How to Polish a Japanese Samurai Sword by David Hofhine

This page is dedicated to trying to save Japanese swords from being ruined and protecting sword owners from being taken advantage of.

Why choose Dave?

    I have been studying traditional Japanese sword polishing since 1988.  All work is done by me personally working completely by hand using traditional Japanese stones and methods.  I often spend up to three weeks working on a single blade.  Most sword enthusiasts in the US are familiar with my work and I do regular work for many of the top collectors in the country.  Many of my clients actually feel that my current work is superior to what they have gotten from Japan and more than once I have been asked to redo the finish on a blade that has just come back from Japan.  As far as I know, I don't have a single dissatisfied customer.
    If you want it done right, I'm your man.  You can choose me or someone else to work on your blades, but I would encourage you to find someone competent, experienced and professional to do the job.  The number of competent professional sword polishers working in the United States right now can be counted on one hand and the number that are actually doing their own work is fewer still.  Remember NO polish is always better than a BAD polish.  

The hoards of amateurs and frauds

    There are more unskilled amateur wanna be sword polishers out there than I can keep track of.  They pop up and disappear like weeds, so it is impossible to keep track of all but the worst offenders.  These are guys who work with belt sanders and acids and fancy themselves togishi.
    There are also a hand full of more or less professional con artists who offer traditional work at low prices, but in reality are just ruining blades and ripping off unsuspecting sword owners on a massive scale.  The nightmare stories of damage done to rare, historically important blades are endless.  Most of the blades I get in have been significantly damaged by bad polishing or amateur cleaning.
    The damage done by these amateurs and frauds includes such offenses as hogging off huge amounts of metal, ruining the blade's geometry, rounding off angles, putting waves and ruts into the surface, destroying the symmetry, burning the temper out of the edge through use of power grinders and sanders, dissolving welds with acid and stripping patina from the nakago.  In the worst cases these fly by night operators simply take off with your blades and money and are never heard from again. Even amateur polishers who have been around for a while have been known to simply stop returning peoples blades, phone calls, or money.

How to recognize and avoid the butchers?

    The enthusiastic amateurs, who may not know any better and are just trying to make a buck, are not the only ones responsible for ruining fine swords.  The blade's owners who keep sending blades and money to the unqualified are equally liable.  Here are some clues for recognizing less than qualified sword polishers.
    If they do not have a significant waiting list, they are not doing good work!  It can take two weeks or longer to properly polish a single blade, so it only takes a few customers to keep a polisher busy for months.  If they do not have a waiting list of at least a year or longer, they either have no repeat customers or they are all ready well known publicly for doing bad work.  Even a well known polisher is not to be trusted if he says he can take your blade right away.  They are no doubt farming the work out to less skilled students or subcontractors.
    If a 'polisher' is charging pennies on the dollar, they are certainly not doing proper traditional hand work and should not touch your swords.  Ask yourself if what they are charging seems like adequate compensation for what may be up to 100 hours of highly skilled labor?
    If you have not seen a lot of high quality first hand examples of their work, don't give them your swords and money.  Some people who sell polishing services have extensive websites, boasting all manner of impressive claims, but do not display their work at shows and can't produce any quality close up images of blades they have supposedly worked on.
    Finally, avoid completely anyone who insists on taking possession of your blade before giving you any estimate of cost.

The one stop 'do it all' online sword shops

    There are some online businesses that offer a wide variety of Japanese sword restoration services.  They offer everything from polishing to mounting, lacquering, handle wrapping, appraisal, grading, shira-saya, martial arts lessons, etc.  The quality of the mounting work varies from excellent to poor.  With their polishing service, what you need to keep in mind is that only a fraction of the money you pay them actually goes to the 'polisher'.  Up to half can be kept as profit for the business.  So if you pay $600 for a discount polish, what you may actually get is a $300 polish from a no-name polisher who isn't good enough to attract any work on his own.  You and your sword will probably not be very happy with the results.

