Parang Kerekoepang From Banjarmasin, Borneo

[CharlesS]

Here is a parang kerekoepang from Banjarmasin, Borneo recently purchased from Ebay, and now restored to more of what it would have originally looked like. It has some very unique features, even strange to me. Note one side of the blade has a shallow fuller and turns inward sharply at the blade's edge. The opposite side of the blade of the blade is practically FLAT, with no fuller and the edge turning just slightly inward.

The blade is quite heavy and thick. It is hard for me to believe that the all wood hilt of this sword could have handled such a blade for long, indeed, you can already see an old stress crack. It seems to me that it would not take much of a blow, even for this slasher, to break the heavy blade from the hilt. Note there is no bolster, rattan or wire wrap, or anything else to strengthen the hilt.

It's a lovely sword to look at, quite elegant, but I wonder about its "engineering".

Restoration only involved cleaning the blade a little and replacing some of the many cord bindings.

Dimensions:
24in. overall length
18in. blade length
1.5in. widest point of the blade

[Sajen]

Hello Charles,

it's a very nice example and when I don't would have bought the kanta shield just before we would have had a fight about this one! :D You get it for a very good price! And the restauration of the scabbard bindings is very well done. :)
I've sold my example some time ago (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=17327&highlight=banjarmasin) which was maybe a great mistake. :(
Congrats for getting this very nice example!

Regards,
Detlef

[Timo Nieminen]

The blade is quite heavy and thick. It is hard for me to believe that the all wood hilt of this sword could have handled such a blade for long, indeed, you can already see an old stress crack. It seems to me that it would not take much of a blow, even for this slasher, to break the heavy blade from the hilt. Note there is no bolster, rattan or wire wrap, or anything else to strengthen the hilt.

It's a lovely sword to look at, quite elegant, but I wonder about its "engineering".

It would be stronger with a bolster, or with wrapping. Possibly much stronger. But if the wood is resistant to splitting, and the tang isn't inserted into an under-sized hole in the hilt (which would put a lot of stress on it), should be OK. In use, I'd perhaps worry more about failure of the resin, rather than the hilt breaking apart. (Losing the blade due to resin failure is made more likely by a low stress fitting, but should still be OK.) If it's good wood, it'll get some long cracks rather than fall to pieces, which will let you know that it's time to get a new hilt.

A short blade puts much less stress on the hilt than a long blade. I think length matters more than the weight. I have seen longer blades in bolster-less hilts; I've used a longer blade in a bolster-less hilt (horn, rather than wood) to fell trees (RIP faithful golok; the blade failed while the hilt kept going - hit something very hard and took a big chip out of the blade).

Yes, the hilt could easily be made stronger. But strong enough is strong enough. Traditional hilts are often built in ways that collectors of modern swords would regard with horror as absolutely inadequate. But history shows that the traditional way is good enough.

How heavy is it?