

 

Also, the best advice in cases like this is not to pursue quick results. 

[Nazar]

Small curiosity that came with this kyu-gunto is the sword bag that looks to be handmade. I believe it has nothing to do with this sword, as its condition does not correspond to the condition of the sword. The bag has some age on it for sure, but I couldn't judge how old it is. The outer fabric is plain and of purple colour. 

 

Internal layer is made of two pieces of different fabrics. It has some tear and wear to it. 

 

Th bag is signed "大岸".

 

 

[Nazar]

And while the texture of the yellow fabric is quite plain, the white fabric has some floral embodiment. It's quite hard to catch with a camera lens, but here are some photos.