Identification Help Needed
 

I am hoping that someone here on the forum can help me to identify this rather different knife. It is the top one in the photo below and as these are the only decent photos I have until it arrives I hope it will be enough for this to be identified. It looks to have a chisel grind on the blade, but because of poor photo quality I'm not positive. Any and all help and opinions on this would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Robert

Robert:

The blade shape of the top one reminds me of an Indonesian/Malay parang pendek. If it has a long unsharpened ricasso it could be one of the other parang types (e.g., parang lading). This is not a blade form that I would commonly associate with the Philippines.

Ian

Hello Ian and thank you for your thoughts on this item. Parang was my first thought also, but the clipped point was throwing me off. Most it not all of the ones that I have seen (with this basic blade shape) have a tip that rounds down from the spine to the cutting edge. From what I can tell from the few poor photos that I have the ricasso does extend four to six inches from the hilt before the cutting edge starts. I had done a web search (before posting it here) looking for examples of parang with this clipped point but had no luck in finding one. Posting it here on the forum I had hoped that someone might be able to identify where it was from or might even have one with a similar tip that they could post for comparison. I had not completely ruled out the Philippines for a source for this either as there seems to be no end to the different style of blades that were made there over the years.:D Thank you again.

Best,
Robert

The parang has arrived and it is much nicer than the photos show it to be. The V grind blade is 9/32 inch thick at the hilt, 15-1/2 inches long measured in a straight line from hilt to tip and 1-3/8 inches at its widest point. The cutting edge starts at a point 3 inches from the hilt and is still quite sharp. I will post new photos of this tomorrow afternoon.

Best,
Robert

New photos.