A Moro Kris With Restoration Questions
 

This is another moro Kris which ive recently bought , as you can see it need some tlc , the hilt has moved up the tang at some point making the gangya/guard loose and now has fixed itself in this position I expect the tang has rusted and is holding the hilt here , any ideas on how to loosen this and get it back into its right place , also as you can see there has been a rectangle hole made in the pommel ,was this for inlay of some type?
I would also like to rebind the hilt but im unsure what type of binding material to use , I think it will be a very handsome sword when finished .
Thanks for any help you can give

I have eventually managed to release the hilt with penetrating oil and lots of patience , the tang was very rusted , after disassembling the hilt I gave everything a good clean and fixed it all back together with the help of some epoxy resin to hold the hilt tight , the result I think is very good , I bound the hilt the best I could with what I had , just thought I would show how it came out .

Nice restoration work!

Good work CHK, congrats! :) I would have tried to keep the both remaining braided fiber rings and just blacken them again. :shrug: But like said, good result.

Regards,
Detlef

You work fast, cleaning and restoring Chief. I will have to agree with Sajen on keeping the original braided rings. Nice work.

I’m speculating that the rectangular cavity in the pommel was once inlaid with the same type of wood. Instead of having to start over and re-carving, it was just filled in.

See the repair work on this Kampilan hilt. Same repair work possibly.

Hi Chief,

Nice restoration and cleaning. I agree that keeping the braided rings would have been more in keeping how it looked in the original culture, but the whipped black cord looks very neat. Having an original anting anting is a nice touch too.

Kino's suggestion about a prior repair to the pommel sounds right to me. I've seen similar repairs on a barung hilt as well. The quality of the repair on kino's kampilan looks particularly good to me and might have been done by the original carver of that hilt.

Ian

I have really enjoyed restoring this sword ,which I dedicated a whole day to get it done , I was in two minds about the brading , there was only one section that was intact and so I left it off as it wouldn't match the new ones , I lightly etched the blade which came up very nice , I prefer not to clean these sword up too much as they can loose there aged look but this one had to be put right ,I couldn't live with the loose hilt , now it looks quite impressive with the bright silver bands against the black braiding , I dont think I will try to tackle putting a wooden inlay into the pommel !
Thanks for all your responses