raynor

I have no idea how postal systems work but that back and forth seems hard to accomplish without a certain level of incompetence.

This. Airtags absolutely terrific in locating "lost" valuable shipments. It is still a fairly new thing for most people to consider but in a hobby like nihonto where you have relatively small items with potentially very high value these are now a must have in my opinion. I have unfortunately no experience with the French postal system but do recognize exciting looking shipments getting "lost" when I lived in Miami, once after they "misplaced" one of my wife's shipments I emailed and called the local postmaster a handful of times and after a few days the lost package turned up, taped shut and with some opened articles inside, and we never hand and problems the remaining time I lived there. Complaining to the bosses as already people have suggested definitively increase your chances!

Great! I recommend not using USPS for items like this. Although no where near the same value, we had a lot of items "found" when making noise after them not showing up or bringing up fake deliveries. Sometimes there was clear signs of opening and tampering, and this only happened with USPS.

Look at the kissaki,, clearly this is a work of the legendary yokai master who taught Masamune

I never use USPS now either for sending or receiving. When I lived in Florida during the pandemic I was shocked how they stole as ravens, mostly my wife's shampoo and beauty products for some reason but I have never encountered another organization where it was treated as normal and how hard you have to work to get someone to do something about it. Once had an open package with opened products "found" and delivered after a couple months with about half a bottle of shampoo used Never had any problems with any other US shipping companies, they usually came through as good if not better then the couriers I'm used to here in Europe.

A discussion is most fruitful when debating not stating. Taking things personally always ends up derailing things into senseless bickering, trust me there are never any victors in a forum fight. This thread is to me, very educational but it is starting to turn into the teachers fighting. Gentlemen, agree to disagree the subject is open to different perspectives this is not about whether the earth is flat or not.

This is exactly why it needs laws and regulation, I rarely agree with Elon Musk on much, but he is spot on with how urgent it is. The technology is too impactful to just be left for companies seeking profit.

I disagree that AI is the end of thinking, but together with say autotune it will be a heavy blow to creativity. It will however be hard to catch people cheating in academia now, until they have to actually do the job. Hopefully many steps from the operating table... This varies through models, but it is a shared path - models like chatgtp get a lot of free training through user usage, but they also do a lot of in house specific feedback training by personnel so the answer is yes and no depending on the model.

A large part in how these language model interfaces (chatgpt and similar) works is that a large part of the training is done by humans, not just the massive calculations carried out by data centers. Actual humans sit down and give feedback on the answers the bots put out, so that they and their creators learn what language carries best when giving feedback to users (customers). Here is a experiment I think members of this forum is rather uniquely qualified to carry out - many members here are a lot more knowledgeable about nihonto then the average Joe. Ask chatgpt questions with variable degrees of difficulty on nihonto or any field you are confident in and you will see it is correct on many things, but also incorrect. When incorrect it will, until corrected speak, in other words "lie" with the utmost confidence worthy of any politician. This is one of the problems, for most people the answers about nihonto when presented with confidence by the allmighty AI will in many cases pass as facts, truth. This of course applies to any other field not just nihonto, wherein lie a tremendous challenge unless these systems are subjected to quality control and regulations.

Speaking as someone with an education in the IT field - Large language models like ChatGPT are getting more accurate every day, but I firmly place them within a rule as old as the internet: Do not take serious medical or academic advice from an online generated source, chatGPT and its like should be treated as a fancy version of wikipedia, nothing more.

Same oil I use. If you can see droplets on the blade or the rainbow sheen you're using too much.

Leave the thread up, it is good education for novices and for anyone that humility is better then hubris - by asking his account deleted the op has closed himself off from further learning, a missed opportunity in any field. Last I checked starting a thread did not automatically give any rights of ownership, been like that since dawn of the internet.

shameless necrobump

Anyone got experience on getting the oil out of these? The packaging is in Japanese so any cleaning instructions goes woosh over my head, as mentioned in this thread they're harder to come by so I'd like to treat the couple large blue microdear cloth ones I have with care.

And that is where one should stop reading sword auctions and switch to browsing amazon or so instead!

I'll check it out but will use no chemicals for this, just the good old fashioned bone/ivory and patience, likely looking into the fiberglass pen option as well if needed. Any chemicals is a bad idea unless we know for certain what we are doing. Not saying I know better then Robert Lisnafali but I am inherently skeptical to new and better solutions dealing with in many cases century old items, made with skills and materials the vast majority of us these days have no idea how to treat beyond subtle physical manipulation. Thus the bone/ivory tools that is harder then the red rust but soft enough to not damage the items unless you try to break a sweat is what makes sense if prioritizing the preservation of the item over desired visual "as new" looks achieved by harsh or untested methods. I'm preaching to the choir here but you never know when someone ends up reading through the forum while considering what to do with grandpas sword they just got a hold of. In most cases leave it alone or get the piano keys out..

