Piso Gading

[kai]

Hello Roland,

Congrats, a neat piso gading from the Toba Batak - it really is a beauty. Thanks for putting in so much effort and posting the restoration results here!

While Batak blades rarely exhibit showy pamor of decent contrast, the laminations are often nicely visible and very interesting from a blacksmith's perspective!

The scabbard rings may well be silver. The mouth and foot pieces will have been done by the lost wax method - my best bet would be that the utilized alloy is closer to white brass rather than a low silver alloy though.

I'm still slightly confused about the massive hilt, it's simply too big even for large hands as mine.
But the very sharp blade got some nicks so it was definitely used. I wonder how to hold this blade in action, is there a special technique?

These are status swords that most likely saw ceremonial use only. From the looks of it, the blade may well be older than the already old fittings; maybe a user blade which got promoted to ceremonial use at one point?

Regards,
Kai