Kronos

Nice one Allan, Did Chris mention the pitting at all or show it to a togishi who may of been at Tampa?

There's a couple Omori with waves here and one with dragons but not both I think : http://nihonto.org.uk/fuchi-kashira.html Ian's a pleasure to work with as well

Congrats Ryan, that's very lucky, many people can try for years to find a sword by such an accomplished smith and still fail. Did you find it in your own closet or?

10,000 swords wow, he should release his own Meikan. He must have someone employed solely to oil all of them.

I don't think he has his own Taikan such as Kotetsu, Kiyomaro etc so your best bet may be Shinshinto taikan or maybe something on masahide's school like 'Suishinshi Masahide To Sono Ichimon'.

Oh, that's what I meant and English is meant to be my first language

Thanks for the quick response I thought that may be the case as it does seem logical. The reason I ask is there's questions about the mei on swords that otherwise would be TH imho if shoshin so no point throwing away money if they have a chance of failing. Edit: ah I didn't realise H+TH was only 30,000 yen

I had a quick question on shinsa fees, as I understand it you can now submit for both Hozon and TH simultaneously at the same time at 27/37k JPY each respectively for a pass and 12k JPY for a fail. Are these prices still correct and how does this work exactly? For example if you fail both do you pay 12k as it only got to the Hozon stage or 24k for failing both?

20 mins left to place your bids gents

Wakizashi as it's signed katana-mei. Looks nice but we can't see the hada/hamon and any Sukesada signed niji-mei needs closer inspection as they have a reputation for kazu-uchi-mono although there are fine examples.

I'm sure Grev would be happy to hold it for you until funds become available

While not bad work there's a level at which it's not financially viable to get a traditionally trained togishi to polish a blade, showato being a prime example where this type of polisher is ok if they're much cheaper. There's no question though that anyone who's completed a 7-11 year apprenticeship in Japan will be superior and to get anything less on a mediocre level+ nihonto would be throwing money away when it comes time to sell as no one in their right mind will be buying it without the thought of getting it repolished. Mr Hofhine's work does appear to be getting better but I can still see some problems from those photo's and that's not including the foundation work which imho is the most important part and you can't really tell without the sword in hand. The number one rule is getting the appropriate level of polish for the sword in question as for a sadamune say you wouldn't get anything lower than a mukansa and so on. I have 5 swords undergoing polishing at present from a very good amateur up to a togishi who's placed first at the annual NBTHK polishing competition so it's not about elitism or being Japanese (there's many untrained Japanese people who are terrible at polishing as well) just getting the right level of polish for each sword.

Yes and it happens all the time.

Do we think this is the actual nakago just repatinated or has it been welded on? I can't imagine anyone doing that prior to the last 20 odd years yet the rust looks much older.

I didn't know they put that much effort into showato. Mt. Fuji you usually think of as a shinto/shinshinto hamon pattern.

Thought so. For the record the daito has the more typical mei (imho without seeing the blade) so I think it'll do well

To address your second point Paul I disagree in that there are no hard and fast rules. There's some absolute Garbage masamune gimei's from sue-muromachi and then there's norishige's etc that had masamune gimei's because they were "close". So a large part of it is in which circles the sword was traveling, whether they be Daimyo gifts or to fool western tourists in the 19th century.

Out of interest is that the 3rd gen Echizen Yasutsugu and papered?

Here's a good explanation of Exposure, aperture and ISO: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm I think the yellow may be due to the white balance. Theoretically the idea would be to have 5.6f stop (depends on the lens as each has a preferable f stop that provides the sharpest images) a relatively low ISO to avoid noise and low light so all light can be targeted better and there's no scattering and reflections. The longer exposure counters the low light levels but also brings out more details and makes it more vibrant if you think of astrophotography. It's rather complicated but that's one of a few things that I believe need to be done to get the type of images you see on the high end dealers websites. But your 3rd image in particular is very good and just needs experimentation with different light.

Was it by RKG? I know he does exceptional photo's and I remember a thread by him on it ages ago.

Maybe try longer exposure and less ISO.

Without knowing the price; supply and demand as they're high in demand and low in supply despite just being screws.

Of course you are right Darcy, it couldn't be polished *out* but polished down a bit so it wasn't so gaping but suriage would be the solution. I'm not entirely sure why I chucked polishing in there now... My main point is things can be done but if they are then it becomes a less desirable sword and the increased price tag is largely due to it being ubu.