OceanoNox

https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/へし切長谷部 Heshigiri Hasebe is a national treasure on display in the Fukuoka Museum. The story goes that a servant was rude to Oda Nobunaga, who wanted to punish the servant. Said servant fled and hid under some kind of furniture. So Oda cut him by pushing the sword into him, not by swinging. Hence the name "Heshigiri" (cut by pushing).

Ah, indeed, I missed the date for this one. Anything else wrong?

What's wrong about that description? It seems perfectly in line with the current understanding on Japanese armours.

Brian, thank you very much for putting it up here.

A bit of necromancy to revive this thread. I have added a few data points to my initial slides, reformated the citations, so the reader can see what paper/book was used in each slide. Some of the data is not only in bar graphs, but with bell curves as well, with the addition of period and smith names on the curve. Also, with his permission, I added @Jussi Ekholm's data on koto, also with bell curves for tachi and katana, to see if there were some trends in sizes over time (this is a reaction to very uninformed video by Matt Easton about why Japanese warriors did not use very long swords). Unfortunately, the file is larger than 3 MB. @Brian, would you like me to send the updated file to replace the initial one?

For those who have an NDL account, it is accessible online here: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13238909/1/13 There is also this one about Akasaka tsuba, in open access. It has sketches, and it seems to be about the process and artisans: 赤坂鐔工録 https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/927286/1/1

In Japanese, brazing is called ロウ付け (roh zuke). Roh is Japanese for solder, but it's also the pronunciation of the Japanese word for wax. The latter being much more common, I suppose whoever did the translation got it mixed.

The relevant part is this: 扨又鍔の鉄の性これまた大ふん品ある事 本ン鍛ひ鍔といふは古鋤から古鍬がらを水に漬数日を経てのち土砂を洗をとし是を吹革に入レ尤至極きたふ事也 それを鍛ひ〱て鍔につくる 形彫は好に随ふこれきたひ鍔の上品 Further, the quality of the iron is very good / high quality. Forged tsuba are made from old hoes and spades, soaked several days in water, then cleaned of the dirt and sandm and put in a forge (the word fuigo, bellows, is used), and forged. This is forged into a tsuba. It is carved into the desired shape and it is a high quality tsuba. ※The translation is partially mine, helped with google. It is possible that miwo missed or misread some letters, but the text is transcribed in this paper, page 92: https://www.kurokawa-institute.or.jp/files/libs/640/201904281025162413.pdf ※※I am fairly sure someone (maybe me) has posted both links before, possibly even here.

万金産業袋 (also written 萬金産業袋), published in 1732, describes how to make iron tsuba. The method is to recycle old farming tools, no casting. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100258979/31?ln=ja It is all in Japanese and written in kuzushi-ji, but you can scan it with the miwo (みを) free application, which will give you the writing in typed text, which you can paste in a translation software.

Susudake is the best. Unfortunately, some sellers have the habit of burning the ends of non-smoked bamboo to give the illusion of susudake... Without access to susudake, there was advice on the Iaido journal, edited by Kim Taylor, a while back. I have used it to make my own: you need to cut bamboo that is on the outside of a tree grove, so that it is exposed to the wind and sun (as it should make the fibers grow stronger). Use the part between the ground and the first ring. Let it dry for some time (mine were left to dry for two years). And use the part near the outside, where the fibers are tightly packed. Then I was told that the the tightly packed section of the mekugi should be towards the kashira (and also inserted from the ura side).

Thank you folks, that's helpful. I had seen some seppa that had seemed to follow the bohi, but I did not know it was supposed to be like that. Most of what I had seen was probably mass produced.

Hello all I have been mulling over the possible designs of seppa. I know of the "scales" like design, and the crenelation like design, but I have been wondering if there are sources or collection showing the different types of seppa. Incidentally, I was also wondering if seppa were made to fit a specific koshirae, or if they were made in bulk and adjusted as necessary. So far, I haven't been able to find much about the topic, despite the fact that they are a very important part of the koshirae.

Magnificent, Jussi. Thank you very much for you hard work and for uploading the data.

Beautiful! Congratulations!

Dan, you are being dishonest here, and I am being polite. The very first photo in the "Silver ring in tsubas" (https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/52786-silver-ring-in-tsubas/#comment-551308) is taken at an angle, and there is nothing in the surface roughness indicating casting, rather it is a look one could easily obtain during forging. My opinion is corroborated with more than 10 years working in research in mechanical and metallurgical engineering, reading actual academic research on the topic of tsuba (as well as period documents, when possible), and trying my hand at the different DOCUMENTED techniques of tsuba making. And if you are looking through my commenting history, you would see the links or references I have posted (I am even the one who posted the research report for the archeological find of cast soft metal tsuba in Nara). If anything, I always try to give a reference to support my opinion. Do it then. Find one of these supposed antique cast iron tsuba, and have the tests made. Or send them to me to do it. I have access to X-ray, electronic microscope with chemical analysis, and micro-hardness (not quite non-invasive, but still considered relatively non-destructive, if you can bear a barely visible indent). Put your money where your mouth is and do the analysis, instead of telling others that they are close-minded and scared, then taking offense at being called out. I am doing it. I had an idea about tsuba research, and my students and I are doing the calculations and experiments to see it through. It's not cutting edge, it's probably not very noteworthy, but we are doing what's necessary to find out if we are right or not.