Some years ago a chap called me to say he had an I vory mounted Dirk. I hate the idea of ivory and had never seen a good japanese blade in Horn,Bone or Ivory mounts , so I passed on it, in fact as a joke paseed on it to a fellow collector. He bought the 'Thing' for a song, had the blade polished and it made Chu Jo Saku!!!!.
Rule of thumb...never ignore anything.
I remember reading a comment by John Yumoto to the effect that no good Nihonto could be found in Shin Gunto {New army} mounts. This of course is total rubbish as pretty much all the good Katana I have seen have been in Gunto Kosherei.

Several years ago a chap called me to say that he had a paper knife in Bone mounts, it was rubbish but he needed a Kai Gunto rank tassel that I had and would trade it for the tassel. The mounts are splendid carving, the blade is Meiji and OK but tempered so a nice thing, not worth papering but certainly not worth ignoring.

For some reason these did not appear on the Okimono subject.

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Hi Roy,
Interesting pics chap,i've been looking into these type of bone hilted types but info seems few and far between except for the general comments of they are tourist items,
caught a couple of your other posts,also showing some good pics of interest,
welcome to the site,nice to see yet more varied info on other types of stuff,
pic from lyle arms and armour review,
inspiration for an ongoing project,

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I take it these are from an old catalogues?, they seem to fetch quite big money now which is surprising when as you say everyone seems to dissmiss them.............or do they.
Regards

Hi Roy,
the picture is from the lyle catalogue circa 1976,
so i'm guessing the price of these now is notably more,
i've only ever read of similer items made for the tourist's but if you have info contrary to that i;d be very interested to hear,
of late i've seen two or three tanto's in ivory fittings going through different auction sites,actually one on ebay now,better than average carving as well,

Here is one I picked up in the states for $150+/-.

I tossed the blade in a drawr, added some buffalo horn fitting and put in a Hanwei Kamikaze dirk blade.

Now its perfect. ;)

http://us.f3.yahoofs.com/users/4251842azb8e67...CBuSVwaTsA