Tsuba

[Steffieeee]

Hi can anyone give information about this tsuba? Age/school. The sword has been in some action with blade nicks saya damage, and I assume this huge whack/scrape to the side of the tsuba. I assume the tsuba is shakudo, looks like a lump of chocolate, pretty thick. Thanks for any help Stef

[Ken-Hawaii]

The tsuba dent is unlikely to be from sword damage  - that's not the way a sword is used. Tsuba's main purpose is to keep hands from sliding onto the blade. Something sure whacked it, though!

[Steves87]

It seems it has been impacted by something with 'teeth', like sprocket teeth.

I like the moon/cloud combo

[Pete Klein]

Maybe someone thought it was a Yagyu tsuba???

 

PS:  I just noticed this is my 3,000th post!  Not bad for around 18 years...

[Spartancrest]

It could as likely be the result of simply dropping the sword and landing on something hard, I was tempted to say it was glanced by a bullet but the metal would have bulged only in one direction. That won't buff out you know 

[Babu]

It's not a crushing damage as you would have equal and opposing damage the opposite edge of the tsuba. It seems to point to it being impact damage based on the laws of engineering. But wow what an impact. So someone was cleavering with something held in a serated jaw clamp and got the timing so wrong the tsuba impacted the metal clamp. Bit "out there" but it looks like that's a possibility.

Regards Adam

[Steffieeee]

Any idea about age and school? It's iron actually not bronze

[Steffieeee]

What does this mean?..

Maybe someone thought it was a Yagyu tsuba???

 

 

[ROKUJURO]

Bomb shell, I think.

[Steffieeee]

Can no one really advise on the age and school of this tsuba? My question was really about the tsuba not the dent in it ..

[Brian]

What does this mean?..

"...In books possessed by the Yagyu family it states that early Yagyu tsuba were tested by being placed on a wooden block and pounded and cut to test their strength."

 

With Pete, you have to think laterally

 

[Steffieeee]

Aha thanks Brian

[Geraint]

Dear Stef.

 

I always find it much harder to say anything about tanto tsuba, some of the clues that might help don't seem to relate to the small size.  This one was nice, moon behind clouds with a nightingale on one side and the silver reflection of the moon in the water on the reverse.  The style of inlay, theme and the fact that it's an iron plate might lead to Mito? There have been as couple of threads recently discussing tsuba which are copies and somewhere I have seen a reference to the fact that wherever a tsuba maker was working a Shoami guy and an Umetada guy were looking over his shoulder.  The suggestion is that many of the works we are trying to assign to a specific school are generic  products by a multiplicity of workers who were just following the zeitgeist.

 

What's the rest of the sword like?

 

All the best. 

[Steffieeee]

Thanks geraint so not easy to place it in a school. Appreciate the explanation. I think technically the sword is a short wakizashi although it feels like a large tanto. It's a really nice quirky piece, with a Zen line carved into the blade which I think is muromachi, a nice animal kashira, the saya partially damaged by a sword cut which for me adds to the history of the piece

[MHC]

Love to see complete pictures of the entire sword and Koshirae, really cool kashira.

 

The damage to the Tsuba has distinct correlational to bullet/shell rifling marks but just a WAG, so.....?

 

Mark

[Steffieeee]

wow yes now you mention it that would explain the striations and the huge impact force. Just been having a look at bullet rifling marks and almost identical I think. need a forensic ballistics expert. actually I think I might know one.. I'll give him a shout

[Wolfmanreid]

Definitely not a bullet impact as the rifling striations in a projectile could not be transferred to a piece of cast iron like that. Even the soft iron of the tsuba is way harder than the lead of a projectile, even a jacketed one. Looks more like someone really cranked that thing down in a vise jaw or pipe wrench or something similar.

[Steffieeee]

Oh well back to the drawing board lol. It's old enough for the iron to patinate naturally over the top so as old as the sword is I think