armsandarmor

it looks like most of the mei was ground off, which is why it is missing. it was purchased at a gun show for a couple hundred dollars; the seller said he bought it from someone else who had brought it back from Japan, probably WWII. it apears to be a collection of parts from various swords. i will try and get more pictures of the hamon. what are the red flags you see?

ok here is what my wife's co-worker came up with, which is really close to my own more recent research and the input already gained from this thread. this is from his email: The first character is most likely one of the following three characters: the name kanji usually pronounced "sada" (貞), the character meaning "look, see, view" (見), or the character for shellfish, usually pronounced "kai" (貝) (sorry, I'm not sure whether or not you can read those characters.) The second is fairly clear and appears to be the kanji for justice or correctness (正). The third is very muddy, but could possibly be the character for "made by" (作), a character used in names that is commonly pronounced "tsugu" (次), or even the characters for "right (side)" (右) or name characters pronounced "suke" (佑 or 祐.) Sadly that doesn't give too many clues as to what it could be: the name of the period, the person who made it, or possibly something different. For what it's worth, I'm leaning towards thinking that all three characters are indicative of the maker's and/or school's name rather than the "made by" kanji. 1st character: 見・貝・貞 2nd character: 正 3rd character: 作・次・右・佑・祐 with the sword in front of me it looks like 見正次; would this help give definite proof of ownership to a specific school or maker?

For some reason that is not visible when holding/looking at it. I lightly photo shopped these last pictures to bring out brightness/saturation/contrast/detail and it does look like it has been taken down, although it would've been done a long time ago as the patina seems more or less uniform. I found a local man who will look at the sword for me, he is apparently a bit of an expert on sword blade mei and Japanese characters so I will post what he says at some point. He works with my wife so in the next day or two I will hear from him.

Here are some more pictures

Yes that would help take slack out of the tsuba as it is loose. Thanks for pointing that out, Ill find one.

the wax will come off easily with a little oil, i will get a sword cleaning kit and take care of it that way. i could always use the sword as a parts sword should i need anything later, ide like to get 2 or 3 Nihonto and it would be nice to have a mint art sword with paperwork; granted that would cost a little more than this sword did this blade has no sentimental value aside from it being mine and a great piece of history.

I put a light coat of oil on the blade and let it sit a minute which took off the top layer of rust, I wiped that off, re-oiled, wiped it down again, talcum powdered the blade, wiped that off and then put a thin layer of renaissance wax over it (everywhere I read online was that renn wax wont damage anything, just preserve and prevent any rust from forming until I get it professionally polished or decide to leave it and renn wax is what the British Museum puts on all of its Nihonto which are far more valuable than my house, let alone my sword). Is this sword really from the 15-1600's? Ill get some more pictures of just the blade by itself, maybe some better light/angles on the signature.

Thank you for the information, that's a great place to start. Here are some more pictures of the sword assembled. The Hamon is barely visible and very straight. I thought it was from 1880s-1920s make but I know nothing about these and the individual I got it from knew nothing either. If it is several hundred years old then maybe I should have it professionally cleaned and polished to fix some of the issues with it. It would be interesting to discover the smith if possible or the forge that made it. I am not sure the sword parts all belong to the blade, everything seems either too loose or too tight to belong to it. But the blade is the most important. I will take apart the sword and get better pictures of the blade/signature to post later. The Tsuba seems very old and has little in the way of detail except when the light is just right there is a smooth diamond/snake scale pattern covering it. It is cast iron. I made a new pin from bamboo to replace the old one, it was broken in two and crumbling from age. some of the round "pearls" have come off from around the pin (not by me). there is some rust/pitting to the blade, some very fine cuts into the edge, and one "chip" or flake has come off the side. I will post more pictures soon.

Hello, This is my first Japanese blade, not an expensive one but I would like to learn everything I can from it; and I am learning everything I can about Nihonto. I tried to find these characters in the books that I recently purchased but have not had any luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also this is my first post to the forum and would like to post more pictures of the rest of the Nihonto to get academic input on its type and style, if for no other reason than to verify what I have researched (if I could be so naive as to ask which forum to post the rest of the blade that information would be appreciated). I have three books, "The Connoisseur's Book of Japanese Swords" by Kokan Nagayama, "The Samurai Sword" by John M. Yumoto and "Japanese Sword Blades" by Alfred Dobree but I could not match the characters to those in the books. I hope I did not miss them. these three characters are the only ones present. Thank you for looking.