vitamin

I have some preliminary thoughts, but probably wrong. So curious to hear fresh ideas.

Have you had them all identified?

You can't ship to USA? We saved you from the Nazis. ;D

I was under the impression all the swords taken by US army to the depot to be melted down were checked by experts, but if HM was not as nice a sword as it was supposed to be, maybe they didn't recognize it and it got melted down anyway. But definitely some swords were melted down.

Dang, I was a week late. That sword is fire. Like, the hamon literally looks like fire.

Do you have any recommendations for someone in the US, ideally west coast? Thanks.

Wait... the Honjo Masamuna was not that great actually? Would that mean it could have been mistaken as nothing special and melted down? Also wasn't there recently a display by Tokugawa family of some koshirae said to be of the HM, where they said only the blade was turned over to the police? Link: https://tsumugu.yomiuri.co.jp/feature/桃山展「本庄正宗」の刀装初公開/ Like why would someone like that turn over both koshirae and blade, surely they knew the koshirae were also valuable?

So what I did was to take a "Magic Eraser" (fine sponge from Walmart that's good at removing grit from objects without scratching—I use these for removing yellowing from my 1980s Apple Macintosh collection) and some rubbing alcohol, and scrub the tang for a minute or so, until the red dust (which was covering most of it) was gone and some of the underlying brown/gray buildup was visible. I didn't scour it all the way down to the bare metal, or anything. Also, the Magic Eraser was literally red after the cleaning. I can accept that I might have gone overboard and used too harsh of a method—lesson learned.

Very interesting. Any idea which characters these are? I have no working knowledge of Japanese characters, but I found a website where you draw what you see and it lists possibilities. Problem is, this is some kind of shorthand, a real doozy. This makes it difficult because it would seem that the direction of each stroke matters, but on this size the direction isn't possible to indicate via the normal brushmarks. Then there's the order in which the strokes are made, another factor. I've always wanted to learn Japanese but it was never offered at a school I attended, so I studied German, Greek, and Latin instead. Then in my career, programming languages took over and I kinda forgot about learning Japanese. Until now :D What an intricate and complex form of writing, this. Now I won't stop until I can read it. Thanks, sword.

Correct.

Looks like I misinterpreted some advice. Well, that sucks. Now excuse me while I go drink the rest of the rubbing alcohol then find out if it's too dull for seppuku... Sigh

Yeah. Maybe it's just a serial number on a mass-produced type sword.

Making a new thread since the original thread had a ton of images but I just want to ask about a specific new image (see below). When cleaning rust off the nakago, on the back edge of the nakago I noticed what seems to be a small inscription there. What do you make of this: Original thread: Thanks for any tips.

Please see the below images, thank you. I've also attached a video from my iPhone that does a better job showing what the polish looks like to the human eye. (The macro shots from my Olympus E-M1 tend to overemphasize the defects.) Thanks you for taking a look!

Please help identifying/dating my unsigned wakizashi. The seller provided the following information: blade is from 1700s to 1800s (?) no papers tsuba/tsuka/saya came from other items, so not including them in the shots Measurements: overall length: 22 3/8" nagasa length: 17 5/8" sori curvature depth: 1/2" kissaki length: 1 3/4" please ask for further measurements Any information you experts might be able to provide about this would be greatly appreciated. I'm curious what the hamon style is called, what period it's from, any links to further historical context, whether it's worth getting papers for, etc Thank you! Please see the below photographs that I took of the sword: An interesting dark eye in the steel: Closeups of the hamon and hiraji with an extremely bright strobe setting and tiny aperture reveal interesting details: The proximity of the strobe can bring out some of the imperfections quite clearly, which to the naked eye are quite subtle (as you can tell from the video): Whether the hamon looks brighter than the hiraji depends on the incident angle of the strobes. Varying the angle brings out some interesting tonal variations that look quite different from the typical way that most sellers present their swords online: There is a small chip in the cutting edge of the blade: Some interesting wear patterns: Closeup of the above image: Some dark "eyes" in the steel: Additional imperfections (perhaps from carbon deposits?): The kissaki: A crack in the shinogi-ji (evidence of a past repair?): Additional photographs: https://imgur.com/a/t1eS9CY These photographs were taken with an Olympus OM-D EM-1 and an EM-1 Mark III, FL-50R and FL-36R flashes, and OM Zuiko 50mm f/2 lens for FourThirds (plus the FourThirds to MicroFourThirds adapter). Thanks!