estcrh

The first way you can tell is if the seller is from China or in this case Minsk, Minsk, Belarus??? Never trust someone from Minsk, Minsk, Belarus

If you were planning on buying one of these as a real Japanese ww2 sword then you saved yourself some money. What exactly are you looking for..if anything...and I am sure someone here can help you with finding something authentic and or show you some sites that you can help you learn for yourself if a sword is real or not.

Ian, I just read Perrin's book Giving Up the Gun..great suggestion. I purchased a copy used from Amazon for less than $6 and it has a lot of good information on samurai history in general and especially on why and how the Japanese were able to reverse their use of firearms. Thanks

Jason, if you download IrfanView it has a very good image editor for reducing the size of pictures, it is a free download.

Piers, I thought that what they had in common was that they both look to be in to good of a condition...but your saying that they were made from 2 different sources of iron?

Piers, Im waiting for that hint.

Jamie, there was a thread very recently discussing just what you were asking about, if you use the search function you should be able to find it.

Jean, I was thinking the same thing while I was looking at the pictures posted, how someone who sells swords...especially from Japan were it would be hard to return....can expect to be taken seriously when the most important areas of the sword are not pictured is beyond me. "I decline the return of goods of KATANA,WAKIZASHI,TANTO,YARI and NAGINATA entirely". This statement alone should scare anyone off but I see that there is already an offer made on this sword. Unfortunately in the U.S. it is very hard to find anyone who will let you look at their swords let alone hold them! People are amazed when I actually let them look at and examine my poor collection, and a lot of cities here just do not have collector groups. So I can understand someone wanting to own something of their own even if its not the best quality but I agree with you that if someone is willing to wait and learn and save (even for a few years) they will eventually own something worth while.

So you think that its possible that many surviving yari started out with much longer nakago but by the time we got to see them they have been shortened due to snapping?

Ron, I have wondered why all yari do not have a long nakago if that helped to keep the wood shaft from being cut. I have never seen a shaft they had iron strips down the length either that would do the same thing. If you look at sodegarami and sasumata the shafts have long iron strips with spikes to keep someone from grabbing the shaft, this would also help keep the shaft from being cut. Yari shafts could have easily been made the same way if needed, so possibly the shafts being cut was not a problem. I have never read any information on this so thats all I can add.

Bruno, this item was listed in the wrong category, thats one reason it did not get the attention it might otherwise have. If it had been listed in the antique section I am sure it would have been noticed...I have purchased items on ebay that were listed wrong for much less than expected...putting an item within sight of your expected buyers takes a little knowledge of were those buyers will be looking. Jason did pretty good on this one!

John, the blade may have been based on a European design or even a foreign blade adapted for use, but I was more interested in why someone would go to the expense and trouble to make something like this and what its intended use was...certainly not for dueling or roasting meat...it does like a giant shish kabob skewer though

Ian, its amazing how much free time one has to explore the internet for oddities when your employment used to be in the field of real estate investment!!! The nagasa is 17 inch, as you can see the 2 (cutting) edges are actually flat and the spine is rounded, no sharp edges at all, but if someone did not know this and could not look at it closely they would have assumed that they were up against a deadly weapon, in fact someone went to a lot of trouble to make this look just like a sword from the outside appearance of the saya and tuska, and if it was pulled out it would appear to be a yari wakizashi. The blade is very strong with no chance of bending at all due to the added spine...and yet not lethal..unless you used a lot of effort. "You have me there" I never thought I would here that...actually I believe we were discussing the existence of just such a weapon a while back, at least I believe this is an example of what we were talking about.

Quote. For the moment, I bookmarked all the discussions like this using the "bookmark this topic" function Lorenzo, thanks for the idea..I did not think of that. Now I will have to go back and try it

And now for something completely different...this sword? weapon or whatever you would call it was sold on ebay as a Su Yari mounted as a wakizashi. It is definitely not a yari, although is easy to see how the seller made that determination due to the shape of the blade and the nakago, it could have been made by someone who was experienced with making yari. The blade is steel but displays no sign of hamon or hada and has a triangle shape which has no sharpened edges and the way it was made renders the point practically useless for piercing. The edges are not dull, they are purposely flat. All parts except possibly the very thick tsuba appear to have been custom made for this sword and I believe I know what purpose it was made for but I wanted to see if anyone else came to the same conclusion. The blade reminds me of a steel I beam. Here are some pictures and a link to a lot more. http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/estcrh/Triangle%20blade%20sword/

It would be nice to see all of the discussions (and pictures) on Japanese firearms and related items in one archive so that anyone in the future could reference these fascinating pictures and intriguing facts etc all in one place. There is more information contained in this forum on the subject than any were else online I believe.

Seller canceled the auction???

Thank you Stephen, this is a great site.

Is there a link to the site were you can purchase the book?

Rey, sorry I can not help you more, I do not have any knowledge of nco stamps etc, there are some members here that can help you if they see your post.

That can be tricky sometimes, sometimes using a scanner can get good results, I believe it was recommended to use a dark cloth to cover the blade when scanning. Scanning can get you good hamon and hada pictures on blades that are hard to take photos of. If you search the forum you will find some posts on scanning a blade. Here is one>> viewtopic.php?f=9&t=6842&p=54074&hilit=scanner#p54074

Andrew, at least you took a lot of close up pictures of the blade, that should help someone give you some ideas based on the shape of the blade, not much to go on as far as the hamon and hada unless you can get it to show up better using different lighting and angles etc, It looks old to me.

Jason, kyu gunto with a family mon, and once again great close pictures of everything but the tang and blade, you could ask the seller to take pictures of the parts that really count to see if it is handmade or not. You can see that someone soldiered the wire on the tuska.

John, I was told that this tanto was from the ww2 era but I can not find any site with pictures of genuine examples, if you or anyone else would care to comment on it feel free. http://s831.photobucket.com/albums/zz238/estcrh/ww2%20tanto/