Jeff E

Thanks, Rich. I figured it wouldn't be too out of place to rekindle it given the time lapses in it before, and I didn't want to start a new topic when the information seems to be gathered in this thread

Hi Reid, I noticed that you only focused on "chopping." Out of curiosity, what about slicing? The blades are probably made for agriculture, but as someone who had one custom made many years ago by Walter Sorrells, I like to keep the fantasy a little. The blades on the antiques that I have seen are always kata-kiriha in cross section, and as a carpenter, I can fully see this blade shape being used to allow the user to trim whatever they are trimming as close and flat to the surface they are removing it from, however, this would also possibly aid in slipping through joints. We see the Kata-kiriha cross section on hocho, though, so I wonder what exactly the cross section was meant for. Maybe they were the knives of head butchers or head gardners?

Markus, I'm not arguing anything here, I am just curious, how often was the word "wakizashi" actually used in ancient times? It has been my understanding for at least 15 years that they used the term "shoto," which would refer to anything shorter than 2 shaku in blade length.