SOLD Heavily customized NEW Huawei 9260 heavy mat cutter
Nov 24, 2024 5:24:13 GMT
Post by wildv on Nov 24, 2024 5:24:13 GMT
I think it's finally time to try and sell this bad boy. There is a huge story here with this sword spanning literal years I'll go over in detail below.
It's the Hand Forged 9260 Spring Steel Oil Quenched Nami Koshirae Hishi-Gami Niku Shinken Heavy Cutter seen here - www.huaweiswords.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=20_27&product_id=52
Obviously been out of stock for a few years now, you most likely will not be able to purchase this sword again.
The Story
Long before joining this forum I had a grand idea of purchasing hard to find or always "out of stock swords" that people wanted, customizing them slightly for better craftsmanship overall mainly all tsuka/tsuba related to put them closer to a custom made sword, but charging well under what you'd have to pay yourself and make a nice little profit for myself while doing so. Boy was I wrong about all of this! This is why I've sat on this sword now for the better part of a year, going back and forth of do I sell it or do I just keep it as I know I'm in for a huge loss here. I've learnt that the hard way this year by being here on the forums, asking around and learning about buying and selling of swords.
I purchased this factory standard 9260 heavy mat cutter direct from Huawei and got it sent right to my local koshirae guy - sorry, I cannot reveal who he is here on a public forum as he does not wish to take on new clients at this point. As you can guess this was several years ago now, I had a heads up Huawei was about to become messy and the demand was definitely there, and still is? I decided because it's made as a heavy mat cutter I wanted to design it after the Bugei swords that were very popular at the time, the Old Pine and the Samurai, a bit of a cross of the two. The fittings chosen.
The tsuba (iron), seppa (brass), shitodome (solid silver gold plated), fuchi & kashira (red copper black plated), menuki (brass), sageo (synthetic Japanese silk), ito (genuine Japanese silk) and samegawa were all purchased direct from Japan. You can see in the photos we went for the pine theme, with a few Samurai warriors on the fuchi & kashira. The war fans for the menuki also reminded us of the shape of pine needles!
A 11" (a touch over see photo) tsuka core was handmade because that size is the most popular when I asked around.
Huawei also do not make their own tsuka to fit each individual sword so this was really important to us. We of course full wrapped with samegawa. The samegawa isn't the highest quality, we were limited on selection at the time and choose the best overall one we could. It does have an emperor node but it's nothing too special. The point of this project was to create the best sword for use. Nothing too flashy or fancy, just very solid, well made and practical. Both photos below are from before the samegawa was stained. The mekugi are also Japanese smoked bamboo.
We needed a saya to match the Old Pine theme but for this budget we were not going to handmake a new one, instead we purchased a "one size fit's most" saya from the saya makers in Longquan. You will receive both original Huawei saya and this green one with this purchase. Fit is ok, a bit of rattle from both but that is what you get without handmade to fit. The spare saya will also come with a saya bag (not pictured).
Due to all of this taking years, the last thing to do was the tsukamaki. Sadly my guy cannot do tsukamaki anymore due to hand issues. I waited too long on this project initially he was going to do it all, so I had to find someone else. I went with Student of War and I am happy with the wrap. It is not lacquered, it is super firm, you cannot move the wrap with your fingers at all. This is what we required from a sword to be used.
Here is the sad part. Based on my initial calculations the Bugei Old Pine cost $1,600 so as long as this project was under that I assumed we could sell it for a few hundred less than the Bugei listed price. It is basically the same built sword, obviously the steel is different (although this Huawei is arguably better for cutting than Bugei) it's not folded or DH which is just really cosmetic, but also adds value so we needed to definitely consider that. Below is what was spent on this sword and you can see a bit of wiggle room for a possible profit.
$510 base sword
$390 fittings/parts from Japan
$175 tsukamaki
$90 tsuka
$75 saya
$390 fittings/parts from Japan
$175 tsukamaki
$90 tsuka
$75 saya
$1240 total spent
You can all laugh at me now! Luckily I didn't go off my initial idea of purchasing about 5-10 swords to start with and do them all similar to this then loosing 10k or more!! Anyway, my loss is your reward, get a beautiful crafted sword you cannot buy anymore. The polish on this is the best I've personally seen on a TH sword. I can provide more photos if you need.
Thanks Sword Buyers Guide friends! Here are some nice blade photos, check out the niku (below in "attachments" I can't add them to the post?) and the lovely yokote!
A comparison between the Old Pine (left) and our version (right):
Attachments:
