Kevin

Cos these days, with a global recession on, and probably about to get worse, folks don't want to bid more? As for the seller, for all we know he may need the money and will take what he can get. There's a lot of people in that boat at the moment. Kevin

After laughing and muttering "bloody idiot!" at the screen, I emailed Sotheby's NY as well. :-) My girlfriend had a peer at it later, and goggled slightly. :-) best wishes Kevin

A Meiji tourist piece based on an old, tired blade? It's not just the amateur engraving on the habaki. The other metal fittings look crude; the lines on the tsuba don't flow properly, the work is clunky and 'uneven', it appears to have evidence of gas bubbles, and all in all suggests a crude bit of metal casting that's on a par with the average Indian village silversmith. The dragon's head is garish, and would make the sword difficult to use - did they ever use dragon's head's like that on tachi, cos I can't recall a genuine non-touristy one. :-/ The bottom picture of the sword before restoration shows that these fittings were original to the sword; they are not recent additions or repros. The whole thing has the air of something done to please the Western market and their ideas of what a Japanese sword should be. :-/ As for the horimono, it might have been put there to hide a flaw or it might have been done to make the piece more attractive to tourists who knew nothing of genuine craftsmanship. Kevin

A quick demonstration of the effect of white balance settings. The first photo was taken using white fluorescent light, but leaving the digital camera on the white balance auto setting. The second one was taken with the white balance set to a white fluorescent light source. In the first photo the patina on the nakago has a very red look; in the second it is what you'd see in daylight. Mismatches in colour balance can however be used creatively. The third photo was taken using 35mm daylight balanced fast slide film, pushed a couple of stops. The illumination is tungsten floodlights, so the mismatch between daylight film and tungsten light will give a reddish cast to things. In addition, with this film areas of intense red will bleed from crystal to crystal - it can be a nice effect for some subjects, such as the gig depicted. The fast film and pushing gives the grainy effect. Oh, and it hasn't been Photoshopped - that's what came out of the camera. Kevin

Actually the rust doesn't look that new if you take the photo overall (e.g colour of the blade). I've taken photos of old patinated nakago (e.g. Koto blades) where the patina has in places come out looking like that, even if it didn't look red in the hand and might in fact look black. It's an artefact that you might get with mixed lighting and/or selecting a particular white balance (or the camera selecting it) whilst using the rather peculiar lighting requirements to pick out the details of the sword, particularly with macro lenses. In addition, some details of swords may come out more clearly if the colour curves are shifted slightly e.g. towards blue or green, so some Photoshopping can't be ruled out. I've heard of one guy who shifts his photos towards the green end for that reason alone. Either that or he's using a fluorescent light source with a daylight white balance. The above are reasons why you can't - or rather shouldn't - make absolute judgements based on a colour photo of a sword, particularly when the photo has been taken under unknown lighting conditions, with an unknown white balance, with an unknown degree of post-photo colour shift, and then put on the web where the colour spaces of each monitor may not be exactly the same, and may not match the colour space used to create it. Very few people go to the trouble to set up the colour spaces of their computer equipment. My guess though is that the photo was taken using white fluorescent light sources, a digital camera, and the onboard settings for white fluorescent light which will approximate the average colour temperature of such lighting but not necessarily exactly match that particular source. That will, for some reason, make some areas of the patina come out redder than they look in daylight. As I said, the patina could be black in daylight, but you may still get that effect. Unfortunately the situation is unavoidable unless you can get the exact colour temperature of the source that you are using and thus manually alter the settings on the camera. Kevin

Agree with Brian - features consistent with the smith Kevin

Hi Les :-) Kevin

And the moral of this story is not to do anything in a rush or a panic, including jumping to conclusions based on internet opinions, themselves based on photos that could be very much better, but instead to take the advice given - and repeated - to let someone who knows what they are on about inspect it in hand. Kevin

Must admit that, looking at Ohmura's site, they all looked to have lacquered samekawa. If you can't find whichever sharkskin you are looking for, we do dyed samekawa. The rawhide stuff used on swords, not the tanned material. No, the dye doesn't come out of the grip side onto your hands - not the way we do it. We've had someone using a sword with our dyed skins for training for a couple of years now with no problems. Since the skin isn't lacquered, it doesn't chip either. Somewhat untraditional but it works, and doesn't have the drawback of lacquered samekawa. :-) BTW, edited to remark that the shark skin - and dogfish skin - that I'm familiar with isn't bumpy, but very smooth, with lots of little denticles. They're like minute teeth - very rough if you try and rub your hand from tail to nose, but very smooth the other way. It's used as sandpaper in some parts of the world. You can find images of it on Google. Kevin

Hmm! Grey had the opposite opinion when he sold it to me, Chris. Don't recall anyone here disagreeing with him and suggesting gimei when he advertised it on NMB. Kevin

Keith Just dug around in the chemistry. It appears that you generally need a compacted or very folded rag or paper and some contaminant (e.g. dirt, silica) to guarantee that boiled linseed oil will cause spontaneous combustion. The contaminants may further catalyse the oxidation., which is already catalysed by the driers that boiled linseed oil contains. From one individual's experiment, it looks like it takes something of the order of 7 hours to get the temperature up high enough, and even then it will only smoulder into a charred mass unless it gets enough air. Apparently, according to the results, you can also get spontaneous combustion under those circumstances with safflower, walnut, avocado, canola and olive oils as long as you mix 0.3% of a 6% manganese drier with them. In fact you get a higher temperature rise with olive oil than you would with linseed oil (172C vs 148C according to one experiment). OTOH, raw linseed oil won't do a thing - the reaction is far too slow. Under some circumstances raw linseed oil can take decades to completely polymerise. On the subject of stains, there's always the problem of how the volatile components will affect the steel. The volatile components could, I feel, migrate through the stained wood and might take some time to leave the wood completely, particularly if they'd migrated to the blade cavity. It's a case of "if in doubt, don't do it!" :-) Kevin Edited to add that cricket might be a more interesting game if the batsmen periodically burst into flame and had to do their runs trailing clouds of black smoke. :-) It might even beat Brian Johnson's "The batsman's Holding, the bowler's Willey." :D

To expand on Grey's comment, linseed oil (and other oils such as tung oil) polymerise by reacting with oxygen. The reaction is also assisted by UV and heat. If it is in an enclosed space, it will use up the oxygen and the reaction will stop - it won't burst into flames. I've got a jar of home-made boiled linseed oil that always has a partial vacuum in it when you open it. Mix linseed oil with cotton waste though and (this is the important bit) make a suitably large pile and you may, in time, have a small and exciting fire. The heat from the reaction can't escape, so it builds up until it causes a fire. OTOH, that won't happen if it is just one small piece of rag, because the heat of the reaction will dissipate. It is almost certainly a bad idea to apply linseed oil (or any oil) to a saya. It is unlikely that it would seep through to the blade chamber if it is applied properly (i.e. thinly). It is more likely to set hard in the outer layers of the wood. It will however stop the wood from breathing - consequently any moisture inside the blade chamber will be unable to wick out through the wood. The result would be an increased chance of rusting. Kevin

It's hogwash. There's no US law forbidding the export of nihonto or shin-gunto. There may concievably be some sort of paperwork needed at the Austrian end - however AFAIK they're not banned from entering Austria. Italy has rather stricter laws on the importation and ownership of swords, and I've got swords into Italy before now. I've had this once or twice from American sellers, and it is usually down to complete ignorance of the law, including their own. "It's forbidden to send Japanese swords to the UK!" "No it's not - I was involved in the consultation process and know exactly what UK law says." "Oh!" "You ship it - dealing with UK Customs is my problem, not yours." "Oh! OK." If one did insist that he wasn't going to export it, I'd just have it sent to the American end of the business, and export it from there. Sometimes, with other items, I've found out that it's because the American seller doesn't know how to export it, and doesn't want to get involved with Customs forms. Other than that, I suppose that next time you could point out to such idiots that Austria is in NATO and therefore allied to the US - it isn't Libya. The Austrian airforce, for example, has quite a number of American-built aircraft, such as Blackhawks. The Austrian army also uses American-made firearms. The argument that you can't ship weapons of any sort from the US to Austria is therefore hogwash from first principals - the US government obviously allows quite advanced weapons systems to be shipped there. Kevin

@ sanjuro Ah, the most convoluted situation I've found myself in was multiple P/Xs. Party A had a sword on commission. Party B wants it but doesn't have enough ready dosh, so offers cash and another sword. It so happens that Party C wants a sword by that particular smith, but also lacks sufficient funds, so offers another P/X. Party D is after an example of the sort of sword that Party C is P/Xing - as you guessed, he doesn't have enough funds so offers yet another P/X. The figures all add up so that Party A can get his money immediately from the commission sale (a very important point to bear in mind), so shortly afterwards there were swords flying in and out of the house. Somehow it all worked. Everyone departed happy. That's the result that I like to see. :D Kevin

@Grey :-) So all I need to do to be rich is to be stranded on a desert island with another dealer and one sword for a month? Cool! :D Not sure why the guy didn't hang on to it though. He was quite keen to get it. Perhaps he found something he liked better. I'm not unused to swords getting about BTW. This one amused me though - Moses' photos are also better than mine. As for previous cases - well, several times I've heard that a sword that I've sold to a UK collector has later been sold or P/Xd to another UK collector. Sometimes I've found out that a sword that a UK collector has sold to me was sold to him by another UK collector a few months previously. In one unusual case a sword that I sold to A was sold to B who sold it to C who sold it to me, and I then sold it to D. That however is unusual. D, as I recall, was outside the UK, so the sword in question presumably now joins a merry-go-round in another country. :-) All in all, it is a very small world. Kevin

