as i've been lucky today, decide to risk what i had in my pocket on an apparemtly unloved club on ebay. got it for less than the postage. no other bidders.
club is marked 'spilati' on a small white sticker. i found a reference to an area in kruger national park of that name in a travel forum by someone who had been there on 'safari' a few years back. not found by google maps or google earth, wiki, etc. found another ref to 'spitali wood', again can't find what they were talking about.
anybody have any ideas? it doesn't look native to me, is it a boer locally made club from the bad old days of apartheit? looks like the two-tone assegai wood from the dogwood family, which is very hard and dense. have no idea how big or small it is till it arrives. could be 3 in. or 3 ft. long
hopefully somewhat in between and more to the longer end of that range. looks like it was turned on a primitive hand powered lathe from the rough tool marks.
i even looked up the website of 'crate amplifiers' mentioned on the round object (speaker?) it sets on to get a size ref. no round things listed there.
i love a good mystery.
p.s. - the iwisa arrived shortly after posting the 1st post. nice heavy (439 grams, a half ounce under a pound) hunk of almost black wood, and it's not shoe polish
. i think it's ebony or an ironwood of some sort. good polish, but you can fel the undulations of the toolmarks and the almost but not quite roundness of the ball head that this was not turned on a lathe, but hand carved.