[Mytribalworld]

Its still possible to buy good old mandaus for a reasonable price.
Its like buying a car there's a lot of space between Lada or Rolls.
not everyone can pay the high prices for the swords listed above but even for the man with a normal wallet its possible to collect nice items.

Blades: also between the blades is a lot of difference in quality.
many travellers in old times has seen mandaus that easely good cut a iron nail in pieces without damage on the blade.
In old times blades where made of local melted ore.many of those blades where so good that they could match with Swedish steel.
Main reason for the high quality was the purity of the ore.
The ore found on Borneo was based on 1000 a number of 996.986 FE2O3 (red ironoxide) . That could result in almost 70% pure iron while the number of strange insults like chalk,phoshor etc, was only 2%.

Another point was the big difference in quality of iron in the rest of the world in those old times.The most iron produced elsewhere in the world was made with a 2 step proces. First cast iron was made and after that it was converted into wrought iron.So it could be carried out on a far greater scale.
and of course it was much cheaper.
But the european industries where still coping with the problem of creating a tough iron with this process.
Only in Sweden they could make a high quality.
So early observers ( mid 1900 century) often compared the quality of Borneo with the Swedish iron.

Not every dayak village was so lucky to have a good blacksmith and also Nieuwenhuis mentioned that sometimes brandnew mandaus when they where tested where badly damaged and of a low quality.
One of the most produces baldes is the classic Kayan blade and good kayan blades where traded all over Borneo.

sources: Door centraal Borneo - A.W.Nieuwenhuis
metal working in Borneo - J.W.Christie and V.T.King
ijzererst in de Tanah laut residentie zuid en oosterafdeling van
Borneo - H.F.E.Rant

Arjan.