Prices


	JUSTICE ARMOURY Custom Services Offered. Click here to go to the original starting page.
	Prices
	My goal with every custom project is to provide the best service I can with the materials I have and the blade I work with. I do not cater to high end, custom pieces or nihonto, that is not my forte. I try to provide a quality service for people who want a customized sword, but not at a months salary. Someone with a $450 blade won’t want to spend $1000 on the customizing. This is where I come in. All prices are listed here. Some information on the other pages may be old, this page will be updated if anything changes. As you can tell, I am no web designer. Less time I spend here though means more time spent on work… I deal with only certain types of blades. For instance, I have received offers to polish Gendaito and even nihonto. I refuse these offers. A quality Japanese antique deserves a polisher with great skill, the proper tools, and classic training. If someone needs a production sword polished to enhance the hamon, remove surface scratches, or just correct a low level finish, I can provide these services. I also do tsukamaki, rayskin work, lacquering, and fitting pieces like tsuba to a blade. My services and prices are as followed.
	Tsukamaki Standard I do every tsukamaki in silk of your color choice. I stock some colors, but I have to special order others, so wait times vary. $125 is my charge for a tsukamaki in silk.
	Leather is a different matter. I have done leather tsukamaki, but it is a lot harder to work with and more expensive. It is harder to control the shape of the diamonds. If perfect diamonds aren’t as important to you as a very tight tsukamaki, I will offer this service with a caveat. If I can’t produce a leather tsukamaki I can’t be proud of, I will have to do it in silk. My suggestion, get a leather katate-maki (battle wrap). I can probably manage one of those. This is probably the best leather tsukamaki I have done. $155 is the cost of a tsukamaki in leather.
	Same’gawa Stingray skin is vital to a tsukamaki. It provides friction for a wrap and it binds the tsuka core together when applied in a full wrap. Panels are in essence a shortcut. They don’t do anything except provide the friction aspect. I offer a few choices with full wraps. $75 is my charge for a full wrap in a regular hide portion of stingray skin. It uses a portion that does not have an emperor node, the choice portion of the stingray hide. $100 is my charge for a full wrap in the choice part of the skin, that includes the emperor node. Both this and the above costs are for an average quality skin, the materials cost is roughly half the total cost of the service, and it takes quite a bit of work to prep a tsuka for a full wrap, then the shaping of the skin, the cutting, the gluing, etc. I can special order higher quality skins, but prices vary. Excellent quality skins are upwards of $150. I will try to accommodate panels of same’gawa, but the channels have to already be cut in the wood. It is not worth it to me to spend a large portion of my time to carve panel inlets. It is just as easy to carve the core for a full wrap if I was going to be doing all that work. I will replace low quality panels, but the pricing varies depending on rayskin quality. Please enquire, I can use varying quality panels ranging from $15 to $30 per panel. I also provide black lacquering of the rayskin for an additional $10.
	Polishing As mentioned I only accept polishing jobs for production swords, or perhaps inexpensive custom blades. Sometimes people are lucky and nab a blade for a decently low price. However, I am not a foundation to hadori finish polisher, I work only with blades that have received a full polish prior, but needs help with the finish or with removing minor scratches. A HYBRID polish will typically fall between $75 and $150 depending on the condition of the blade. Some blades need only a minor polish and a hamon enhancing acid etch, these will typically be between $75 and $100. Heavier polishing and hamon/hada enhancing will typically go to $150. Each job varies, I will give an estimate based on photos. I also offer a HYBRID/STONE polish. I do not polish using the large, foundation setting Japanese water stones, the stones I used are the final steps in accenting the folded steel and the hamon pattern rather than using acid enhancing. Some acids may be involved to help open the grain of the folded steel, but the final product is from using hazuya and jizuya stones. This polish typically starts at $150 as it is much more time consuming. The base polish starts with a hybrid polish and finishes off with the fingerstones. Although around $150 in price, this type of polish cannot be done on all swords. In fact, Dynasty Forge is the only company I have customized swords for that can produce a smooth enough piece to accept fingerstones.
