What NOT to do to and Old Sword

Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith

Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith

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At Harrisonburg a gentleman can by my table to offer me a sword. He had been told that I liked them, and maybe was interested in his. He was holding a large katana in a heavy saya with no fittings beyond a plain iron tsuba. The saya and tsuka were covered in smooth brown leather, perfectly hand stitched down the seam. The leather showed age,and the tsuka cover was a bit loose, but the condition was otherwise excellent. As he handed it to me to examine, he said he had all the Govt. paperwork on it and started telling me about how it was a trophy brought back from Japan at the end of WWII, and the names on the paperwork, etc. I asked permission to examine the blade, and it was granted. The size the saya indicated a very large and heavy sword,with very little sori, which I expected to be a possibly very old shinogi zukuri blade. As I drew the blade, my heart sank. Someone had taken the blade and tried to grind it down on a bench grinder into a thin sabre type blade, and then used 100 grit sandpaper to clean up the terrible grinding results.It was half its original thickness and looked like they had tied it to the back of a truck in LA and drove to NYC with it dragging on the road the whole way. It was totally ruined.......and totally beyond repair...... even as a display piece. Since there was no mekugi, I asked if I could examine the mei and yasurimei on the nakago, (under the tsuka). The damage there was even more upsetting. They had ground all the tang down too, removed all signature and filing.The four ana showed that it had been re-handled several times, and was shortened ( three forward and one nearly at the end).
I asked him why he had done all this, and he said it was that way when he got it. I asked what he was trying to get for the sword and he said $650. I told him I would give him $100, and that would only be for the old saya and tsuka.....he could keep the blade. He said that the last dealer he had taken it to had offered him $100 for the paperwork, and told him he could keep the whole sword.

Lesson to learn here, is....
If you aren't trained in togi, and the ability to recognize which swords should be left in poor shape to preserve their value.....DON'T sand or grind on it!Don't Polish it! Don't take some 400 grit paper to, "clean it up...just a bit." At the most, gently wipe it down with choji oil, but quit there until someone has checked the sword out and said it will be OK to restore it to polish. Don't touch the rust and dirt on the nakago......ever.

I have no idea of the un-modified value of this sword, but a $100,000 sword can be reduced to a tomato stake by what was done to this sword.
 
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and another one bites the dust.
I have to say I'm at a loss for words.
Just a sad tale the is too often repeated.
 
I understand the general idea of your post, but I really have no idea what you were talking about :) Perhaps I need to read up on sword nomenclature
 
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I'll second the sentiments expressed. This doesn't just apply to swords. I can't count the number of times on shows like the Antiques roadshow I've seen the appraiser say something like "Well, in this condition it's worth 5000 dollars but if you hadn't stripped it, buffed it and then coated it with gold paint it would be worth 150,000 dollars." The bottom line is, that unless you are qualified expert you shouldn't try to "clean up" or "fix" an antique. If you are a qualified expert you know better than to "clean up" or "fix" an antique already! :)

In this particular case, it might have been a bit of a mercy that the file marks and kanji had been buffed off. Would you really want to know what had been destroyed?
 
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I handed someone a civil war era powder flask and they promptly began "cleaning it up" for me before I could say anything... no real damage was done but I was horrified!
 
I agree stacy.

Also beware of guys "claiming they can "polish" a sword- after all, all they do is rub it on a rock and make mud:rolleyes:

A traditional sword polisher does more than simply take out scratches and make it sharp. BTW, I recently herd a guy bragging about show well an edgepro made a katana, and how great it worked.

being a sword polisher requires a pretty leingthy apprenticeship.

beware of sharpeners who claim to be polishers:thumbdn:
 
Man while I didnt follow all the Japanese as well, I could tell you were horrified and dismayed from the overall condition. I cant stand it when some one kills a great piece of history.

Jason
 
Translation:
This was a real big samurai sword. The sheath and handle were nice. The blade had been ground to ruin. The tang was ruined ,too. The blade was probably very old and valuable before the damage was done.The person who did it would be considered a criminal in Japan.
 
I believe because that is where the smith signs his work. and any polishing of this area would/could destroy his touchmark.

Jason
 
The smith signs the tang. Traditionally when you make a weapon (as far as I was taught), the smith marks the tang, the name on the blade is the owner. The patina/rust tells as much about the blade as anything else, it's part of it's face and an expert can tell a lot about it's authenticity by the patina/rust.
 
The comment about making it into a tomato stake brings back memories.

I once told a gentleman who had ruined a custom rifle bbl, by mistaking his ability to clean it with a power drill, to go tighten a barb wire fence somewhere.

Leadfoot
 
I thought, from the title of this thread, that perhaps the "what not to do to" and "old sword" were not related. I am sad I was wrong. Hearing about these kinds of things makes me sick. I remember in the $50 Knife Shop, Wayne Goddard recalls that he got the idea to make knives from watching his H.S. shop teacher cut up Japanese swords and grind them into hunting knives.

It probably is a mercy that the tang signature was obliterated.

My stepmom has a 400 yr. old katana in fairish shape, with papers and a legible signature on the tang. One day I'm going to have it restored.
 
It's interesting to me how time changes the way we perceive things.

What once was fodder for the HS metal shop is now a revered antiquity.

As I mentioned in another thread, I collect a number of different things, and I see the same trend in those areas. Things that were once common fall out of favor. During this period they are treated with disrespect (and in some cases disdain), until they eventually become much less common. Then they go through a period of revived interest, and suddenly become revered again... though usually not for the same reason they once were. Eventually, they become valuable enough that they become faked, over-restored, or "married" from mismatched pieces. This in turn creates confusion among the collectors, which once again cools the interest in the items.

And through it all, there will be people who take these things very seriously and struggle valliantly to preserve history... and the rest of the folks who barely have a clue, and assist the universe in its inevitable track toward entropy.

I stand as one who preserves history, though I know my efforts are ultimately futile. I buy less than perfect collectibles (such as pocket watches, radios, telephones, and such) and leave them in as found condition, while doing what I can to prevent them from degrading any further. I have no heirs to pass them to, so when I die they will flow back into the market where entropy will reassert itself on some or all of the collectibles I currently own.

While I certainly admire and understand the dedication with which people preserve antiquities, I make it a point not to get too emotionally disturbed when I see others acting as agents of nature, bringing about the destruction of collectibles. "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do."

- Greg
 
I totally agree that there is no inherent value in just being old or antique. Looking into the future is impossible. As kids we all put Micky Mantle rookie cards in out bike spokes, ruined out Red Rider pistol sets playing Cowboys and Indians, and...gasp! opened the box on our Barbie dolls....destroying the collectors value. However, looking backwards, there are things from the past that anyone will clearly understand the value of. Since large samurai swords are pretty scarce in the USA, I would be surprised to find anyone who would think of them as worthless steel. The temptation to try and restore one is also understandable, that is why I made this thread. The crudeness of the modification done to this sword was beyond anything you can immagine...far beyond destroying its mystique and collectors value. I can only guess it was done by a 12 year old kid in his dad's garage, without his dad's knowledge.
 
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