Paul Chen Practical Katana Generation 4

I purchased a Paul Chen Practical Katana on Sword Forum Online to use as a practice piece and try out some things I had learned.  It came in a saya with production habaki but no other fittings.  I purchased some fittings to use on this blade.   I would guess these were from Namekawa but I am not 100% sure.  I picked up a tsuba to complete the set. 

The style of fittings is higo and I had to redo  the finish to make a matching set.  The fuchi/kashira had an epoxy coated so I had to remove this and then match the finish to the tsuba.  I resurfaced the tsuba, taking the old finish off and working it until it was smooth and blemish free.   I used Birchwood Casey Super Blue on all of the pieces. I  'burnished' the finish in while I was applying the bluing solution and it came out very smooth and shiny.

The habaki on the blade came glued on, possibly done to make up for a bad fit.   I had to remove it and clean it up and snug up the fit.  I can tell you that whatever the glue/epoxy that was used on this blade, was very tough. Its sort of a grey color (similar to JB Weld) and very stubborn to clean off.  I used a candle and gently heated the habaki up until it started to shift a little, I used a wooden tsuba removal tool to gently tap it off the nakago. Once I got that off, I was able to use files to remove up the excess glue.

The habaki had to be re-profiled at the base since one corner that had a dent, making it so it would not sit flat against the seppa. This will throw the entire fit of the tsuka off, so the habaki base was decked and made flat. There was some minor adjustments to the overall lines to make them all square and flush.

Here is a picture of the habaki after I straightening the lines. It fits flush to the nakago, nice and tight with no excess play.

A before image of the saya after I removed the plastic koiguchi that is standard for Paul Chen.  I made note of two main areas that had to be corrected to get a good fit. I think the previous owner tried to adjust the fit of the blade by cutting a groove inside the saya. This had to be fixed and matched to the shape of the habaki for a better fit.

Here is a picture of the finished koiguchi, the mouth was shimmed up and file fitted. The koiguchi is copper and I added rattan to strengthen the area between the saya opening and the kurigata.  I made sure the rattan followed the overall shape of the saya so it's nice and flush.

I also took off the plastic kojiri and replaced it with a new one made from buffalo horn.  I had to cut and shape it as well as profile it and for aesthetics that pleased me.  Here is a close-up of the new kojiri. 

And finally, here is an overall picture of the saya.  One thing I noticed is that there was some grey 'body filler' used to patch up some of the pits in the saya. I decided against gouging these out as you can see in the following photo.  I might replace the kurigata at some point with one made of horn.

More To Come...