Bitchu (no) Kami Tachibana Yasuhiro

[hxv]

My sword came back from NBTHK shinsa with Hozon origami. Below is a link to the sword before the new polish by Bob Benson.

 

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13572&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15

 

It's remarkable to compare the sword before and after polish. This sword is interesting to me for two reasons. First, it sports an o-choji hamon, which is not typical of Yasuhiro. Second, it is suriage by about 2". You can see from the pictures (compared to ubu nakago pictures from Fujishiro and Nihonto Koza, and various papered examples on the web) that the bottom mekugi ana is the original, and the sword has been suriage by just a little more than 2". Its current nagasa is 27 1/8", making its original nagasa 29" - quite long for Yasuhiro daito whose signed extant works hover around 25"-26". In the monouchi, there is clear utsuri, but I have not been able to capture the utsuri in the pictures.

 

I think Ishido Yasuhiro is ranked Ryowazamono from what I can find on the web. If this is incorrect, please let me know.

 

The sword is quite nice and worth the resources I spent on polishing, having new shirasaya made, and papering. Pictures are posted for your enjoyment. Constructive comments, positive or negative, are always welcome.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[runagmc]

Hi Hoahn, I'll be the first to say thanks for sharing your story with this blade so far on NMB. The polish is beautiful (you don't see shinogi-ji this clean, where you can see the steel and forging characteristics this well often enough). You did a good job to take the time and exspense to bring this sword back to life. (even if it is a suriage Shinto, which doesn't take much away from it, in my eyes)

[cabowen]

You are not suppose to see the forging clearly in the ji- it is suppose to be burnished like a mirror. (my guess is it is the angle and photography that is enhancing it here....Gorgeous work!

[kusunokimasahige]

That is under debate. Even in the art of Japanese sword Polishing it is written that burnishing the shinogi-ji only came about in the late Edo period and was not done before. Some polishers do not burnish and some even do not use Jizuya for the Jihada. They use Hazuya only.

 

Also the Kashima sisters say that a mirror finish on the shinogi-ji is just outright wrong.

 

See: Nagashi

 

http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/togi.html

 

and Migaki

 

http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/togistyles.html

 

I tend to agree with them, a shinogi-ji which looks like a full blown mirror to me does not give me as much insight as one in which I can see a lot of activity.

 

KM

[CSM101]

I really think, that this is an outstanding blade with many activities. I just played with one of the photos and here is my version. In case you want to know, what I did, I can make a short tutorial about it.

 

Uwe G.

[hxv]

Hi Uwe,

 

It would be outstanding if you could give us a step-by-step tutorial.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[Ken-Hawaii]

Yes, please do, Uwe. Thanks!

 

Ken

[CSM101]

Okay, the trick is like always: there is no trick. The photo of Hoanh is already good enough. But the digital process with Photoshop is mostly a mystery.

 

Let´s start then. First of all: every photo I work with will be opened in Adobe Camera Raw. Camera RAW is a RAW developer and gives you the possibility to make the hard part first. It is included in Photoshop CS or Elements. Open as …and then you choose Camera Raw. If you use a Canon Camera, then I recommend DPP or any other RAW Converter. It doesn´t matter if it is a Jpeg, a Bitmap, a TIFF or a RAW-file. Make the most obvious things with a RAW converter.

 

Down you see Camera Raw and a different photo. With Hoanh´s photo I use 1 for the white balance. First the pipette and then click somewhere on the blade, where it is yellow. After that the colour is a little bit more correct. The photo is too dark, so 2 for the exposure (or brightness in different versions). 3 is for the depths. That will bring more light to the shadows. There is no effect to the parts that are already okay. And last part 4 is for making black to grey. That’s the main work and very easy to do.

 

And now comes the hard part. You could open the photo just like always. But I use SHIFT and then I can open the photo as a smart-object. On the right side of Photoshop you see “Layers”. When you click with your right Mouse-button on the layer you see, that you can make a “New Smart-object as a copy”. Choose that and now you have two versions of the same photo. And that is the only trick. When you double-click on the small photo in layers it will be opened again with Camera Raw. And then I choose 5 for the correction of the colours. In one photo I make the saturation for yellow, green and orange to 0 and the photo is almost black and white. Donw in the right corner is a litte symbol, looks like a square with a circle in the middle. Click and you have a mask in one layer. Now you choose a soft brush with black and you can go over the parts, that you don´t like and they just dissapear. And in the end you have a wonderful photo. If you deleted too much, press x and suddenly you can bring with white the deleted parts back.

 

If you want to see, how it really works, I recommend the book from Scott Kelby “The magnificent seven” Lesson 3 with a BMW: It is the best tutorial about layers and masks I have ever seen. And if you know how to use, when to use and especially why to use layers and masks then you already mastered the first dan in Photoshop-Do. Okay, that´s a little bit too enthusiastic. Third kyu. You can look in youtube, if you can find something with layers and masks, but most explanations are not for beginners.

