I'm curious on how tsuba were originally fitted to tachi & katana blades. Were tagane-ato really necessary to fit the blade & nakago hitsu-ana together? Both tosho & tsubashi created extremely-polished products, so I wonder why large chunks would be needed to be chiseled out of an otherwise-pristine tsuba to get it to fit a blade. The only thing I can come up with is that tsuba were made up in batches that were bought separately, rather than as part of a sword "system." But that flie
