Brian

And a reminder that pure clove oil (choji) is NOT good for blades. Camelia is the right stuff or any light mineral oil like sewing machine oil. A few drops of clove oil are added to the mineral oils in Japan, but that just gives it that characteristic smell. Do not use pure clove oil.

Not terrible condition, both genuine, and a nice wari kogai. I think you did well.

I'll ask everyone to calm down please, and have a little respect for each other. Many of us here are unaware of other members backgrounds or experience. Both Colin and Ron have significant experience in their fields, and I have learned a ton from both of you. I respect both opinions and experiences. Ron has some amazing tales of his early years, and some incredible stories of what it was like in the arms field way back. Colin has significant experience in the UK art scene and Japanese art there. You both have a lot to offer. Sometimes it's good to go back on someone's profile and read what they posted years back, it allows you some insight into the person and how they respond and why. Please guys, allow for different personalities. Sometimes what we perceive as rude or arrogant or argumentative is just part of someone's persona, and doesn't need to be taken personally. Ron...Colin has some amazing experience and stories from the UK scene. He has a lot to teach. Likewise Colin...Ron has a very different outlook on things from his days as a major weapons dealer in Canada, and has some incredibly interesting stories. Let's allow for different opinions and more importantly personalities, and maybe not take things too personally.

If the blade is only very slightly magnetic, that tells you everything you need to know. I am not aware of any genuine sword that isn't made from steel and is properly magnetic. A display/wallhanger is the only option. Even "Island" swords would have been made from steel. Unless it's stainless, and clearly this one isn't, based on the rust and patina imho.

We here on the NMB are ALL proud of Andrew. He's one of us, and we are lucky to have him occasionally pop in. One of the guys I consistently hear nothing but good things about. On behalf of the forum, we all wish him a huge congrats and well deserved.

@Peter Bleed is your guy for the Kunikane lineage if he's around.

I honestly believe they are always assembly numbers. Someone would be working on the fittings, the blade goes off to polishing, somehow someone needs to be able to put all the right parts back together. They aren't interchangeable. So you mark the blade with a number. Maybe the parts are in a bin with the same number or stamped too. Either way, this is to put the blade together with the saya or other parts imho.

Question....under the title, there are 5 blocks and then another 5 blocks. Should those be kanji?

And aside from wiping off any loose or active rust, lightly...do NOT clean off any patina or stable rust off the tang. That is vital to the value of the sword.

That is a fantastic paper! Huge thanks for sharing. Is it ok if I upload to the downloads section?

Piece of paper and the sword in question are unrelated. The sword you have is in mounts that are usually associated with better quality wartime blades. Sometimes star stamped traditionally made Gendaito. In this case, I actually hope it has the original Gendaito blade, as they can be nicer than an average out of polish antique blade. But you'll only know when you take it out of the mounts. CHAT GPT is not a great source of info, and in fact can be irritating with its hyperbole. "...to preserve its massive historic value" is just plain silly. Take off the handle and let's see what you have there. Not a treasure, but appears to be a nice sword. One of over a million wartime swords that ChatGPT deems to have massive historic value Hopefully you have a nice Gendaito worth $2000+ Btw...someone needs to inform the clueless AI that hundreds of thousands of nondescript antique blades were repurposed and purchased for low value during the war to outfit military swords. Not every antique blade was some family blade lovingly taken to war.

If they are able to be posted, they are within the limits and fine with me :-)

Calm down. YOU started a topic called fools in auction houses. This is an auction item, claiming to be both Edo period and WW2 at the same time. Seems to me like it fits the topic perfectly. Lighten up.

Can I ask ppl to keep me updated if and when you are having issues accessing the forum? It works fine from this side, so need to know if there is still a lot of an issue, in order to take it up with the hosts. Thanks.

That eagle is very much a traditional Japanese depiction. Don't read too much into it.

The Japanese won't issue (legally) a torokusho for a sword that isn't genuine and traditionally made. By the fact that it has one, that already gives you the indemnity you need for customs.

It is 3 megs per post. So maybe you already uploaded other pics in that post with a total over 3.

Constructive criticism or comments are always welcome, no offense it taken. Just to address a few points above. Way back when we moved to this hosting, we already had well over 250K attachments. Now that number is likely far more than double. No mean feat to try and move hosting. It's not something you can quickly FTP across. I also want to host here in South Africa, so when I have an issue I can pick up a phone and actually call someone. Don't want to be tens of thousands of miles away speaking to a bot. Also, the cost of hosting overseas is more than we can bear, given the funds that come in. This attach has been inconvenient, but we will get through it, and things will get back to normal. If they don't, I'll look at other options. But again, everything comes down to money. The site is well known. Everywhere. Just type into any AI chat "What is the largest Japanese sword forum in the world" The problem is that many collectors are not young anymore. They prefer to collect in person, and many are old school. Even in Japan, it is hard to change that mindset. We would love more interaction, but people prefer what they know. The younger generation prefers Facebook...instant gratification even if the data is disposable and far less reliable. We have a good membership here, that ebbs and flows, but there is still more info stored here than anywhere else. I prefer to keep this mostly on topic. I don't want to cross over to the martial arts much. There are places for that, and they deal with it better than we can. We are about the study and preservation, not so much the use. Image uploading is more than sufficient. Really it is. We can't be expected to accommodate everyone who wants to take a 50MP photo on their phone and upload it directly. We don't need billboard size photos and people need to learn to crop and edit before they upload. Currently regular members can upload 3 megs per post. Since pics can easily be brought down to under 500kb, you are able to upload enough provided you aren't trying to upload pics that are several megs each. PLUS you can then reply and do more pics, with the same limit in that thread, adding more pics. If people want more per post then they can upgrade to Gold membership. There you are allowed 7.5MB per post. More than enough. Pic max sizing is ample to view only. We don't need to scroll several pages across to see everything. I think the post limits are more than enough if people learn free image resizing and learn a little about DPI and what is sufficient. As for the customizable feed, see my post above. This is easy and worth playing with. We will be going to new software by the end of the year and there will be many more features and changes, and I think everyone will benefit.

Exactly how big are you trying to post? If you click on images, they open up a new window. Click again, and they open up to the max size, which is plenty for a forum.

Have an almost identical Lantaka sitting in my living room :-)

Typed a long reply and then lost it to an accidental keystroke. Don't have the energy to type it all again now, but will respond properly tomorrow. Btw, go to the top of the forum. See that "Activity" link? That will give you a ton of options as far as getting your feed is concerned. You can even click "My activity streams" and configure a steam to give you alllll the content you are looking for. I don't think that feature is that hidden, you just have to play with it a bit. This software is powerful and you can feed yourself pretty much any stream you like.

Seems to be ONLY causing trouble with international traffic. I have no problems this side, so I'm guessing the ISP's have to reduce/monitor/slow down incoming traffic. I heard the other day that some are experiencing several GIGS of data per SECOND in these attacks. Almost impossible to stop. I am looking into available options. I had hoped it would slow down soon. Whatever happens, it is temporary, we will get back to normal soon. Thank you for your patience.

Definitely not Japanese

I expect 99% of this sort of damage is neglect and messing around, and done in modern times. Blade to blade contact is rare and unlikely from those pics. We tend to romanticize these things, but it's important to realize that it isn't a desired thing in most cases and unless can be proven 100%, it's best to not see them as a feature.

https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/subscriptions/ explains the search delays, which is necessary since they are hugely resource intensive on a server.