Bruce Pennington

I noticed how straight it was with very little sori.

Mal Cox covered them in one of his documents:

Auction with a reserve price of $700. The blade alone could sell for $500 then the saya (scabbard) would sell alone for $150-200.

The whole rig appears to be late war. Very common to see painted wood rather than rayskin or even fabric in these.

John, just curious why you thought the bend happened in shipping. Did the seller say there was no bend originally? If it was in the saya, I don't see how that bend could have happened. I have read quite a few reports, and complaints, that the western swords (and some later Japanese) bent during use in the field.

I only have 4 of his on file, and one is a bad gimei. There is enough variation in each to make it difficult to compare this one with the rest. The only distinctive point I see on this one is the kakihan (enscribed kao). It has a 'bottom' on the 'B' AND an underscore, whereas all the others on file use the underscore to 'finish' the "B". I don't see anything obvious on the mei. Example:

Couple of guys named on this thread that rewrap tsuka:

Thanks guys! I'd say he's happy with David's idea. He doesn't know anything about swords and is just happy to know it's old. It was in leather saya, but the tsuka was reduced to same' only, no metal fittings, no ito. So, I'm walking him through ideas on how to retro-fit the tsuka to something he would like.

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Google translate works for me: Google Translate

Thanks David! I'll pass that along.

Lots of great stuff there! Here's the kai, mentioned:

Hey guys! Friend of my has this one from his grandpa. Mumei, looks old. Can you give us some idea what he's got? Nagasa is 27" (Ignore the stone it's laying on, I told him about that issue)::

If you are planning to re-sell, then, yes you might not want this one. You could face the same sort of complaint from the next buyer.

I have 2 others, by him, with the kokuin, but haven't seen it on blades made by anyone else (yet!). So, does the stamp actually say "Mitsuru?"