Quote Originally Posted by Dovo1695 View Post
The curious thing about this is that it sounds like Iwasaki stopped making the Western style knives in the 1980's. Mr. Stanley told my brother that these were newly made. I guess it's possible that Iwasaki made these knives as a special request of a good friend and fellow master craftsman. It's also possible that the knives were made previously but not sold.



In my brief searches today for Western Style tamahagane Iwasaki knives, mine is by far the oldest batch number that I've ever seen at 1901. The next oldest I've seen was around 1800. That said, it's been 15 years or so, so my brother's recollection may not be perfect either. I'm not sure what to make of it all.

My best guess is that Mr. Stanley was able to persuade someone who knew Shigeyoshi Iwasaki or Mr. Mizuochi, who has run Sanjo Seisakujo since S. Iwasaki retired, to cough up one of the NOS blades that Sanjo Seisakujo is rumored to have. I recall reading somewhere, probably something from Jim Rion, that he saw NOS tamahagane blades when he was given a tour of the manufacturing facility and was told flat out that they were not for sale at any price and were reserved for a special circle of friends. This would also explain why yours does not have the typical black scales that we're used to seeing on tI's.

As age goes, I'm the current owner of Stefan's black scaled Iwasaki (serial #1676). At one time I had information (if I recall correctly obtained from from Takeshi at A-Frames Tokyo) on Iwasaki numbering that put mine as manufactured in 1976.

But I'm guessing the time between the manufacture of your blade and the finishing of the razor was probably at least 15 years.