showa tsuba

[lonely panet]

Hello gentlemen,

here is a showa tsuba I have, that at some point somebody tried to clean one side of for some silly reason.

the aged patina looked nice for a showa piece so why remove it???

look closely and it has some forging marks so, I don't think its a run of the mill pressed tsuba.

 

Im thinking of trying to reproduce the patina on the cleaned side, does anyone have any ideas on how ??

 

also please feel free to openly discuss the item, im not offended easly

 

regards Hamish

[lonely panet]

pt 2

[ROKUJURO]

  Hamfish said:

.....here is a showa tsuba.....that at some point somebody tried to clean one side of for some silly reason.

the aged patina looked nice.....it has some forging marks.....

Hamfish,

 

I may be wrong in interpreting your photos but I don't see much of a patina. Instead the surface looks corroded in spots. There are no hints of a forging treatment (I am a smith) but some small irregularities in the metal. The area around the NAKAGO ANA tells me it was die-cut.

 

Repatinating is an art and requires knowledge and experience. It also requires exact information on the metal used, and in your case it might well be some alloyed industrial sheet metal where the traditional patination solutions will not work on as expected.

 

I would just leave it alone and suggest you concentrate your efforts on a more promising TSUBA.

[lonely panet]

Thanks for your help, now that you point the metal around the nakago ana, I can see that it has been die cut.

thanks for pointing that out, I was really only looking at the edge of the tsuba for activity.

The surface rust is constant and evan all over the surface of the metal, do you think it is natural??

 

The reason I am trying to age the other side is that I have a edo wakizashi koshare that was used during ww2 and the tsuba would look better on it, compared to the one thats already on it.

Thankyou again Jean

regards Hamish

[ROKUJURO]

  Hamfish said:

.....The surface rust is constant and even all over the surface of the metal, do you think it is natural??

 

The reason I am trying to age the other side is that I have an edo wakizashi koshirae that was used during ww2 and the tsuba would look better on it, compared to the one thats already on it.....

Hamish,

 

fast aging is a contradiction in itself. You could realize that with little sleep, drinking a lot of alcoholic stuff and smoking cigars, but I am not sure that this works with TSUBA!

 

As I said, patination is an art, and it might need many trials to find out what would be best for your TSUBA. You might search in the www for SABIJI, but I am not too confident that the process will work on this kind of steel. For a simple 'show' TSUBA you could go to your local gun-store and ask them for a 'gun-brown' treatment. I don't know for sure but it could be that before any treatment the old corroded surface will have to be removed, but I think we should not go into the subject of do-it-yourself. There is a risk of damaging objects of value, and the NMB wants to follow it's way of protection and preservation of NIHONTO-related items.

 

A much better way would be to ask a renowned TSUBA expert like Ford Hallam (here at NMB).

[george trotter]

Hamish,

I think the comments about patination are right...what you assumed to be a "patinated" side and a "cleaned" side are what is found from time to time on swords of all ages. What happens is someone stores the sword for decades in a shed or basement standing up in a corner...the top surface gets dusty and moisture is absorbed (rust/tarnish) and the underside is less dusty = less corroded...voila...a "patinated" side and a "cleaned" side.

 

I think the tsube is a pretty standard pressed type commonly found on iaito type Showa pre-1945 mounts. Should be OK to gently clean the bad rust - stabilize - keep as an example of a Showa era tsuba "as is" (following Jean's advice of course)...maybe just clean bad rust and leave it patinated/clean but stable...it is what it is...no need to re-patinate IMHO.

Hope this helps.