Ian B3HR2UH

Congratulations to Chris Bowen for having the guts to tell it how it is . Ian Brooks Australia

I just shake my head each time I read further comments about this sword with its mystery residue . The hamon and blade are not exceptional as stated . This is not a fine piece . It is a very very ordinary blade ( I am tempted to say rubbish ) which is not worth the attention given to it .The mystery residue seems pointless to speculate on unless there are photos of it . Perhaps I am being too harsh ? Ian B

Hi Robert, We had our NTHK Shinsa in Sydney a couple of weeks ago and I submitted the sword for judgement. Like many ( most ? ) of the submitters my optomistic hopes were dashed. I had hoped that the piece might have been by a Bitchu Aoe smith of the Nambokucho period. This was based on the nioi based hamon , what a few of us thought was sumi hada and the fact that this school made blades of this shape . As things turned out it was papered to the Kai Mihara group circa 1530 . Seems that many of us are guilty of excessive optimism when it comes to assessing what we own. Ian B

Hi Simon, I think it might be me who was to get back to you. Thirty years ago I purchased a wakizashi signed Kazusa Suke Fujiwara Kaneshige which had a gold inlaid cutting test by Yamano Hisahide dated 1666 . The whole thing had been chrome plated including the tang. My mother who is a qualified Metallurgist was working at the time for Sidchrome the tool manufacturers . We talked about the problem and my recollection of what I did was this It appears that prior to being chrome plated the sword would have been given a copper and / or nickel strike which I take to be a light copper or Nickel coating that is applied to the surface prior to the chroming. There is no chemical to dissolve the chrome which has to be polished off or taken off with acid. I made up a tube which was filled with acid and put the sword into this for a very short time . From memory just a few seconds . This removed the chrome but not the coppper/nickel strikes .Readers will probably be shuddering at this point. The acid was then washed off in water . After this we put the blade into another container of chemical which was to dissolve the copper and nickel . After a few hours this is exactly what happened . I had been fearful that the gold would also dissolve but it wasn't touched. The blade came out in remarkably good condition . The rust patination on the tang was pretty much gone ( whether due to the chemicals or to cleaning prior to plating I can't say ) but it has since repatinated nicely. It is impossible to know what condition the blade was in prior to plating but after it had been treated as above you could still make out the hamon and the steel had not been etched or otherwise obviously affected . I feel it came out of the treatment in pretty much the same condition it had been in prior to the plating .The treatment involved no loss of metal and the blade is now in a condition where it can be restored and papered which could never have occurred had it remained plated. All these years later I have no idea what the chemicals used were but I am sure someone at the university metallurgy dept could point you in the right direction. Hope this is of use Ian B

Are there any Tasmanian collectors out there ? I am planning a short holiday in Tassie and hoped that there might be a collector out there willing to show me some swords . I can be contacted on ian_brooks@hotmail.com Thanks Ian Brooks

Thanks for your comments Chris . Much more enlightening than you previous cryptic ones. When I first saw this sword I thought wow I will have a crack at it however my ardour has since cooled . A number of things concerned me 1. As you said the date characters didnt line up on the nakagos ridge although some mei that I have seen in the books don't either 2.The gap between the bottom horizontal stroke of the Tada and the top horizontal stroke of the Tsuna seems too great even allowing for the photo being blown up. See the example above and that in the book Japanese swords in Dutch collections 3. the gap between the Tsuna character and the Hori do saku is too large 4. The point is too long . The NBTHK English journal 15 says that the kissaki is generally in medium size and sometimes was shaped slightly longer than usual . This Kissaki looks way longer than any that I have seen of Tadatsuna"s in the books Ian B

Robert , I was the buyer of this sword and thought you would be interested to know how it turned out. The late Robert Lewert had a Juyo blade by Bishu Suyetsugu that was dated 1378 . This featured in the May 1974 JSSUS Newsletter . The length and shape of Lewerts sword are very similar to the one that I purchased . In the translation of the Juyo write up that is in the Newsletter the shape is described as " Naoshi Nagamaki , shobu zukuri, high shinogi " I think that it is fair to say that the shape of the ebay sword was also Naoshi Nagamaki. I took a punt on the sword for two reasons . Firstly the mount was in my opinion the best Katana mount that I can recall seeing on ebay for ages .There are lots of mounts with mediocre fittings that come up but I thought this one had some class about it . The Fuchi Kashira were good , tsuba by Owari Sadahiro , fine silver foil habaki and gold foil seppa . As a generalization you would expect a mount of this class to have an OK blade in it . Secondly the blade was Nagamaki Naoshi and as you said, seemed to be about 70 cm long.The very few blades of this style that I have seen in books or in the flesh all seem to be attributed to or be by Nambokucho smiths so I thought that there must be a reasonable prospect that this blade was too. When it did turn up the mount was as classy as I had hoped for. The blade is 68 cm long and is in fair condition . The hamon is nioi based and I would decribe it as undulating suguha with some Ko midare and ashi . There are a couple of rounded spots in one area of thi Ji which might be shintetsu . I think I have got myself a probable cut down Nambokucho Nagamaki . There is a shinsa out here in September and I will put the blade in that and see what the experts think ! Ian B