Hi all,
I've been having a really hard time finding information about how to tell what level of quality a given bladed weapon (specifically, ethnographic daggers/swords) is. Forgive me if I've missed some well publicized post on this blog, or something obvious on the wider 'net, but the only things I come up with out there are Spyderco folding knives and so on. As for going to a country, visiting its smiths and/or knife/dagger salesmen and knowing enough to identify a well forged ethnographic blade vs. a low quality tourist rip off, I'm coming up blank. I've run into this problem in the Philippines, Taiwan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan just to name a few. I'm not totally naive... but I just can't find anyone with this kind of knowledge who's willing to pass it on to me.
To give it some focus, I've been collecting Uighur, Tajik and Uzbek Pichoks and will be adding Taiwanese aboriginal blades to my collection over the next few years. The focus of my collection is newly made pieces in traditional styles which could actually be used if I wanted to.
Think back to when you knew little/nothing about this stuff. How did all of you gain your seemingly encyclopedic knowledge?
Hopefully someone out there can help me out!
