Japanese Sword Polishing and Restoration BEFORE and AFTER

Japanese Sword Polishing and Restoration BEFORE and AFTER

This page shows blades polished by Japanese art sword polisher David Hofhine both before and after polishing. Click on the Recent Work or Facebook link for lots more pictures.


This 27 1/2" osruiage blade signed Echizen Kuni ju Kaneyoshi with double grooves on both sides polished in a sashikomi style. This blade has 4 peg holes and was originally 6 1/2" longer! This was a pretty tricky polish because of the bad pitting rust in the grooves. Also, this type of sashikomi finish is actually more difficult to do well then the more typical keisho style finish. See this page for more information on the difference between keisho and sashikomi finishing.

This is a 28.5" orsuriage Oei Bizen masterpiece. All four of the above photos are of the same blade. This blade has great choji utsuri which unfortunately can not be seen very well in the photos. I spent a full month working on just this one blade, confirming my status as a starving artist.

This is a before and after picture of a 27 3/8" Oite Toto Kato Tsunahide tsukuru kore. Dated Bunka ju ni nen hachi gatsu hi or August of 1815. It is a very nice blade, but a bit blood thirsty. It got me pretty bad twice!
This is a 25 1/8" gendaito by Nagamitsu. It suffers from a low grade early Showa era polish and a rather badly chipped kissaki.			This is the same blade with just a finish polish and some extra point re-shaping.
This is gigantic 33 1/2" presentation sword by the early Showa era smith Kajiwara Hiromitsu from Chikuzen. This blade had been horribly abused over the years. Before I started, I mapped out 14 specific individual bends in the blade. The geometry had been completely ruined by severe rust followed heavy power sanding! Click on this photo for a much larger image.

This is a before picture of a 21 1/4" wakizashi signed Iga no Kami Fujiwara Kinmichi with kiku mon, ura mei Nippon Kaji Sosho. Just a little bit of exploratory stone work has been done here.		This is the same blade after full traditional art polish. It has some nifty little bits of activity up in the ji.
These are some BEFORE pictures I received from the owner of a 27 1/4" osuriage blade with a two character tachimei signature of Kaneiye.
Here are some full length pictures of the same blade after polish.

Here is a progression of work on an old Koto Yamato blade from coarse arato stone to finished blade.

This is a before picture of a 21 1/4" wakizashi signed Yamashiro Daijo Kunishige, covered in deep rust.

Here is a closer view of the same Yamashiro Daijo Kunishige blade after full polish. After about 2 weeks work, this blade has gone from junker to treasure. This image shows the great activity in the hamon and ji-hada just above the ha-machi.

Here is an interesting example of a Finish polish only. Please do not let this blade give you the wrong idea about finish polishes. Someone had used fine finger stones to clean this blade, so it looks pretty gray, but other than that it had a mostly smooth clean surface.

Note the deeper scratches and small chips it had could not be removed with just the fine finishing stones. I can't even tell you how many times people have sent me a rust spotted sand papered mess and expected super fine finishing stones alone to somehow clean it all up. This is frustrating on both ends, so read the description on the SERVICES page carefully about what can and can not be fixed by finishing stones alone.

This is a 15 1/2" wakizashi signed Tamba no Kami Yoshimichi in pretty rough condition.

This is the same Yoshimichi blade after full polish. Note the kiku-mon in the hamon and the sunagashi above the hamon typical of a Yoshimichi blade.

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Please note, the blades featured on this web site are not currently in my possession, do not belong to me and are not for sale as far as I know. An absolute minimum number of blades (usually just one or two unmounted and unpolished) are kept on hand at all times to minimize liability. -David Hofhine

This is a before and after picture of a 27 3/8" Oite Toto Kato Tsunahide tsukuru kore. Dated Bunka ju ni nen hachi gatsu hi or August of 1815. It is a very nice blade, but a bit blood thirsty. It got me pretty bad twice!