Historical metallurgy is one of the most interesting topics of archaeometry but, in order to have a good level of characterization of artefacts by traditional analytical methods, a destructive approach is usually necessary. One procedure which receives great interest in the field of historical metallurgy is steel making and the production of tools and weapons from this material. The Japanese ancient and historical swords represent one of the best examples in this field and hence are one of the most interesting classes of artefacts to be studied in order to comprehend the evolution of metallurgy. We propose to measure two Japanese long swords owned by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. They are a Chu Aoe School Tachi signed blade of XIV century and a Bungo School signed blade of the Mino tradition (XVII century).