Short Development History of Type 95 Gunto

[stegel]

Sorry Nick, but i don't mean to create extra work for you..
I'm just trying to get my head around the engineering involved in the conversions, so am thinking out loud a bit here.

Post 154:

What happened was that they simply had too much stock of Type 32s. And as the army document above pointed out, the Type 95s were designed to make use of blades converted from Type 32s to use up that stock. However, Type 32 A models for ex-cavalry use, having longer blades seemed to have been favored in converting to Type 95s and the shorter bladed B version remained longer in stock.

Post 155:

One of the later mandates for the Type 95 sword development was that old Type 32 Model A & B blades could be converted into Type 95s. This chart shows how the Type 32 blades could be retooled to approximate Type 95 specs.

Post 189:

Regarding some key points of the Type 32 conversions, the following was said.

Blades: The converted sword needs to resemble the new sword design, so blade length and curvature need to be altered to match those of the new sword and also have a Habaki added.

Scabbard: The various Saya features will be converted to resemble that of the new sword, but because of the different thickness of the Saya, the Saya-gi wood cannot be reused. So Saya-ita panels will be newly fabricated to replace the Saya-gi in the converted swords.

These statements indicate to me, that 'Completed' whole Type32's were used for the conversions, not necessarily spare parts of the swords (possibly stockpiled and kept for repairs and refurbishment).
I think that any conversion being made would try to keep costs down and involve minimum effort or complicated process.

If we consider just the blades for the moment. They had their curvature modified and length shortened (providing extra tang) to the Type95 specs, then we still have the issue of the Bohi being the wrong size,(the 10mm of the type32, not ~6.5mm). This would be immediately visible to any of us collectors.

However, it seems that perhaps the blades were completely re-forged to meet all the new specs including the bohi?,
-which makes it interesting to see that the width of the original Type32 blades remained unchanged, and this seems to indicate a lesser process to me than reforging, but then we have the Bohi issue remain?

Once converted and 'resembling' the new Type95's, i would expect issuing of serial numbers, for this to occur, if it did, then the bohi issue must have been resolved.

I don't think it will be in the archives, but i would love to know the exact method of conversion involving the blades.





Post 161:

The inventory pull-order for 2nd April, instructed 1,400 pcs of Type 95 War Specs (vs the peace time dulled down blades) to be issued and charged to the Manchurian Incident Budget. These were all made-from-scratch pure Type 95s

On the other hand, the 16th April document requires 980 pcs of cavalry Type 95s and 8,295 pcs of regular Type 95s to be issued from a Rinji (Extraordinary) Military Budget. These were the Type 95s that were Type 32 conversions.

Are these represented in the production figures we see here?

[stegel]

Bruce, i cannot find it now, perhaps it was over at NMB, i remember you posting a photo of one of your swords which had an unusual tang.
I think it was a wooden handled model, and it had a curve to it instead of being straight.
That would be an interesting one to revisit given the new light that we have.

[Nick Komiya]

Measuring of the blade width must be done within the area not more than 10 cm away from the Tsuba. As explained earlier, Type 95s were to be prepared in two specs, a 平時用 (peace time version) with a dulled blade and a 戦時用 (wartime version) with a hand polished sharpened blade. The peacetime versions were to be handed in and exchanged with the wartime version in times of war. It was specified that on the wartime sharpened blades the dulled portion of the blade should not reach beyond 10 cm from the Tsuba.

Thus the area within 10 cm of the Tsuba remained untouched while the area ahead of that was exposed to sharpening work that could have affected the blade width.

Both the Type 95s and its clone had wartime and peacetime versions at least for the first two years of their existence, before the China Incident made it a waste of time to make dulled down versions. That is why the inventory pull sheet specified wartime version.

By the way, the 8th prototype of the Type 95 along with its cloned version were submitted for tests at 3 schools and a transport battalion, which gave the following verdicts.

1. Infantry School Verdicts.
Both the new design as well as the conversion will be suitable for field use after slight improvements and are both improvements over the current Type 32 models. Furthermore we actually prefer the converted model over the new design.

2. Cavalry School Verdicts.
Both versions with slightly more tweaking will serve well as cavalry swords.

3. Toyama School Verdicts.
(A) Shearing performance
New prototype---------Acceptable
Conversion model------Generally acceptable

(B) Koshirae
That of the prototype is preferred as the official spec, but the type used on the converted model will serve acceptably for the time being for use by Infantry NCOs and men.

4. 1st Battalion of Transport Verdict
Both models only require slight tweaks to make them far better than the current Type 32s

[Bruce Pennington]

Bruce, i cannot find it now, perhaps it was over at NMB, i remember you posting a photo of one of your swords which had an unusual tang.
I think it was a wooden handled model, and it had a curve to it instead of being straight.
That would be an interesting one to revisit given the new light that we have.

Sorry, that is a side-latch Nagoya, at 28.11mm.

[Kiipu]

Post 161:
Are these represented in the production figures we see here?

I revised post #158 after the fact and added the characters found in the table and what they mean. After each sword entry, there are two rows. The top row is quantity made and the second row is cost/value.
三十二年式軍刀 = 32 Year Type 32 Military Sword.
九五式軍刀 = 95 Type Military Sword.
振 = counter for swords.
千円 = one thousand yen.

[Shamsy]

Thanks Nick. I'm afraid then that I wasn't able to find any converted swords in the collection. I did measure correctly, very close to the habaki, as the illustration from Stegel. I imagine these would have to be quite rare.

I'm curious about the bohi too though. When the 32s were converted, then the swords blades must not have had these cut? The image of the sword, to my eyes, appears to have a regular size 95 groove and as you mentioned, appears identical to a standard 95. It's easy to remove metal, but harder to replace it.

Is that sound reasoning?

[Nick Komiya]

Here's a slightly better photo of the clone that shows the bohi grooving configuration. Just don't ask me how they pulled it off so well.

[stegel]

I had the same thought, to get a clearer picture and observe differences, if any exist.
I played with the original picture from the archives and noted some of them here:



Just comparing the two in the picture, i think that the clones should be easily recognisable.
I wonder if the actual photo's are still in the archives, and if they really are that poor quality?
(Perhaps they were scanned poorly during the digitising process)

[Nick Komiya]

If you visit the archives in person and check the original, you will see that original photo prints are pasted onto them in much higher quality than the hastily digitized version. Here's such a prototype report I have on army paratrooper uniforms.

[stegel]

I had an inkling along those lines and that's great news! Thanks Nick!