Took a flyer on this sword - what did I get ?

[grapppa]

Please help me understand what I have...The blade is good overall quality from appearances; it is very sharp up to 2" from the habaki. No serious flaws. There is no tempering evident. The tang is unmarked. Since there are two holes it must have been remounted. There are no other mounting hardware. The habaki is copper with what seems to be a bonded brass layer. Blade length tip to habaki 26". Overall length 33". Blade curvature 5/8". More pics to come of saya.

[grapppa]

Additional pics

[sanjuro]

Hi.

 

Since there are two holes it must have been remounted.

. Not necessarily....... Quite a few nihonto were double mekugi ana. Most Type 3 gendaito blades have this arrangement. I also have a tachi from the Nanbokucho period unshortened that has this feature.

 

Regardless of that, I suspect this sword a little......... It speaks Chinese to me. I base this solely on the nakago which is poorly made, The boshi which is slightly clipped, the absence of a yokote and the overall appearance and sugata. The habaki looks 'wrong' also. But.........I could be wrong here, so lets see what others make of it. :D

[Grey Doffin]

Hi Paul,

Looks like a late war, up against the wall, last ditch type of Japanese military sword. The nakago is poorly shaped and the habaki looks to be borrowed from a different blade and fitted with a spacer to fit this one. Spose there's also the possibility that this is some type of Chinese fake.

Grey

[cabowen]

Shot down......

[Brian]

Yasurime? Kissaki is bad, nakago is terrible.

I vote 60% fake, 40% WW2 colony sword or last ditch sword.

Sorry...but to answer your question of what did you get..I guess the answer is a lesson in what not to do

Doesn't mean many of us don't take a chance sometimes, but we take these risks and accept the consequences.

 

Brian

[loiner1965]

my feelings are its a poorly made nco machine made blade...purely on the basis of the sharpness stopping 2 inches from the habiki

[SwordGuyJoe]

my feelings are its a poorly made nco machine made blade...purely on the basis of the sharpness stopping 2 inches from the habiki

 

Not necessarily. Many WWII era blades do not have a completely sharpened blade. The unsharpened edge, I have been told, is referred to as "Ubu-ba." This is a good indication that the blade has not been re-polished. I have two gendaito blades, one by Nagamitsu, that has ubu-ba.

 

Edit: I am not implying this is a gendai blade, just commenting on the unsharpened edge. I concur that if this is a Japanese blade, it is certainly a late war effort, illustrated by the poorly shaped nakago and kissaki. It also looks like the habaki was pre-made and 'customized' to fit this piece. This would lead me to believe that they were, at the time, using spare parts rather than making habaki to fit blades.

[sanjuro]

Not knocking the sword here, just trying to learn something from the analysis. I think one of the giveaways on this sword is the rather pronounced alteration in width at the mune machi/hamachi transition into the nakago. So deep that a filler had to be inserted into a mismatched habaki in order to accomodate it. Even a colony sword (at least the ones I have seen), does not usually have this.

[Brian]

Yep..I noticed that Keith. I think if we get a shot of the machi without the habaki on, we will confirm what we expect to see.

It is not a poorly made NCO sword, and ubu-ha is common on WW2 swords that were not sharpened or messed with.

 

Brian

[loiner1965]

interesting replies........just proves that top notch swords do not necessary create the most responces

[sanjuro]

Yeah ....... Not so strange though. We can learn as much from negative examples as we can from positive ones. Its one area in which what knowledge we have we can actually use to process the reasons for our suspicions and make comparisons. Another thing that occurs to me on this sword is that there is a noticeable fumbari to this blade. No WW11 sword had that because it is damn difficult to do and is only ever seen on koto blades which this is not. Fumbari and Ubu ha do not occur together on nihonto. Draw your own conclusions.

[nagamaki - Franco]

1) "Bad swords hurt your eyes!"

 

2)

Fumbari and Ubu ha do not occur together on nihonto.

Ubu ba is a function of polish, think about what that means.

