LOHAR - Solving The Mistery

[tom hyle]

Originally Posted by Bill Marsh

I also wonder why Lohar are flat,almost unfinished, on one side even when heavily decorated on the other side. Maybe you could ask your friend? Seriously, is it because they were made to hang on a wall?

I doubt that. More likely because they were meant to be worn on a body, where only one side shows. It is a common (of course not universal) practice for blades to have a front decorated side and a back plain side. On saxes it was quite prominent, and it is also seen frequently on earlier modern European kitchen knives (which are marked and spine-swedged from the thumb side; medieval ones were often grooved and inlayed on the same side only.) and swords (commonly marked from the hand side, if on one side only. Machetes have often been deliberately marked as knives). Only one side shows when you're wearing one.
The ice/candy pick seems realistic, and I don't know that in preindustrial environments ice and candy would be considered a domain of children.
As for an icepick as a weapon; that's pretty much all they're currently known as in N America.