It's not much...

The saber is Manding. The blade's very nice - it starts out about 1/4th inch thick and tapers down to a false edge at the tip. The steel's got that "European saber" look and feel to it - it flexes but not as much as modern spring steel.
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The sides of the blade are a bit wavy and the width of the blade fluctuates a bit - as if it's been cleaned and sharpened a few times. There's no ricasso or fullers or anything like that. I wonder if it's a repurposed briquet or naval cutlass blade.
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The pommel and guard are made of some sort of stiff fabric. I thought they'd be leather but you can see the weave of the fabric. I don't see how it'd be comfortable to use this thing, the pommel digs into your wrist when you swing it. It feels very sturdy and the blade's still sharp - it could definitely do some damage.

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The last one reminds me a lot of a parang. The edge doesn't start until halfway up the blade so you can really choke up on it for fine work. I believe it's from the Congo.
 
interesting. The cloth appears to be similar to oil cloth. An old material used on sailing ships sort of a canvas coated in linseed oil to waterproof it. Also makes it stiff like this sounds. The last one. Is the blade damaged along the spine? In the picture it appears to have a break. Might just be the picture angle though.
 
Oh yeah, there's a big ol' crack through the blade.
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No damage to the edge though, it's still quite sharp. So I bet that split is due to a flaw in the steel rather than any abuse

The fabric on the Manding hilt does feel a bit like tincloth. If you look very closely you can see some sort of spotted pattern printed on the fabric, so who knows what it started its life as.

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I think I found a logo on the toy/decorative rapier. I can't make out what is says, though.

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The other side of the hilt doesn't say anything, it just has the crosshatch pattern.
 
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Wow. That is some crack. Did you know about it when you purchased the blade? Seems that sort of makes it a decorative item now eh? LOL.

As for the cloth. It almost looks like one of those old burlap bags. Complete with "writing" at least I think I see some sort of pattern to those spots that might have been printing at one time. LOL I wonder if it is soaked in something like pitch or something. I had never heard of tincloth before had to look it up. Yeah that appears to be very similar process for oilcloth I think it is the same concept maybe just a bit different ingredients.

Logo? Wow, it looks like random blobs to me. Perhaps the crosshatch is enough to find a match on the logo. Don't know how you would even go about finding that sort of thing but so far you have amazed me with your finding ways to identify blades so I am eagerly waiting to hear what it is once you find it.
 
Yeah, the auction was honest about the condition of the thing. But I paid very little for it and knives from the Congo that show up for auction are usually out of my price range.

You can't really make the logo out well from that picture, but the last character is definitely an M. It looks like it's only 3 or 4 letters but the rest is badly worn out. I don't know what kind of company would make something like this, so I have no idea where to start looking. Was it a toy company? Sword company?
 
Just a guess but I would think it would be a sword company. even with your description of the blade I don't feel that a toy company would have been correct. Usually children's blades were made by the same makers as adult swords. BUT if it is decorative only, that makes it even harder to guess, so I am suggesting concentrate on the swordmaker logo's on the probability that you can find those since the decorator idea might be impossible to find anyways.
 
I still creep for antiques but ebay has been sparse for mandau lately-- but managed this from a private dealer, made me a really good deal on this and two others
blade of the above, very thick

 
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That's really cool. Human hair kind of freaks me a bit but I'll be ok.

Is that ivory on the handle? Sure looks like it, could be bone I guess.
 
yeah pretty sure the top is antler and bottom is bone, but both could be antler-- the demon and spirit faces on the grips really get to me, they are extremely skillfully done and very evocative, but yeah the human hair adds an air of "reservation" about the idea it could have been taken in force , and most likely was-- both of these blades probably saw combat and killing since both are from mid 1800s

last one is probably the creepiest of all







I just sent out the payment on these to secure them for the long term :D-- but as I said I will not have them for some time, I trust the dealer though as he has sold me awesome stuff in the past-- that kora that i bought was from same guy
 
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WOW!!! that is sure an incredible piece. Creepy a bit, but the condition and the eloquence of the carvings. That is true museum quality stuff there. Sort of the you are guardian of it for future generations sort of stuff.
 
yeah I don't collect the mandau lightly , and if my family does not wish to continue the collection I fully intend to find someplace to donate them ( or they can sell them when I am gone whatevs )when im done being intimidated by their formidable history and craftsmanship-- I even contemplated a region appropriate war shrine to appeal to the tingu to not seek the heads of children ?



between my first and these there are several of varying quality , these are definitely the top of all I have gotten though
 
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Might have to break out the Head and Shoulders for that one. That's a lot of hair. Have to look at them teeth and see if they are whittled in or maybe they are real an glued in.

I'm pulling the covers over my head on this one.
 
the spot you see the teeth is a traditional spot for many of the borneo tribes to place the spirit face-- when they went head hunting they would go through like voodoo rituals ( voodoo like) where they would call on animistic spirits to inhabit them, thats the tingu-- the tingu required blood and human heads to deliver messages to the other spirit worlds, so on the authentic blades you will almost always find some kind of face ( from those regions , I am still learning obviously) so the choppers on that one is the war demon's face I think
 
Those are stellar mandau, Gehazi.
Human hair is creepy-human bone is off the hook:
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This was a piece I did a restoration (read:kept from turning into a swordapult) on a couple years ago. Snapped off Japanese officers sword blade, pommel is human scapula. Instead of a pisau raút the side blade is a tombak (spearhead) dagger-this dude was angry.
Dates from WW2-brought back by a dude who was probably OSS, or the Pacific theater equivalent. Supposedly in the estate with the sword was a period photo of the GI, the Dayak holding the sword, and a shoulder-high pyramid of Japanese heads.
Surprisingly, wasn't an uncomfortable thing to have in the house.
Again Gehazi, those are gorgeous.
 
yeah the special forces were all over borneo , i read accounts of the SAS being impressed with how the dayaks could take off a mans head in one swing because of their blades, while the japanese officers and soldiers would take several slashes to kill prisoners with a katana, mandau only ever took one - so goes the legend anyway, but I know SAS and other special forces groups of both sides were all over borneo. and when reading accounts of a man lamenting the loss of the head hunting art, he told how the old timers would describe using the blade as very easy , they would just slap towards the victim's limbs or neck, never really aiming the edge, because wherever the edge caught the flesh the weight would draw it through.

but dayak or headhunting martial arts im sure would have been pretty grotesque to watch when they were fighting for keeps instead of prisoners since it seems to have been all dismemberment and decapitation
 
The Brits encouraged headhunting against the Japanese-I wonder if they ever regretted that.image.jpg
I made myself a little one out of blister steel and a stag fork-the chisel grind seems to help wonky cuts, though it's bloody hard to make a straight cut in soft materials-always ends up a curved cut track.
 
That used to hang in the gun rack of my truck...thanks Gehazi. That blister steel(carburized wrought iron) gets so hard that there was some head scratching getting it soft enough to work with...
 
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