Just had my attention drawn to this blade: http://www.nihontoantiques.com/fss403.htm The collector who originally owned it was wandering around the web looking at swords and came across it. He bought it at a local fair years ago. He sold it to me. I sold it to an American Ebay member in December 2010. Now it's up for sale again, via Moses Beccera's site. :-) It's doing some travelling. :-) Kevin

If you look at it carefully, the spokes are very unevenly shaped - the taper isn't uniform, the thickness isn't uniform and with some spokes some they taper out too rapidly, then come in a bit, thus making the line a bit wobbly. In addition, the spokes, in at least a couple of places, asymmetrically placed - compare one side with the other. It's all lopsided and uneven - and, in my opinion, an offence to the eyes. It's amateur. Kevin

Wouldn't touch it with somebody else's bargepole. Kevin

It is. :-) First time I saw it, I said to the guy who owns it that, in my opinion, it would pass Tokubetsu Hozon. He asked if I was sure - I told him I'd put money on it. He said to submit it if it didn't find a buyer quickly. :-) He's quite chuffed at it passing as well. :-) I have a hunch that it might go further, but that's for the next owner to decide. Kevin

Well, (and to paraphrase the kid's programme Blue Peter) here's some pics I took earlier: http://www.ryujinswords.com/rai.htm Now all I've got to do is to sell it for the owner. :-) Not sure if it will come back to the UK There are a few interested parties. If one of them puts money down, it makes more sense to send it to them directly from Japan, rather than for it to come back to the UK first. In any case, I'm not too keen on endlessly unsheathing a sword to rephotograph it - there is always the risk, no matter how small, that the polish may get scratched. Kevin

[tease]Ah, so you would have bought *that* sword on Ebay if you'd had the budget![/tease] :D Unfortunately it isn't going to be any cheaper now it has Tokubetsu Hozon papers. Kevin

Ah, so you missed the Hozon Nakajima Rai that I had on Ebay that's just received Tokubetsu Hozon papers? :D Not everything on Ebay is rubbish. Kevin

It's the same sword Clive http://www.to-ken.com/swordregister/no74.htm Kevin

Quite chuffed - it passed Tokubetsu Hozon, as I thought it would. :-) Just awaiting the sword to be released and the origami. Two wakizashi passed Hozon as well. Just waiting the results on the koshirae. Kevin

I may have found something – I know, I'm like a terrier with a bone, but the subject intersts me. Anyway, the composition of the ore may also be important. To paraphrase Ohmura: “Japanese iron sand contains titanium (approx 4.5-6% on the examples he gives). The Manchurian and Chinese ores don’t contain any titanium and are therefore better for sword steel.” Now this puzzled me – titanium is used to reduce grain growth in steel and make it tougher. However, apparently numerous fine titanium carbides at grain boundaries can exert a detrimental influence on the tensile strength of steels containing more than 0.1% carbon, whilst the coarse globular titanium carbides and fine titanium carbides at grain boundaries reduce impact strength. In short, it increases the chance of brittle fracture in steels with more than 0.1% carbon. Now this is probably not an important factor at ‘normal’ temperatures or for small pieces of steel. In any case the amount of titanium is probably reduced (but not eliminated) during the processing of tamahagane. However temperatures of -40C and a nice long sword blade could be another matter altogether. Ohmura remarks that traditional Japanese swords had, from ancient times, suffered from cold-induced brittle fracture. The ores used by Mantetsu contained no titanium at all, and thus differ markedly from Japanese iron sands. It was in great demand by WW2 traditional smiths. This may be the last bit in the jigsaw puzzle. Mantetsu did low temperature tests, according to Ohmura. The temperature in a room at the Railway Research Institute in Dalian was reduced to -40C and the blade left in the room overnight. The next day the blade was taken out of the room and struck against an iron plate or anvil. The cutting edge did not chip or break. Ohmura remarks that the Kwantung Army, which had jurisdiction over Manchuria, required Mantetsu to make swords that could withstand cold winter temperatures. This was a big feature of a Koa-Issin sword. However he says that the test was only described briefly in one document because of military secrecy. Furthermore, Mantetsu only released limited data about the sword to interested parties. They did not describe either the manufacturing process or the production facility because they considered these to be trade secrets. Mind you, given the involvement of the Kwantung Army and the cold-induced brittle fracture test, these were probably also military secrets. Not surprising, given that this plant was well in advance of contemporary Western steel producers. However, this secrecy rather hobbles our ability to understand what was going on. Oh, on the price – Koa Isshin swords have been fetching $2500-$3000 for a wee while now. Kevin