Type 98 red saya?

[Frank]

Hey guys, anyone seen a red saya for a type 98 before? (Signed and stamped blade btw) doesn't look to be a modern paint job neither, and no other colors underneath the paint. THANKS!

[Frank]

[Frank]

[Conway S]

Hello Frank, 

You will get more responses if you post this in the Military Swords thread. I see that this paint has age to it, however, this is not the hue of red normally found on period correct pieces. Looks like Bubba painted it in his garage sometime post-war. The traces of red paint on the saya fittings indicate this was not done with care and thus probably not original.  See the below link for often encountered period saya colors. 
 

Conway
 

http://ohmura-study.net/904.html

 

[Kantaro]

Those bloody communists...

[Bruce Pennington]

We can say for sure it wasn't a factory paint job.  You can see red splotches on the brass parts where the guy that did the job got a tad sloppy.  You won't see that on a factory paint job.  Now, whether it was wartime bubba or post-war bubba - who knows!  I have 3 NCO's that I thought were post-war bubba-jobs, and stripped them.  Now, after some further discussions and seeing others pop up, I realize that 2 of them were wartime paint done in the field.  

 

I can say I've never seen one that color red before.

[George KN]

The areas where the paint is chipped away seems to be corroded. I wonder if this is another example of someone painting it in the hope it would stop rust?

 

This happened to mine, which was painted brown and black, seemingly covering up damage to the original green paint:

 

 

 

If the red really has just been painted on top of the other fittings (which it does look like), I recon you might find the original paint colour when taking off the koiguchi.

[Mister Gunto]

Definitely looks like Bubba got ahold of this one. Hopefully he left the blade alone.