Thanks Richard. I'll have a look at the fiberglass pencil option but will remember your warning. I'll rather finish this with some red rust remaining then damage the patina at all. Preservation >> my wish for it to look clean after all. I do not think this tsuba has any wax, but then again I have not yet had the opportunity to study any with it in hand so not experienced those factors. I've heard to boil in distilled water for that but so far that is not on my list of things to do, less is more. I just wish to halt and remove as much red rust as possible on the main surface without compromising the tsuba in any other ways. I'm post covid locked in Norway for now and believe it or not bamboo toothpicks are exotic here, so I wonder if anyone have tried regular wooden ones for tricky small areas, they're soft enough that I'd feel safe going close to inlays. Now with a less terrible photo up, am I right assuming the left buffalo is shibuichi?

Thanks for the tips all, I think I'll have to look into the fiberglass pen. I'm sure it works for some but I won't use oil or any harder material like steel wool here, for the exact reasons Grey mentioned with the inlayed metals. Bone and patience is what I started with and eventually it should be enough, if the fiberglass pen is what I think it is the areas around the inlays should be treatable as well. Has anyone tried regular wooden toothpicks for this? I'm slightly apprehensive about trying to reach those small spots with what have to be pointy bone or ivory that would apply too much pressure and possibly scratch the patina as well as red rust. I've never considered having this tsuba professionally restored, it's a nice mumei tsuba I believe could be Mito, or I might be way off, but not a piece I think would at this point warrant such an expense. I've spent my whole fun budget for a while on rare books and travels in a post pandemic frenzy. Also apologies for the terrible first photo, it looks miles better on my phone but I realized using my laptop that the HDR (extra lighting) layer gets removed when uploaded in addition to added compression noise, this should give a better impression:

This side of the tsuba has more active rust then I am comfortable with, besides patience and gentle bone treatment here is there anything else I could do? I think there is too many spots where oil could soak in and resurrect the problem in the future so not looking to do that.

Wow! Another example why to only let trained craftsmen touch nihonto

Speaking from experience, do not buy the paper, repeat do not buy the paper buy the item, especially for blades. If picking up your first sword and looking to learn, try to buy something good as you will not learn much from a tired low quality blade. I set forth that I would buy a good sword, preferably signed and dated and ended up picking one up here on the forum. It was unpapered, had it sent to the last NTHK shinsa with the late Yoshikawa sensei in the US and it came back kanteisho without any surprises as expected - I was after confirmation from someone in the real know about what I thought about it and got some nice little tidbits from the origami as extra bonus. I'm still learning from that blade and do not see myself selling it even though I could probably "make money" now with it papered, so I guess one can say papers add or more correctly cements monetary value. Unless it's a mumei blade that papers to a big name, then the attribution definitively adds value. If you want to make money there are so many better ways and hobbies to invest rather then nihonto that I don't know where to start. Unless you found the Honjo Masamune in a barn. I have no bone to pick and not much experience but the nbthk/nthk/npo debacle over which one is good or more reputable is kind of pointless - we have some extremely knowledgeable members on this forum but any of the shinsa panels from either organization will not be staffed by people walking in randomly from the street. Are they infallible, no of course not. Is a panel of Japanese experts as good as it gets? Pretty much. I've observed it is mostly us western collectors picking teams here like it is a sports tournament or favorite pin up debate, some might have legitimate reasons to prefer one organization over another, all I know is that the nbthk has come a long way since the green paper mess decades ago and the nthk had a head judge who looked after the emperor of Japan's sword collection. I guess they do not let you do that if you do not know what you are doing.

One of my students did the same thing to a stone with his hand, it swelled up to double the size overnight and he was sheepish when I told him to go buy a hammer if he wants to keep breaking stones not use his hands.. not why we train, he was lucky he did not break his bones and no one has had to defend themselves against a stationary rock ever. Means to an end indeed!

Selling two of W. M. Hawley's little booklets from 1974, the "Laminating techniques in Japanese swords" and "Japanese swordsmith groups". $50 each plus shipping. Also selling a copy of the Sano museums 2002 "Masamune" catalogue. Great photos of great works over 169 pages. $125 plus shipping. Some more info here: https://sword-auction.com/en/product/7642/カタログ：特別展-正宗-日本刀の天才とその系譜-2/ $210 plus shipping if all three bought together. These will ship from Norway to pretty much anywhere. 10% donated to the board if sold here before they go to the 'bay. Will be packed well but confident I'll be able to ship even all three together under letter category rather then upgrade to parcel with the crazy increased international parcel costs these days. All books in great condition, "Laminating techniques in Japanese swords" has some scuffing on the front page as seen in photo and the Masamune book came from Japan with minor spine damage at the very bottom. It affects the lower part of the spine as shown fully through, but does not affect the books integrity or contents in any way. All three items roughly A4 sized. Any questions let me know.

Wow, is it out of print again already?

Have you played the lottery at all after this find? Great find by a deserving finder - many people would make worse choices where the sword did not end up resting on pillows in fresh polish. Well done!