Bo Hi carving.

[remzy]

Greetings everyone,

i was browsing some nihonto selling site (yes, i am tempting the devil and training my temptation endurance!) while at some point i came upon a nice looking tachi in great mount.. then i see the picture of the Bohi end and went "oh my gosh... yikes!"

 

http://www.sho-shin.com/hitch1.html

 

Do you think this would be a good idea to fix it? in the event that you got the money, could it be concidered a "crime" against the blade to tamper with the original ... rather crude, carving?.

 

Just looking for impressions here..

 

thanks for looking,

Remy

[John A Stuart]

Hi Remzy, That not bad at all. Bohi in worse shape on blades of immensely higher value. Pretty common to have some roughness there. John

[remzy]

Seriously?? i know that it was common practice to let the apprenticese carve the hi .. but most of the ones that i have seen were, shall i say, more pretty?

[nagamaki - Franco]

Pardon, no offense intended, but this limited discussion is missing the obvious!

Don't ask, think about it.

[remzy]

To what "obvious" are your making reference to, mister?

 

I thought this out ( yes, yes i do think...) and getting the end of the bohi end fixed by a well established togishi :

-wouldnt ruin the artistic value of the object, on the contrary,

-wouldnt modify that school characteristic of the blade, i dont remember seeing anywhere that "messy bohi end" was a part of the bizen tradition etc...,

-wouldnt prevent you from figuring when the blade was made.

 

IMHO this isnt a case of "preserving the aesthetism envisioned by the smith" like you can say when the kissaki tip is broken and you have to reshape it... since this was done wrong in the first place. Even if a mistake is 1000 years old, it still is a mistake.

 

 

Point take Mr Stuart, i just didnt realise this was acceptable, so to speak, i am just having a hard time beleiving that someone who can carve beautiful horimano cannot make the end of his bohi terminate smoothly.

[Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini]

someone who can carve beautiful horimano cannot make the end of his bohi terminate smoothly.

 

Maybe once it was and the present one is the result of the polishings, exposing the small defects of the steel.

Re-shaping would have meant loss of material, that likely wasn't considered convenient by the polisher.

The same *possibly* applies today.

[Guest reinhard]

This (quoting) "Muromachi Soshu-style......suggests early Mino, perhaps Naoe-Shizu....lead me to think Sa-school.Good sword."- sword is not machi-okuri, as the seller claims, but at least suriage; perhaps even o-suriage, for the mei is lost. This is probably what Franco meant. In this case (suriage) the bottom-end of the bo-hi looks like it should (maru-dome kaki-nagashi with patina). I can't see anything "messy" there. The top end looks just what bo-hi looks like after repeated polish.

 

reinhard

[remzy]

Thanks for the clarifications guys.