Two new Philippine Acquisitions to share

[Battara]

Originally Posted by RobT

Hi All,

I have a number of kris with a one piece baca baca (or asing asing as the case may be). On all of these kris, the ganja (to use the Indonesian term) is either part of the blade proper (ganja iras) or, as is on the kris shown in this thread, so closely fitted to the blade that the line of separation is almost invisible. I assume that the one piece baca baca made its appearance in the late 19th/early 20th century? The other question I have is about the closely fitted ganja. Is this tight joint indicative of a manufacturing technique that is markedly different from that used to forge the older kris blades and is the tight joint an inevitable result of the new technique? If this is the case, does anyone know how it was done?

Sincerely,
RobT

Hi RobT,

Very early kris (1700s) had ganga that often looked very separate from the rest of the blade. As time went on though, the ganga production got better to the point that the style was to have it look contiguous with the rest of the blade. It would seem that integral gangas started to appear in the roughly 1920s and then an engraved line to hint at a separate ganga in the 1950s. Rough estimates, but these are my observations.

Another observation is that often gangas were made of the same steel, or even earlier, of a separate laminated billet, with the laminations being perpendicular to the rest of the blade.