francois2605

Not sure if you already found this about Moritaka. The source is Markus Sesko's Encyclopedia of Japanese Swordsmiths

I have a Moritaka with a similar slogan. It's signed "Koteki Mu Kotsu Minamoto Moritaka + Kao" According to the seller: "Muteki Kotsu = patriotic saying & meaning "our enemy has no backbone""

Here's one of my favorite tsuba. I love the irregular shape and the texture of the iron.

Maxime, when I look up Markus Sesko's Swordsmiths of Japan, I can see 4 entries for Hirofusa. and Are you using an old edition of the e-book ? Note: According to ChatGPT, the swordsmith's kanji in the paper are 広総 which would be the 4th entry

What a terrible loss. I never thought I would read this news on the forum. I'm shocked. Condolences to his family.

Hi @Abaris, Here are some pictures I just took of the renovated koshirae. As you can see it uses mother of pearl and the lacquer used has a green tint. I was really happy with Mike's work. He renovated the koshirae before Brexit was a thing and when it was easy to ship swords to the UK. As far as I remember, the shitodome were made by Mike

Mark, you probably already know it if you're into macro-photography: you can greatly boost the magnifying factor of your macro-lens by using those tubes between your lens and the camera body. Example below from this webpage: https://www.canon.fr...ens-extension-tubes/

3 different pictures shot with a Canon EF F/1.8 - 100mm macro lens. Mark, using a macro lens is IMO a must-have if you want to properly capture the activity of a sword. You'll see things you can't see with your own eyes

Indeed, there are some inaccuracies and overstatements however the technical explanations regarding the metallurgic aspects are worth watching I think. It's the first video I've seen explaining so well what happens at quenching time.

Not sure if some of you follow this channel (that I personally love), the guy posted a video about the forge of Japanese swords: Haven't seen yet but given the usual quality of his videos...

What are you supposed to answer if you regularly buy but never sold ?

Same here. This kyu-gunto tassel is really a work of art.

From what I understood, the numbers painted on the nakago usually never match the ones on the fittings. If your sword fits inside the koshirae, it has to be original. Each sword being unique, it's almost impossible to find another koshirae for a given sword. Very nice pictures

Have you checked Google for SVG files ? There seems to be a lot of scalable files available for free. For instance: https://commons.wiki...panese_family_crests Unless you want something custom ?

Thanks Stephen, amended my post

@Bruno The polishing "process" has been documented in this thread from 2012: Edit: Corrected my message after Stephen's feedback and added missing link to the mentioned post Edit:

@Stephen Steven mistakenly replied here to a PM I sent him earlier today.

I think I should read more. I bought tons of books but barely read them: I start full of optimism but rarely make it to the end (it takes a serious commitment on the medium term which isn't compatible with the way I operate). Multiple reasons for that: * When I have free time (in the evening) after a work day, I'm usually too tired to read something as technical as a nihonto book * English isn't my native english which only makes the learning more difficult * Reading a nihonto book is usually at the bottom of my todo list * My brain is wired to remember reasonings / logical facts and connect them with things I already know (I remember the logic and derive facts from it). That's how I accumulate knowledge. It's very challenging for someone like me to accumulate knowledge in the field of nihonto: all I read seems to be "random" facts disconnected from what I read previously, I have a very hard time remembering things related to nihonto because I fail to draw any logical connection between facts A and B. As a consequence, reading is not the problem, the problem is remembering what you read and accumulating knowledge over time.

That's a terrible news. The JSI is probably the website I've used the most during my searches. He contributed a lot to this community. RIP Rich

Are you selling this sword ? If so rules require posting your asking price

This seller is also known as Masa Horiuchi on Facebook

The quality of some of their translations dramatically improved recently. I immediately thought that someone had used ChatGPT . My guess it that "top notch" comes from ChatGPT rather than Tsuruta-san.