old mucked up cheap tsuka's revealed some nice menuki!!!!!

[jason_mazzy]

I bought a few gummed up dirty tsukas, to use as a project for building handles for my nihonto using antique period correct pieces. the fuchi and kashira were basically rotting off, but there were some menuki hidden under the rotting silk. I soaked them in water and soap, and then rubbed my hand on them with a lil baking soda, and low and behold these showed up:

 

 

Now mind you I used a scanner, and they do not sit even making them very blurry. These are far better in person. The detail is amazing.

 

The Hotei are shakudo with gold and silver gilt. The face and hands are silver, while the sack is gold.

 

the shi shi seem to be copper base with gold gilt

 

I enjoy that hotei has all his fingers, his dimples, his eyes, his eyballs, his chin, his lips then and his nipples and belly button lol. very nice of them to add all the details LOL

[drbvac]

That was a bit of good luck - nice indeed - maybe I better look more closely at those junked pieces for sale!

[Jamie]

Nice find.

[jason_mazzy]

thank you. the hotei are much better looking. i don't know why the scanner made them look weird or splotchy. they are actually very smooth and perfectly smooth and even patina. the one has the ever slightest bit of wear on his nose. but it actually accents his face better. Great looking pieces. Maybe I can get mark to use the macro setting on his camera.

[Stephen]

your cloth cover is getting closer to the glass than the nuks, try with a color hard paper folder and see what it looks like.

[Bazza]

Jason,

 

Lovely!! Thanks for sharing. Over the years I have found THREE excellent sets of menuki in otherwise abysmal swords!! A suggestion if I might - very selfish as I want more detail!! - crank up the scanning resolution to max and crop the image so we get more pixels on the menuki.

 

Bestests,

BaZZa.

[Stephen]

crop the image so we get more pixels on the menuki.

 

 

and another background color other than Monkey #hit brown lol

 

forgot to say in last post...good find.

[jason_mazzy]

lol it is actually a black shirt. when I crank the dpi to 1200 (the only setting available after 600) it will not let me post the picture. I don't understand it. It is my computer not the site. I will be visiting Mark very soon, and he is great at macro shots. i think that will help them look much better.

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello Jason,

 

I soaked them in water and soap, and then rubbed my hand on them with a lil baking soda, and low and behold these showed up:

 

Decent finds, thanks for showing. Water and a neutral soap are fine, even the use of a soft bristle brush. Caution with the baking soda as it can be abrasive and over clean.

[b.hennick]

Hi Jason:

Scan your fittings in the evening. Set up the scanner, place the menuki, leave the cover open and turn off the lights. When you scan the background will be black and the scan will look great. You should be able to limit the scan size to the menuki. You should scan at maxiumum resolution but then crop out extraneous areas. With photoshop[ you can change the image size. Messageboard allows for images that are I suggest using photoshop and use save for web. That will allow iamges up to 800 pixels wide and 1000 high. Select the largest dimension and then set the pixel size one less i.e. 799 or 999. You then have an image that all can see.

Of course you can also photograph the object and crop that photo as above as well.

[jason_mazzy]

having trouble with this thing. it scans them, but then when i open the scan the picture is blank and says my computer doesn't support this format??? the only thing that changes is the dpi I don't get it.

[rkg]

Jason,

 

+1 on trying to just scan the pieces with the lid open - on most scanners you'll get a nice black background - you usually

don't have to wait til night - depending on the scanner you can just make sure there's no bright light source (I tend

to just shut the curtains and turn out the overheads) and it works fine...

 

On your "can't open" file issue, does the file suffix change? What software are you trying to open the image with after you

scan it? FWIW, I've seen microsoft's "windows picture and fax viewer" screw up when you feed it really large jpegs.

 

scanning at the highest optical resoluion your scanner has and cropping to size before posting is the way to

go - few people want to download/look at all those "black" bits :-)

 

Which scanner are you using? Some are better than others for this kind of imaging... It looks like you don't have

a lot of depth of field to start with here...

 

There's a pointer to something I wrote up a while ago on using a scanner for this sort of thing in the "news" section

of my website that might help you out:

 

http://www.rkgphotos.com/news.htm

 

 

Best,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[jason_mazzy]

I cannot crop because then the stupid windows viewer says it can not open the file. nothing changes just the size.

[jason_mazzy]

I visited mark today and blew a tire right as I pulled in. that was not fun. But I did happen to get some pictures taken of the menuki so I hope Mark posts them soon.

[Mark Green]

Yup here they are

 

Both are very nice!

Sorry I didn't take pics of the back. Next time. We had the tire thingy going on :x

[Mark Green]

A nice set of F&K that Jason brought over as well.

I like these a bunch.

[jason_mazzy]

Mark did you think the shi shi are gold and shakudo or gold on copper?

[Mark Green]

I think the F&K are Shibuichi (copper/silver) with some kind of gold wash applied. I have been told they are likely modern. Hand made. But, newer than Edo.

The menuki seem Edo to me. They are very nice to my eyes. I look forward to having a bit more time to have a good look. It looked like the shi shi are copper with gold foil. The hotai, look to be shakudo, gold inlay, and silver inlay.

Mark G

[jason_mazzy]

Ford I heard you thought the fuchi kashira might be much newer. can you tell me what things and how to spot them, would make you think that?