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So the Koumyyas arrive in the mail today. "Hmm," I sez to myself I sez, "The scabbard looked all brass from the auction picture, but some of this brass is a little differently colored than the other brass..."

I scrub the thing with a pencil eraser and....

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Voila! Some of the decorations are made of what appears to be silver that's been soldered on to the scabbard!

The blade's interesting too. It has a very faded etching of a guy on a horse by the hilt and some flowery scroll above it. I don't know if the Koumyya maker did that or if it's recycled from an older blade.

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Wowza! How incredibly wicked cool is that! It's sweet.

You sir are just a magnet for finding cool sharp pointy things. I browsed around some during lunch but must not have looked in the right places.
 
Thanks! This is the second Koumyya I've bought that looked brass but turned out to be at least partially silver. The other one I bought with this one (the one with the bone hilt) appears to be silver washed in certain places, but it's worn off and isn't as nicely done. I'll take pictures later.

I'm gonna clean this blade up and see if I can't make out any details on the picture of the guy on the horse. It looks European, maybe something to appeal to tourists.
 
Oh, don't use that tourists word. You got the right thing baby. Who said that Lou Rawls, nah, Ray Charles, yeah!!!
 
the proper polite term is 'for those who travel' ;)

what i can see of the blade looks like an older one, they are occasionally decorated. newer ones tend to be thinner & less well crafted, grind lines & primary bevel may be rounded or not even present, ie. 'flat'. a thickness less than 4mm may indicate a newer display knife 'for those who travel'. thicker ones may indicate one intended to be useable. the use of brass and german silver is fairly typical, may even be gold/silver in high grade examples. they generally are suspended from a colored cord & tasseled baldric tied to the scabbard loops. i gather nowadays they are mostly worn on special occasions like weddings rather tha common EDC like in yemen.

mine, has the date 1928 dot punched into it. (blade is not really rusty, it's patinated & oiled but not over cleaned. scabbard is brass & german silver.

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the grip is too wide for comfort on mine, it's not one of my favourite knives & i'd never actually select it to defend myself.. blade is 4mm, so borderline. appears never to have been sharpened tho it does have a primary bevel on the inner edge and on the first few inched of the outer curve.
 
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Interesting, blue's seems to be much thinner and a bit longer in the grip but pretty much the same shape, the scabbards are quite similar.
 
yes, they're all pretty much slight variations on the theme. you can even get straight bladed ones call genoui, they're much rarer tho...
 
it goes knda milky, but not black. might be silver if it has black tarnish. clorox test it. (dip a q-tip in it & wet a small polished spot- will turn black on real silver, the purer it is the faster it'll turn black.) if it's plated silver, you might eat a spot thru to the base metal, usually copper or brass.
 
image.jpgGood to know, thanks. The white metal bits on this scabbard appear to b soldered on rather than plated.

The little flyssa arrived. It's probably one of the crudest examples I've seen, but I like it. image.jpg
 
E-nep just arrived! Lookit that curve. Love that crusty scale too
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Here's the other koumyya. Scabbard has silvery bits after cleanup. The blades about 4mm thick and has a crude shallow fuller. The blade and scabbard are both cruder than my other one but I think it's an older pieceimage.jpgimage.jpg
 
Sweet! What's the handle made of on the koumya. Bone, Antler, or a light colored wood.
Sheath is really nice.

Love the crusty scale on that e-nep too. Looks great.
 
So I did the Bleach test on the two koumyyas. Now, I did it with CVS brand bleach which in my experience is less diluted compared to real clorox. On the "newer" looking scabbard it turned black after about a minute, and then about a minute later some verdigris started form like you'd expect on copper. On the older looking one with the bone hilt it turned black after about 20 seconds and I didn't notice any verdigris.

So I reckon they both have silver in them, with the older one having more silver than the newer one. I don't have a piece of sterling silver to test as a baseline unfortunately.
 
when i tested my moro kris gangya i did a side-by-side on a solid silver salad fork i have, took a while to polish out the black spot on it :)
i have a full boxed silver plate set from my married days, but didn't want to eat thru the plate layer so i didn't use any of the plated set.

p.s. - they both reacted the same, proving the gangya was fairly pure silver.

anyway, quite cool that the koummiyah turned out to be silver in part.
 
I know my wife has some silver jewelry but I 'm not going to ask her if I can use it for testing. I'm not that dumb! Maybe I'll go to a thrift store and see if I can find some cheap sterling silver plated flatware.

Another nice surprise - I used my puuko for the first time this weekend to slice up a bunch of veggies. After I finished I noticed the edge steel looked darker than the body. I guess that means it's edge hardened or at least laminated steel.IMG_0207.jpg
 
My little Indonesia blade arrived. I was told this isn't any particular kind of knife, it's basically just a shank. A quick sharp piece of metal to poke holes in people, not a specific "ethnic" style of traditional knife or anything like that.

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It does look like it would get the job done, and it's small enough to be concealed easily. Seems odd to made a disposable little knife out of such nicely pattern welded steel though.
 
A lot of work just in the sheath too. Any inmate would be right proud to have a shank like that!
 
I agree, it's a lot of workmanship just for a shiv. My theory is that the blade is the tip of an old keris or tombak that was a family heirloom or whatever, and when it snapped they mounted it in a way that would still allow it to be displayed.
 
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