	Saya Work There are several services I can provide for saya. Some may not all be available at a certain time depending on my circumstances. LACQUERING I can lacquer saya, but only in certain styles, and only with acrylic synthetic lacquer, essentially the same stuff that goes on cars (minus the metallic effect. I can do metallic too actually). A single, solid color will run about $75. Popular colors are usually dark blues, deep reds, and of course black. Sometimes a saya is a funky color and they want it to be black. Many coats are applied, the finish is buffed bright, and a clear coat is added. I can also do a marbled effect lacquer. This lacquering is much more difficult and time consuming. I ask $125 for a lacquer job like this. Marbled red and marbled green have been my requested colors. I also did an interesting rattan and marbled lacquer combination. I have also done quite a few saya in bare hardwood. I have to sand off all the lacquer, make sure the saya is evenly sanded, I stain and seal the wood, then apply a clear coat finish to the wood (usually a wood lacquer). Because this is lacquering AND a lot of extra work with the sanding involved, this work usually goes for $100 - $125. Remember, not all wood grains are exciting and fantastic. And it’s impossible to know without sanding the lacquer off. RATTAN Rattan offers a classy styling to a saya. It also binds the throat to prevent splitting from bad draws. Rattan can be left natural whitish, sanded and stained, or lacquered over. There are also different styles of wrapping I can offer. Rattan to the kurikata is $35 natural. $50 stained and clear lacquered over, or sanded smooth and lacquered over in black. Rattan past the kurikata is $60 natural. $75 stained and clear lacquered, or sanded smooth and lacquered over in black.
	Electroplating and patina Bored of copper seppa? Hate brass habaki or cheaper looking fuchi and kashira? Well, some things cannot be helped. No matter how much to clean it up, some fittings just don’t look good. However, for certain things I can offer an electroplating service. Many metals are available, gold, silver, brass, bronze, copper, tin, zinc, nickel… each has its own unique properties. Like silver but don’t want to pay too much? Zinc, tin, and nickel are silver colored metals that cost a lot less and plate a lot heavier. As you know, plating isn’t permanent. If you’re not careful, you can rub it off by repeated scratching. Prices displayed are on an assumed habaki / seppa plating combination. Other pieces may cost more. Most tsuba may be too thick or big to use with this kit. These prices assume the pieces need some buffing before they are plated. Gold – enquire. Prices are too unstable. Silver- $55 Copper - $40 Brass – Bronze - $30 Tin – Zinc – Nickel - $30 A note on silver: buy some silver polish for yourself, and polish the pieces I send you. Silver polish actually has silver in it, and it will build the silver plate slightly thicker. I will polish the silver on my end of course, but it will be up to you for the upkeep. Tin, Zinc, and Nickel have different shades. I did a Zinc and Tin plating a bit ago on two separate seppa sets, but I mixed up which was which. I think Tin was slightly darker than silver, and Zinc had a slight bluish tint. Polished zinc does not look like galvanized steel which is flakey and rough. It plates and polishes very bright. Bronze is almost a burnt silver color. Not as gold looking as brass. Bronze comes in many shades, some are whiter, some are redder, this one is a brownish silver tone. I also have “Black Chrome”. Black chrome is a chrome like metal, but with a smokey grey finish. Thing is it doesn’t look the same on each metal. I’ve tried it on copper and it came out looking blackish copper, almost like dark Shakudo. Other metals turned a near solid black, others a shiny grey. Perhaps the only way to get it to look like a dark chrome is to Chrome plate the part, then black chrome plate it. Yes, I also have chrome. This is not offered right now unless you’re willing to experiment a bit, or change to a different plating if it doesn’t look good. I can also patina certain fittings. Not all metals react the way you want, so it will be trial and error basically. For service will be free or almost free as I would do it for just materials costs, if any. For instance, gun bluing can darken brass, silver, bronze, and copper, but they all react different. Sometimes they have to be aged, buffed to even out the finish, and age them again to get them to look right. More than likely this would be a $10 to $15 service tops. Special Projects Other projects can also be discussed, but of course the cost will vary depending on the labor, materials, and difficulty of each project. Certain things I have done like “aikuchi” mounting tantos and wakizashi. I don’t do full mounting right now, but I am experimenting with using hickory handles as tsuka cores. Hickory is incredibly tough, and often used as a high impact wood in tools. So soon I may be able to offer new tsuka cores to the public if I can get this sorted out. More than likely around $90 - $100 for a new core, an extra $75 - $100 for the full wrap of rayskin, and then $125 for the tsukamaki. Perhaps to save a few dollars I would do a $300 package deal. Payment and Shipping I prefer a check or money order sent to me with the project. I will accept Paypal, but prefer not to because of the fees involved. International basically has no option but Paypal. Tsuka cores and smaller projects like tantos can probably be shipped back for a flat $5 charge, Wakizashis for around $12, and full sized katana for $16. Insurance is extra and not included. I try my best to get the exact costs for everything. I ship everything through the US Post Office, which is a faster, and in my experience more reliable service than UPS or FedEx. Please click on Payment and Shipping for my email address if you need to request an order or discuss work any further. Thanks.