thirtycal

Yes definitely the goal is to preserve it as 'captured'. Hopefully my kids will be reponsible enough to keep both swords in our family - they've got a long ways to go though :-). I checked the other blade tonite and definitely can tell it's machine made, even though it's in a virtually identical mount (tsuka/saya). You said something interesting though - you say this blade is from a relatively unimportant smith. Does that mean that this is not likely to be a late Edo period blade with gimei? Other folks that have looked at this suggest that the sharp edges on the original peg hole and the file marks under the mei could be evidence of gimei. Any ideas? thanks- Philip

So not being a sword guy, I want to thank everyone for their help identifying this blade. Of course the one thing that I was hoping to tell my dad was how old it is. Since the concensus seems to be that this is a Nagahiro, then we're talking about a blade made sometime around 1500 - is that correct? He's going to have a hard time believing that (since dimentia has set in) but hopefully he'll appreciate the fact that he picked up a 500 year old sword back in 1945 - and since then it has sat on the wall of our family room since about 1958 (he still lives in the house I grew up in). Just last year he gave them both to me (as youngest son to pass on to my children). I want my kids to know what these are so they can preserve them. thanks- Philip

Wow you guys are fast! Ok thanks for the replies so far. Since I didn't know what would be 'important' to photograph, on my first round I thought I'd just post some generic photos - but I figured that once you guys saw the blade, you'd tell me what I needed to photograph for better ID (good thing I didn't put it back together yet). I'm astounded to think that my dad just pulled this out of a pile and happend to pick an old blade (so far some guesses have placed it as early as the late 1400's? Jeesh that is crazy). He has two of them, and they both look very similar, although I suspect the other is machine made since there isn't much of a hammon. I can't get the handle off that one very easily so I don't know if it has any markings. Anyway, here's more photos of the blade, and I tried to get shots of the areas you guys seems to be asking about... Oh and by the way, there are no chips on the blade - the original photos were shot on terry cloth, and that made the blade look chipped - here's some photos taken on a hard surface: By the way, this symbol is on the handle: thanks again guys! Philip

My dad brought this sword back from WWII. The blade appears to be hand made, but I know very little about these swords. Can any of the experts here identify the markings? Besides what I've shown, there are no other markings on the blade and I've looked very carefully with a magnifying glass. I'd love to know more about this sword so I can tell my dad while he's still capable of understanding. He might find it interesting. I'd really like to know how old it is. Thanks everyone- Philip