Luzon Itak?
 

ebay special.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...ayphotohosting

when i saw it, i thought it's your typical steak knife size blade (yes, the seller gave the size, but i have a hard time trying to picture it based on the description. i guess i've already made up my mind once i saw the pic, lol...)

got it today and i was pleasantly surprised. this piece is actually beefy. the handle is actually made out of carabao horn (seller erroneously described it as wood). it has a weird jewel like glass embedded in it. alos there's a brass cap on the pommel. what impressed me the most was the blade. as short as it is (14"), it's 3/8 inch thick at the base. it has some serious nicks on the blade's belly.

i pretty sure this is a luzon piece, but does anyone has a similar piece i can compare it with? would just like to know how old this piece is (the horn handle looks pretty old based on the appearance...) and maybe what province it came from. i will provide some more close ups.

thanks in advance...

Is that blade chisel ground? Almost looks that way in some of the pics.

hi federico,

sorry for the late response. no, the blade is not chisel ground. i'll post better pics when soon...

Stoned?
 

There are a lot of clear stones. I doubt that they are diamonds, but quartz or white sapphire are just 2 possibilities. A jewler could use an eyepiece to check for double refraction and heat dissapation. You might be pleasantly suprised.

thanks jmings,

it is indeed preplexing as to what type of stone it is, but i got a feeling serves as an amulet or agimat. taking it to a jeweler is a great idea for identification. thank you.

spunjer,
would an anting anting be attached to the handle? too easy to fall off, imho.
very nice balaraw.

thanks laban,
i dunno, it's hard to say. it's pretty secure, tho. another name that was suggested on this piece is tabak.

spunjer,
my fault, i didnt see it was 20" long. could be a tabak.

Looks like a slim Tabak to me.

On a related note, the Tabak is the logo of the Phil. Army's first infantry division whose AOR is zamboanga peninsula, basilan, sulu and tawi-tawi. they are usually in the forefront in the skirmishes with moro rebels. Tabak vs. barung.

Talking to some of the elders in my region a long time ago, they felt that tabak and itak itself are interchangeable, though tabak was used for larger blades while itak was for smaller (eg. oh pass me the itak when asking to pass the steak knife vs. pass me the tabak when asking to pass the cleaver), but then they started messing me up by talking about having large itaks and small tabaks, and then they got into the oh well we dont really know and then back to the oh yeah no its this to oh well not sure to the why do you care if it has a specific name to both tabak and itak are just general words for knife/machete to well you get the idea :rolleyes: :eek: :D forgot to add oh just call it a bolo :D

...i guess it comes down to the western mind's penchant for being too specific sometimes (i.e., it 's assault and battery since while he was verbally threatening you he stepped on your pinkie toe...).

looking back at my old posts, i did asked a lot of questions in regards to terms used on these sundangs, some i've heard before, and some that are news to me. when i went back last year and actually spent some time in the inland of Panay (small farming towns like ajuy, tanduyan, tinori-an, etc) and hooked up with friends i haven't seen in decades, i brought with me pictures of these old visayan sundangs for identification. i was reintroduced by them to their fathers and grandfathers, same manongs that use to scold us for teasing the carabaos when we were kids, lol. ahhh, good ol' days...

anyhow, it's funny how they referred to those sundangs as binangon, regardless on how the blade is shape. i guess, they were looking at the general form of the sword. even after pointing out the difference on how the blade is shaped, it didn't matter. as zel pointed out before, go to a different province in that island, and the same sundang is called sanduko, or talibong. then going back to manila, the term binangon is as alien as tombak; the same sundangs are now known as itak, lol. the meaning behind the 'diety' hilt is something that is still a bit of a mystery, tho. maybe, that's another example on how we scrutinize every single detail on how it came to be....