1050 wakizashi by Bob Engnath in Full Polish

Bob Engnath was a legend in the sword world. Years ago when I was first married we bought a condo in the city of Glendale, California. I used to walk our dogs over to an area called "Adam's Hill" because there was this knife shop there. A great big knife shop. With sword blades too. The guy who ran the place, Bob Engnath, was a great guy. Simple, straightforward, and honest. I asked a lot of questions over the years. I watched him grind and I watched him carve. He was really an amazing guy and I learned a lot from him. He kept telling me to come by some time and spend some serious time and really learn more about how to do all this stuff. One day I decided to do just that, but... The store had closed.

Bob Engnath had died suddenly a few days prior.

I've always had a soft spot for Bob's blades. They can be amazingly active. They can be really interesting to look at and I must admit they're fun to polish. Bob sold them for virtually nothing when he was alive because no one out there was doing decent work polishing and mounting swords. So most became "do-it-yourself" swords. And most still around today look exactly like they were done by "do-it-yourselfers". Which is a shame because they can really be stunning.

This blade came to me via a good customer of mine. He bought it from a friend and it was in Bob's rough finish. The only thing done to the blade is a small area on the nakago looks like someone started to drill a mekugi-ana but never got far. No big deal. The rest of the blade was pristine in his grinder finish. Very cool. Don't see many like that anymore.

The blade style is unokubi zukuri. There is a really sharp "scoop" on the shinogi ji (flat side of the blade above the main ridge line). It was a style Bob did fairly often. It is a big, imposing wakizashi. With a long, more pointy tip which is exactly how Bob tended to shape these things. I had debated reshaping some of these details making them more "traditionally" correct, but Bob is no longer with us. And this is how Bob shaped his swords. So out of respect for Bob's memory I kept his shaping.

The hamon is an example of Bob's best work. Active, interesting, full of stuff to look at. Deep ashi which were a result of how he kept the clay on the blades (something else I got to see him doing one day).

The blade also shows a lot of the "streaking" we'd seometimes see in his steel. What happened was that Bob worked via stock removal. So he's start with a long bar. That bar was shaped originally by being rolled out and this would sometimes cause alloys and impurities to be stretched lengthwise (at least that's what he told a good friend of mine years ago). Those impurities would interact sometimes with the heat treatment making for interesting effects not normally seen in conventionally forged blades.

This blade really shows a lot of what made Bob, well, "Bob".

Originally the owner of the blade, my customer, just wanted me to sell it bare on consignment. But I kept looking at it thinking how nice it would look in a full polish. So... I polished it.

To keep the price reasonable, there is no habaki or shirasaya. I can put it into a shirasaya with wood habaki if the buyer wishes. It is polished and ready for mounting. Or ready to be wrapped in towels and stored until you're ready to mount it. Or just displayed.

Bob is no longer with us. And examples of his work in pristine condition are rare indeed.

$2,500.00 USD. SOLD

Contact me.