Greetings. First post, motivated with good reason. At a family Christmas Eve get-together last night I was surprised with a gift, details below.
At first glance, it appeared to be a shin gunto 98 with common low-end koshirae, some of the hardware missing. Saya shows some sort of hand written identifying badge attached. Upon examining the blade, to me it looks to have received what seems to be a nice polish at one time or another.
The proportions of the blade seem nice, all the lines are crisp. Mune to shinogi still shows more luster than the rest. Nagashi appear under the habaki, about 14 lines on each side. There may be lines on the mune near the kissaki as well, though my poor eyes don’t see detail well in that area.
It wasn’t until I removed the tsuka that I started wondering if this really was a mass produced 1930’s-‘40’s blade, which is what I’d assumed upon first look. The nakago shows a lot more dark rust than I would’ve expect from a young sword, deeper pitting as well almost to the point of obscuring what little mei is still showing. I haven't found any production/arsenal stamps. Was rust accelerated by someone hoping to give it an older appearance, perhaps?
Regarding other features, without magnification, the hamon is straight and unremarkable, though a little more activity shows in the pictures I’m sharing. I don’t know if it’s naturally showing due to polish or acid etched. I’m unable to see evidence of grain with the naked eye.
I’m hoping you in the know can offer your own more experienced comments having seen a lot more of these than I have. There are four photos at the link below, but I’ll warn you that they are actually high resolution scans I did last night, so they may take some time to load depending on your connection speed. When seen full size they do show a lot of detail, though so I'm hoping it was worth the effort.
http://home.comcast.net/~shinzan/guntoindex.htm
Merry Christmas and thanks in advance for any insight!
Devon
