Lacquer Repair

[kissakai]

Hi

I have just had this tsuba repaired. I was unsure whether to buy it or not due to the damage around the fern frond which will always draw your eye to this area

I bought it from Ron Hartman in Dec 2014. The colour diffences between before and after is due to using two cameras

 

 

It was suggested I send it to Mike Hickman-Smith for his evaluation

These were Mikes comments

 

Looking at the quality of the surface lacquer I do not propose to do a full ‘restoration’  Problem would be that to get a fully polished flat surface I would risk damaging the old lacquer around each section of damage with the polishing.  What I can however do is to conserve.  The undercoat exposed where the damage has occurred is far more porous than the top coat so I will seal it these areas with urushi then build up with top coat black lacquer  until I am as close as I can get to the old surface level without doing any polishing to flatten. I should be able to fill in the missing section of gold pine branch.   It will be time consuming in terms of number of days but only a few minutes at a time.

 

Tsuba work is finished and I am pleased with the result. As I mentioned at the start, I have lacquered the damaged areas in only and not over lacquered the whole item so that the original surface is honest. The original covering was black when it was applied but over time it browns / clears so giving that beautiful slightly translucent dark brown. I have patched with clear urushi (which is dark brown when applied in any depth) with a tiny amount of black and brown urushi mixed in. The patches are currently slightly darker if you look in very bright light however over the next 18 months to 2 years, the clear urushi will continue to clear further and it lightens up so hopefully the patches will be less visible in time. I am pleased also with the gold work which is not really apparent unless you go looking for it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grev UK

 

[kissakai]

Hi

It was never posted for comments so it doesn't matter to me but over a hundred views with no comments I did find a bit strange

I'm not fishing for replies so no replies are required

 

 

Grev UK

[John A Stuart]

First time seeing this post Grev, but, that is a good repair. The pine branch/ twig looks complete. John

[SAS]

Looks good to me, just saw this post.

[Alan Morton]

Grev,

if I had owned this tsuba and had the work done I would 

be highly pleased

 Mike has done an excellent job

Alan

[IanB]

Well done to Mike - a really nice job.

Ian Bottomley

[Iain E]

Hi Grev,

just seen the post - having seen your Tsuba before hand I'm very impressed with Mikes work here.

 

He did a great job on repairing the lacquer damage on my saya as well - Top bloke....

 

Iain