While discussing the origin of Shakethetrees sai
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=19051 I realized that there were just not enough available images of antique sai. Without representitive images that have a known origin it is hard to make a definite determination on any weapon other than guessing.
I decided to put together a Pinterest gallery with as many examples of Chinese iron bar weapons as I could find, this included maces, sai, whips, etc. I have tried to weed out replicas as much as possible and I have tried to only include weapons that I know originally came from China or are easily identifiabe as being Chinese based on very close similarity to known examples.
Hopefully this gallery will be of use to anyone with an interest in these types of weapons. While researching this subject I came across only a handful of sai that were known to originate outside of China, these came form the Indonesian area, I have yet to find even one documented antique Okinawan sai.
One thing that is readily apparent is that the Chinese really liked the four sided profile, this creates a very sharp edge, the Indonesian examples I have seen either were round or eight sided, the Japanese jutte is also very rarely four sided.
http://www.pinterest.com/worldantiqu...ron-whips-etc/