phil reid

Hello, My friends just purchased this nice iron tsuba ( 80mm by 83mm by 3-4 mm) and was curious about dating and any other information that anyone could provide on it, only 3 to 4 mm thick so thinking that might help with dating, has a roman numerical 63 painted to inside surface so come out of someone's collection/ museum collection at some stage. Many thanks!

Hi George, Hope your keeping well. Thanks, very interesting about the blade hole being drilled and then mounting shop handles ( bulk pre made?) being fitted afterwards to be adjusted ( wood filing/ filler, seppa adjustments etc) to line up with pre drilled hole to the point that if too far out a new hole would be drilled? Never really went into the production of these WW2 swords so need to do some reading.Cheers!

Hi Bruce , no, no date but small seki stamp above signature, standard military mounts with wear appropriate to blade wear , puzzled about the 2 holes as to whether it had been rehilted period or early post war, scabbard fits blade well but 2 inches too long.

Assistance please with signature on this seki stamped blade

hi John, no tang is not painted, assumed it was stainless steel.

My naval blade is unstamped, hilt fitting are marked or number stamped but nothing on tang but slashes lll /llll ( 3 and 9 = 39 which is stamped to all hilt guard fittings in Roman numerical), everything fits perfectly, were any blades not anchor marked?

Tangs actually quite bumpy on this but never cleaned it in the 7 years I've owned and 2nd time I've had the handle off, nice fittings but blade very tired, assistance sort with translation please.

Thanks Kiipu, Great link, got excited as chap said his saya had a sling ring but his photos showed ring through drag where mine had a leather sleeve with ring to add back sling.

Hi, Photo of my type 95 I sold roughly 12 years ago, had what I'm being called is a Minzuno stamp. Just wondering if we have any further data on who Minzuno were and why their was only such a short run? If anyone knows where it ended up would be interested( think it had additional leather ring sleeve to say for back sling). Cheers from Australia.