Strange knife

[Ian]

This truly unusual knife is unknown to me. It was in an auction that ended today and was decribed as Indonesian. I doubt that attribution. Perhaps southern Asia or mainland SE Asia.

Ideas, thoughts, ???

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[Sajen]

Hello Ian,

I think that it's a Southern Thai working knife for a special purpose. The handle is similar to the Thai rotan splitting knives.

Regards,
Detlef

[JeffS]

For the rattan knife, the flat base of the hilt is designed to rest against body of the user while drawing the rattan (or bamboo) with two hands to split it. If this is the case with Ian's knife, I wonder what material that blade profile could be designed for.

[Klop]

Lovely exotic knife! With some sort of psychological test included; just like the Batman logo where I see a mouth missing teeth, in this case there is a face in the "negative".

Kind regards,
Eric.

[kino]

How peculiar. I obtained this just few weeks ago.

[Ian]

Thanks Detlef and Erik. Yes there is certainly some resemblance to a rattan knife as used in Mainland SE Asia. I think kino's example is a variant of thjat style of knife.


My main thought was that this odd knife is another pu erh knife used for cutting and splitting a pu erh tea cake. The blade to cut the cake and the spike to pry off the desired amount of tea leaves from the compacted mass.


You may recall I had another "what'sit" (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=28693) a few months ago that turned out to be a pu erh knife.


BTW, I did not win this knife at auction.