I know that among many Filipinos there has been some debate on the separation line theory. Some of us have noticed that not all early/archaic Moro kris have straight separation lines at the ganja. Some do infact have a 45 degree slant.

Hello Jose,

Yes, I agree that our current working hypotheses need to be very critically examined, especially due to the scarcity of dated examples.

Most archaic Moro kris with obvious age (from wear, provenance, etc.) have a minute kink (at roughly 45 deg.) like Rick's left piece above or those upper 2 shown by Cato in Fig. 44. Also Alan's piece does seem to have had such a hardly noticeable protrusion. I've seen blades which have a perfect minute curve and a rectangular protrusion instead, respectively.

Then there are examples with a larger protrusion like the lower piece in Cato's Fig. 44 or even larger protrusions (like in Michael's piece). Especially the latter are pretty much in line what we'd consider to be 19th century pieces from later Moro kris style blades.

Since this "archaic kris" style seems to have been into production till the early 20th century at least (the latter examples seem to show similar lower skills as in other Moro kris blades), my main question would be which criteria can be used to tell wether any given "archaic" blade is really old, intermediate, even more recent (like 1895-1930)... I realize that Mabagani and others have reasons to believe that Cato underestimated the age - this would just shift the dating (not affecting the discussion wether we can estimate from the features of a blade to which age-class it belongs).

Are there examples with a more 19th c. gangya which show wear and/or greneng consistent with the oldest pieces?

Any "straight" gangya pieces with elaborate greneng similar to Michael's piece above? (Rick's left blade exhibits about the maximum greneng I've seen, I guess.)

Regards,
Kai

For sure I know of only one that Artzi sold to Charles who later found out it was from Brunei and was made in the late 19thc for executions:

http://www.oriental-arms.com/item.php?id=1533

IT has a small slant line at the end.