 

The next time we use a photo from Barry Hennick, theme: “Sharpening” :D

 

Uwe G.

[cabowen]

 

Also the Kashima sisters say that a mirror finish on the shinogi-ji is just outright wrong.

 

and Migaki

 

http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/togistyles.html

 

I tend to agree with them, a shinogi-ji which looks like a full blown mirror to me does not give me as much insight as one in which I can see a lot of activity.

 

KM

 

They are certainly entitled to their opinion but I think the photo they show of "soft" migaki looks god awful....

[hxv]

Hi Uwe,

 

I opend up my RAW file with Adobe Photoshop and got the following screen. Where do I go from here?

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[kusunokimasahige]

Chris, I agree that the photos on their site are not what we would see as awesome.

 

Uwe, thank you for the explanation. I use Gimp but I still cant get what my eyes see in real life on a photo.

 

KM

[chris covington]

Love it! Thanks for sharing! i have a yasuhiro signed blade but it is in rough shape and beyond help even with a polish. For me it is a sword for budo. I will start another thread so I don't steal this one.

 

Thanks again for sharing this great looking sword with us!

[CSM101]

Morning Hoanh,

 

Hope, this is a better screenshot now. And for the "real" colour there is something called "colour correction with curves". Sounds complicated and is complicated. But after a few hundert photos you can do that in less than 10 minutes.

 

Greetings

 

Uwe G.

[hxv]

Hi Uwe,

 

Thank you for the new screenshot. I followed your instructions and manged to get the following picture. Thank you for the tutorial.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[CSM101]

Congratulations!!! You made it!

 

Four things I always see, that can easily be corrected. White balance, too dark, not sharp enough and making something unreadable readable. Two points I already explained. Maybe we should move back to improving our photos and I write two more tutorials if you want.

 

Have a nice evening

 

Uwe G.

 

PS: Your version is better than mine.

[hxv]

Uwe,

 

Yes, more tutorial, please! May be you can start a new thread with your tutorials. I have always found Photoshop a little daunting with so many choices, so your step-by-step tutorial is great.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[CSM101]

I made a new tutorial "Sharpen a photo". Back to, where it belongs: "Help us improve our photos"

 

Uwe G.

[runagmc]

You are not suppose to see the forging clearly in the ji- it is suppose to be burnished like a mirror. (my guess is it is the angle and photography that is enhancing it here....Gorgeous work!

 

Hi Chris, I realize the shinogi-ji is burnished, but in many cases it is poorly done, leaving burnishing marks and making the steel and hada difficult to interpret. It could be just the pics, but I doubt it. It looks like some of the better burnishing work I have seen on a sword which appears to have fairly coarse looking hada (which would make burnishing smoothly even more difficult). Maybe they do something to even out the appearance, or maybe just skill with migaki-bera...

[Ron STL]

You young computer wizards amaze me! Too much for this 77 year old! About the shinogi-ji. One of my earlier polishes from Kajihara when John Yumoto was handling his orders was a shodai Hizen Masahiro, literally a "perfect" sword let's say. Kajihara left the shinogi-ji not so burnished so as to show the jigane in the ji. John commented on this when the sword came back saying it must had been what the polisher wanted you to see. I will say it is the only sword in my collection that had this kind of non-burnishing (less burnishing). The Yasuhiro looks absolutely beautiful, I might add.

Ron STL

[hxv]

Thank you Ron for the kind comments. Uwe's tutorials are not hard to follow. I just have to be willing to make lots of mistakes and learn from them. I have always found my pictures, although focused and showed clear details, always on the "yellowish" side. Uwe's instructions really helped me tremendously in correcting the colors and in exposing ji nie more clearly.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[CSM101]

Hello Ron,

 

thank for your kind words. And don´t worry. This here is no wizardy, just digital image correction.

 

Wizardy is more like the next one: convert a photo into a digital oshigata.

 

Uwe G.

Oshigata.pdf

[Eric H]

No doubt Bob Benson knows how to make a proper polish to a blade. Anyhow the burnished parts give a beautiful contrast to the other sections of the blade, a work that requires tactile skill...and it is an essential aspect to the beauty of the Japanese sword. On the basis of the posted photos cannot be ascertained whether the shinogi-ji etc. is burnished or not.

 

Hoanh, what is it?

 

Eric

[hxv]

Eric,

 

The shinogi-ji is semi-burnished. What I mean is that it is clearly burnished, but the masame hada in the shinogi-ji is still visible, especially if you view the sword at certain angles.

 

Regards,

Hoanh

[Eric H]

the masame hada in the shinogi-ji is still visible

Fine, the burnished Shinogi-ji should show the Hada within it.

thanks

Eric