Here’s another tsukamaki restoration that Aldwin did on his personal katana that he use for training. This is actually 2nd full customization where he also customized the saya. This katana was orignally the Kaisen (Battle) Katana 1060 Series. But now it’s called the “Gin no Senshi” or Silver Warrior Katana.
This is just a low budget customization. He re-used some of the fittings he had laying around. The tsuba was from a different katana that we have. We used the same fuchi-kashira and nickel plated it. We replaced the original brass dragon menuki with a pair of brass kabuto (samurai helmet) that we had and nickel plated it as well. We modified the brass habaki and nickel plated it too as well as the brass seppa. We added 2 more seppa as the tsuba was thinner than the original tsuba. We re-wrapped the tsuka with black synthetic silk tsukaito, also in hinerimaki style, but this time it was traditionally wrapped where hishigami (paper wedges) were used to ensure a very tight wrap that will last a very long time. We stripped the original lacquer of the saya, then we rounded the sayajiri (end part of the saya) and lacquered it in a silver gray stone finish. We discovered that rust has formed on a small portion of the blade. So we repolished it, removing the wire brushed hamon in the process then just gave it a satin finish instead of its original mirror polish.
We hope that you like what we did with this katana.