[sanjuro]

Ubu ba is a function of polish, think about what that means.

 

OK........... some clarification please Franco. Its very late at night here and the grey cells are slowing down. :?

 

Whilst fumbari and ubu ha are not mutually exclusive features of a blade, I can think of no instances where they occur together.

[grapppa]

I would like to remove the habaki but it is staked on and may require a good deal of force to remove it...It will move about 1/2" easily... any suggestions on removal?

[loiner1965]

all you can do is use lots of oil and gently try and tap it with a wooden type chisel...keep moving it backwards and forwards etc and it will work itself loose

[nagamaki - Franco]

some clarification please

 

Keith, how does the presence of ubu ba on the last few centimeters of the ha alter what would be a widening angle of the ha (if extended out as compared to the angle of back edge of the sword or shinogi if present, too, I suppose), which defines whether a sword has fumbari or not?

[Stephen]

Id just leave it alone and move on to better swords.

[nagamaki - Franco]

amen

[ububob]

Call it tuition.

[sanjuro]

Franco.

 

Ubu ha would make an habaki almost impossible to fit closely to the blade with fumbari. The unsharpened section would require a wider slot in the ha plane of the habaki which would weaken it.

 

I'm not really seeing the point of this, but I guess you are taking me somewhere meaningful with this line of thought. :D

[nagamaki - Franco]

When it comes to discussing nihonto sometimes running off on a tangent can be likened to struggling when stuck in quick sand, it will only get you in deeper .... so, what do you call 4 bull fighters stuck in quick sand?

 

Quatro Cinco (pun intended)

[sanjuro]

I'm still not seeing the point of this. I'm a plain spoken man Franco. Say what you mean for God's sake. I dont have the patience for semantics and your mind games. If you have something to say, then say it.

[nagamaki - Franco]

Keith, fumbari, then ubu ba, and now you're dragging habaki into it, which, I'm sorry to say, is an indication that you're not understanding these features in their relationship to the shape of the sword. A properly made habaki would not come in contact with the ha, in fact if made correctly the habaki will be protecting the hamachi, regardless if there is the presence of fumbari or ubu ba.

 

Fumbari - Used to describe a blade which is relatively wide at the bottom, or in which the cutting edge and the back edge curve in opposite directions (both of these cases are more distinctly visible in ubu (blades which have not been shortened). To say that a blade has "no fumbari" means that the cutting edge is nearly parallel to the back edge at the bottom area; this is often seen in suriage (shortened) swords. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6evZqp8xofMJ:swordwiki.org/wiki/Japanese_Sword_Terminology+nihonto+suridashi&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

 

Just recently I was looking at a wonderful 1939 gendaito made as a copy of a Kamakura tachi, complete with ubu ba and fumbari and it had a habaki that partially covered both features to boot and still fit perfectly.

[sanjuro]

Franco.

A properly made habaki would not come in contact with the ha,

 

Did I claim otherwise?

 

is an indication that you're not understanding these features in their relationship to the shape of the sword.

 

Your interpretation, to which you are entitled, but which has no bearing on the question implicit in this thread.

[Brian]

We are sitting here for 2 pages debating a sword that is very likely a fake. I really don't think we should waste too much time on it.

All I wanted to see was the machi area out of interest. Doesn't really matter either way though.

Can we not get carried away on trivialities please...we should be working together to educate.

 

Brian

[ehk]

This topic was definitely worth learning from for a "not even at newbie level" person as me. The first and only thing that struck me when I saw it was "this nakago looks strange" but as I read this does not always mean something.

 

Thanks!

[David Flynn]

I'm glad I didn't enter this discussion, oops

[Guido]

What Franco is saying is that Fumbari and Ububa don't exclude each other, and the the fit of the Habaki doesn't have anything to do with either - contrary to what Keith said. Geez, what's so hard to understand about that??? Btw, I'm with Franco on this one, fwiw.

[grapppa]

Adding picture of hamachi and mune-machi.