Takouba supposedly from the 30's

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Originally Posted by Shakethetrees

A good, acceptable, answer might be to just say it is twentieth century, and if further focus is needed to call it pre war or post war.

WWII brought a lot of materials and outside exposure to places that were before the war, isolated from outsiders.

A lot of debris wound up following armies to North Africa (as well as everywhere else!). Magazines, stuff from the civilian market, etc., could have been picked up from trash piles or traded and, to use a recently coined word that is now currently in fashion, "repurposed" in unexpected ways. One thing that comes to mind are the Chinese daggers with fake tortoise shell grips, where cellophane or some other clear flexible material was wrapped over cigarette box paper to create a poor imitation of shell. How well this held up over time is reflective on the their scarcity.



Sometime even construction methods have been upgraded due to this exposure. The surplus of available steel and brass and other metals and new materials made piecing together in the old manner not necessary anymore. Aluminum crept into the picture, used in grips and mountings from Afghanistan to the Philippines and elsewhere.



New tools and the availability of electricity and acetylene torches had a tremendous impact on manufacturing, leaving its fingerprint primarily as grind marks and welding beads not ground and finished out.

The study of these traditional weapons made using non traditional materials could be an interesting study on its own.

But I digress...

My point is to say that all of this should be taken into consideration when dating a weapon, or any other bit of cultural material, for that matter.

We are living just past the largest shift ever witnessed where old methods and materials disappeared and new ones emerged.

What an excellent summary , very well thought out.