An important fact for the novice collector

    NO polish is always better than a BAD polish.  Shiny does NOT necessarily equal better.  Just because your blade comes back from an amateur polisher all shiny with the rust removed does not necessarily mean the blade has been improved or made more valuable.  The geometry is the most important aspect of a polish and this is usually where the most damage is done by amateur polishers.  A rusty sword with its original geometry, lines and metal intact is more valuable than a blade that has been crudely ground down to a shiny wavy stick.  If you can not afford to have a blade properly restored, simply keep it clean and oiled and preserve it as is.  You will be doing yourself, your sword, and posterity a great favor and saving some money in the process.

Do it yourself?

    Traditional Japanese sword polishing is not a technical process like re-building a carburetor where you can simply buy the right tools, follow the directions and have a good result.  It is high art like trying to paint someone's portrait.  You can buy the finest sable brushes, French oil paints, a professionally stretched canvas and get some good books and videos on painting and try and paint someone's portrait, but your first painting will look like a bad grade school art project.  In fact your next twenty or thirty paintings will look equally sad and amateurish.
    After a few years with hundreds of hours of practice and some good professional instruction, your paintings will finally start to look better, but any expert will instantly be able to recognize the work of an amateur.  Only after many years and thousands of hours of dedicated study and practice will your art skills begin to have merit.
    Sword polishing is exactly like this.  You must realize that the first twenty or thirty blades you work on will turn out badly, so taking the family heirloom or the prize of your collection and trying to learn polishing on it is a guaranteed recipe for tragic failure.  If you do not intend to spend thousands of hours practicing and thousands of dollars on good polishing stones, save yourself some money and grief and don't even start.  Instead use that money to have your swords restored by someone who can do the job properly.
    Finally, if you absolutely must study traditional Japanese sword polishing, spend the first several years working on only non-art swords such as modern martial arts blades or the blades coming out of China or maybe broken pieces of older blades.  Also try to find some competent instruction and spend as much money as possible on the best quality natural finishing stones.  You can't get anywhere with junk stones or sand paper.

Sword Polishing Scams!!!

    We have all ready covered the idea that generally speaking, Japanese art sword polishing should be left to those who know what they are doing, but there is another threat out there that you should be aware of.  There are currently several big dealers, collectors or even US based polishers who offer to broker or arrange sword polishing to Japan.  Some of these are very honorable men, but some of them (even the very well known ones) are notorious crooks.  Their favorite polishing scams include some of the following:

    1)  They will promise you the very highest quality polish from top experts in Japan and usually charge you $3,000 to $5,000.  They will then send your blade off to some four fingered meat head (often not even to Japan) for the cheapest polish they can possibly find, sometimes just a sandpaper and acid job from a local butcher.  This leaves them with a several thousand dollar profit and you with an empty wallet and a ruined blade.  Being promised the "best polish" and delivered "the cheapest possible polish" is so common it is almost the rule more than the exception.

    2)  A big name polisher in the US or Japan will use their name and reputation to get you to send them your blade and pay absolute top dollar for what you think will be the best work of a well known artist.  They will then hand your blade off to "Junior Assistant Trainee #3" to do all the actual work.  This is somewhere between bait-and-switch and outright fraud.  The end result is poor quality work at the highest prices.

    3)  This one is extremely common!  They will quote you one total price and take your sword and money.  When the work is done they will claim that the polisher is demanding another $1,000 to $1,500 for "extra work" and will tell you that if you don't pay up you will never see your sword again.  If you do not pay their extortion, you will never get your blade back and of course you won't get your money back either.

    4)  This is probably the worst.  If you have a REALLY nice blade.  They will steal it outright and replace it with a similar looking, but much less valuable blade.  This was most common with unsigned blades.  They would swear it was the same blade and just looked different from polishing.  This one is a bit less common now that quality digital photography is available to everyone, but a few years ago, when all you had for identification was a hand drawing or tang rubbing to go by, it was a lot more difficult to try and prove your case.

    5)  Not really polishing related, but you of course need to get as much information as you can and be very careful when you buy or sell anything.  There are a few very sharp individuals that have built their entire collections by taking advantage of elderly vets when they buy and ripping off novice collectors when they sell.  Some of these people are the same individuals that perpetrate some of the scams listed above.  These guys are generally not my biggest fans.

    6)  Click HERE for more information on scams and frauds.

Hope some of this info has been helpful,

David Hofhine