Katana Pics

Jose Reyes

Jose Reyes

Joined
Nov 14, 2001
Messages
1,152
Was going to wait til Steven was back on to post these but maybe he'll make an exception and respond in this thread. Reading a couple of the other threads going on I decided to go ahead and post them up to contribute a few images...

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Looks great to me. I don't know enough about Japanese swords to know the maker from looking at the sword, so could you please supply a name?
 
Keith Montgomery said:
Looks great to me. I don't know enough about Japanese swords to know the maker from looking at the sword, so could you please supply a name?
Click to expand...

Thanks, Joe!

Sorry, Keith, I was rushing. The sword is a san mai blade by Howard Clark. It was mounted by Keith Larman using some fittings made by Patrick Hastings. It's mounted based on the traditional Higo style.
 
Nice! I have a Howard Clark sword too, I'll have to post pics sometimes.
 
Jose! We Need to see the full blade and point
please share the background on this one
 
Yes, It's doeskin ito. It can get a bit grimey if used a lot but I'll just have to worry about dusting it every once in a while... :D

I've seen your sword, Joss, it's awesome. Great tsuba on it... :thumbup:

Don't have a pic of the full blade after polish but here are a few more. Not sure of the proper terminology but it's a beefy Nombokucho style blade.

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That is absolutely beautiful! :eek: I hope I don't ever get bitten by the sword bug - bowies are expensive enough. But I sure do enjoy drooling over work such as this. Congrats and thanks for the peek.

Roger
 
What a great blade. Howard Clark does excellent work for reasonable prices. However, one person's reasonable is another person's way over the budget.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I've been awed by the mystique of the samurai sword since I was a kid so it's a dream come true. It's pricier than a bowie but you have to take the amount of work by multiple craftsmen that goes into it. The menuki, or fish under the handle wrap, are antiques so the total is at least 4. The nihonto made in Japan are truly pricey, and even more so the antiques used by actual samurai. Maybe someday... :D
 
The steel looks fantastic, the overall package is wonderful ....... the idea of 3 or 4 masters combining their individual strengths into one sword certainly adds to the appeal of the Japanese inspired pieces.

Stephen
 
My interest in knives actually developed from my interest in nihonto and iaido. My "collector gene" wasn't satisfied with the glacial pace at which I could acquire high quality Japanese-styled swords (due to cost), so I transitioned to something a little more affordable and have only occasionally looked back. :D

I dream about someday getting my hands on a Slobodian shobu-zukuri or a Clark 1086M. Or a DiCristofano o-kissaki. :thumbup: But I suspect we're talking 5 figures there...tough to justify when I've got mouths to feed!
 
You know Jose, this is a very good question. The truth is that I have no idea. The project spanned 3 or 4 years, and between the time I bought the unpolished blade (step 1) to the time the mounts were completed, too much time had been spent. I didn't keep good enough records. I know the menuki by themselves were a cool 1 grand. :eek:

With this said, mine is PW. I'm reasonably certain a 1086M with Fred Lohman polish & mounts would be less than $10,000 by quite a margin.

Personally I have decided not to get involved in Jpz swords anymore. It's a process that is too long, too expensive, and too fraught with risks. This sword of mine came up great, but I have had another experience where I invested tons of money in a blade that ended up being flawed, and in a case like that there's nothing you can do (you cannot demand counts to the smith when you've spent 1-to-3X the price of the raw blade into the polish for example).
 
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