Question about finish.
 

Cleaning up the little blade that turned out to be a meed chai-tong, I found myself cursing the guy who put the file marks in the blade. Then I looked more closely at the pitting, which was not rust after all but forge marks, and the question arose....how good was the finish in the first place.
On a lot of SEA and Fillipean stuff I see here, the forging and shaping of the blade is superb, but the finish rough, although the mounts are very nice indeed. So , is the roughness due to age and use, or were these never that polished in the first place.
I am not refering here to pamor work, that is off in a different direction entirely.

Post pics, please. The "finish", especially on older working blades, was not always finely polished on these.

David, Yes, it is very common for the older Thai blades to have forge flaws, and file marks...they often do not do have a high polish. If you see a finely polished SEA sword it's often because a collector has polished it themselves or had it professionally polished and etched to bring out the temper line.

Andrew, will do what I can, I don't have a working camera at the moment, but have a friend who does.
Nathaniel, thanks for that, I wondered. I suppose we see the temper line and laminations as features to be brought out, and to them they were just practical solutions to make a sharp blade.
But it does seem funny, the forge work and shaping is so good, and the carved hilts downright beautyfull.
And then you look at Chinese, Japanese and Indo-Persian stuff where the finish of the blade is paramount!