Brian

I have looked at advertising, and have been playing with placement and it is ready to go anytime. The problem is twofold. Would dealers be willing to pay for it? And #2...the logical thing is to say that Gold membership exempts people from having to see ads. That is easy to do. But if many of the Gold members are serious collectors and the target market, would advertisers not be against a system where paid membership exempts the very market they are trying to reach? It's a problem in my mind. As far as charging a small fee for some translations, my issue with that is that I am indebted to the members here who do those translations. We have many skilled, helpful members here who give of their time and effort to do these translations. The problem is that if we were using this as a revenue stream, from my own morals, I'd want to give back to those guys. They do this largely without any reward at all. But if the forum is making something from it...however small, I would feel obligated to try and give back to those guys. And how do we do that? How do we judge who puts in more effort or who is more accurate or who spends more time on them? It's a morality issue for me, and I already battle with feeling like I don't give back enough to the guys who assist here with info constantly.

I am always hesitant to make changes that affect others that aren't so..."oblivious" But seems something may need to be done in this case. Hmmm. A membership would at least have been appropriate a while ago. Especially considering the hosts just advised me now we are almost up to our 125 GIG allocation, and I'm going to have to buy more server space. Sigh. Still....125 Gigs of images here is quite something. Try publish THAT as a book

Because it's not a wartime blade, it's earlier and remounted, and guys are treasure hunting/hoping.

It's a Chinese fake, sorry. Inscription has no purpose. This is a bad one. Next one will be better

Marc, Probably best to post a pic so that guys don't have to go Google it.

Regular high grade isopropyl alcohol. Wipe as many times as necessary, then a light oiling on a soft cloth or tissue. Minimal is fine.

I have been getting some contact from members saying they are unable to access the forum the past few days. Oddly, some of these are via pm's, which mean the members were on the forum at the time. I also don't have an explanation of what exact problem they are having, but I'm looking into it. I think there may be some attacks on the server lately, flooding with hacking attempts...maybe DDOS or otherwise. But if anyone is experiancing issues and can describe exactly what the error is, it will help. I have no doubt it will be temporary, and we'll get it sorted. Just need to identify exactly where the issue lies.

Bruce, so far I have seen no stamps on it at all anywhere. I I have looked quite hard.

Thank you very much Moriyama san. Quick question, wouldn't Showa 23rd be 1948? Far too late for them to have been making military swords?

Man, I hate these "chippy" mei. Can anyone assist with this Type 3/Rinji Seishiki mei? On a Showato that just popped up here. Mei looks like Yoshitada or xx Tada? Thanks in advance.

Agree with Sam. Problem is I don't think there is much more that can be said from the pics. Looks very interesting, and worth getting in the hands of someone with experience. But looks like a potentially good sword.

And yet another excellent article supplied and written by Malcolm E Cox in the downloads section. This one on sukashi iron tsuba, a nice primer on the subject for our tosogu fans. Thanks go out to @mecox yet again for his support and generocity.

Expired certificates on known websites really aren't too much of a risk. Just choose to proceed.

Thank you Chris!

Those uploads didn't work, try again or pm/email them to me to upload.

Looks like the nakago was scrubbed of anything that was there and a new mei added. Or a Komonjo special.

Thanks Michael, appreciate the support. Nice tsuba that should be worth several times the starting price. His work really does fetch good money out there. If I may make a suggestion for the auction, perhaps a link to his Katsuhira's Tiger Youtube video for those looking at the auction, to get an idea of what he was about and what he could do?

Thanks Chandler. Have added that one to the links list above.

I do that because true handmade swords can also be discussed in the Nihonto section since they do belong there too. As do military swords with older blades. It's worked ok for many years, I think we're good leaving it as is, and leaving the mods to make the call if something should be moved.

Did you not bother reading the post he just pointed you to? (Still waiting for that forum support/membership you said you'd be glad to do)

Very, very bad Chinese fakes. There is nothing here really resmbling a real Japanese sword, sorry. Check out the fake Japanese sword link above and you'll get an idea why.

Thanks for the punt Mal After just having to sort out a few hundred for the Japanese Sword Index hosting to continue it in Rich's name, really could use the promo. Thanks for all the info you provide so freely.

Thanks Mauro and Ed. For Tadahisa, Haynes has this to say: F: Shoami W: Kyoto D: ca. 1700 NTs: a classic Kyoto Shoami sukashi style iron plate tsuba with leaf, ink stick, and two brushes in the round, with gold nunome inlay. SCE. R.E. Haynes collection, 1947 So seems to be a tsuba with the same theme by him.

Thanks guys, and thanks Hamish. They/he really did this design very nicely. Nice to see something not gimei for a change. At about $60 each, I figured I was doing ok :-) The other 2 I posted in Tosogu are also nice, I like them and always nice to get new items when your collecting is stagnating a bit

Thanks Tom, appreciate it