Very Unusual Philippine Sword.
 

Here is a very unusual Philippine sword from my collection with a decorative scabbard that was made from a discarded sugar tin. I believe this piece to be from central Luzon and would date to the late 19th or early 20th century. Because of the material used in the making of the scabbard this could very possibly be from the Subic Bay area where a sugar tin such as the one used would have been readily available from the trash of the American Naval Forces stationed there.
Originally I was not going to post photos of this piece until it was finished,
but decided instead to show it in the different stages of restoration.
At some point in its history the last (approximately) four inches of blade and
scabbard were bent sideways almost to the point of snapping the blade into. When I received it the blade and scabbard had been straighten out far enough for the blade to once again slide in and out freely, but the blade itself was broken about three quarters of the way through from the cutting edge to the spine. It has since been welded back together. I will post more photos of this item as the work progresses with close-ups of the blade repair. Any comments or information that anyone would like to add would be greatly appreciated. I apologise for the poor quality of most of these photos.

Best,
Robert

A VERY UNIQUE SWORD I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING HOW THE WORK PROGRESSES. IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE IF ANYONE ELSE HAS SEEN A SIMILAR METAL SCABBARD FROM THE PHILIPPINES. PERHAPS YOU CAN GIVE THE BLADE AN ETCH TO SEE IF IT IS WATERED STEEL. YOUR BLADE REMINDS ME OF THE BLADES ON SOME OF THE SWORDS FROM FORMOSA MINUS THE POINT. I THINK THE CLIPPED POINT STARTED DURING SPAIN'S OCCUPATION AND CARRIED ON INTO THE USA PRESENCE. .

Hello Barry, here is another bolo (that still needs a good cleaning) that I believe to be from the same time frame and possible location. "If" I remember correctly this was described by the seller as being brought back from the Spanish American War. I have seen a couple of knives with metal sheaths (I won one of these) as well as two other swords with metal scabbards, but I was not lucky enough to win either of them.

This is what I have been told as well. With or without a point this is one vicious example of bolo that I do not believe was ever meant for farm work. :eek:

Best,
Robert

Robert,

Your second example is a Central Luzon matulis from the revolutionary period in the fight with Spain at the end of the 19th C. The word matulis in Tagalog means coming to a point, or sharply pointed, which is an accurate description for large knives/short swords of this shape. Purely a slashing and stabbing weapon. While it could be used as a tool, it is not optimally designed for such work and is therefore mainly a weapon.

Sharply pointed blades such as these were prohibited by the Spanish in the late 19th C. because they were such deadly weapons, hence the amputation of the tips on many pointed blades at that time to conform to the Spanish decree. To own a matulis at that time was to brand you as a revolutionary and a renegade.

As far as tin scabbards, I believe these likely come from later, in the 20th C., when U.S. forces were well established in Luzon. Your first example may well be a knife from an earlier period later dressed up in a fancy tin scabbard.

Ian

Hello Ian,
Thank you for your very informative response on these two items. Your suggestion that the first sword could possibly be older than the scabbard itself was an idea that Lorenz and I were discussing right after I first acquired this piece with the possibility that the sword likely dating to somewhere between 1850 and 1890 and (as you point out) the scabbard being a later replacement. The very unusual styling of blade is one that I have never seen on any other Philippine sword before and was wondering if you have ever seen anything like it before either?

Best,
Robert

Hi Robert
Looking forward to hearing how the welding was done.

I have used oxo acetylene with fair success in the past but I do not have access to tig or mig so maybe these are ether for blade repair. I also do stick welding but this would be too harsh for blade work.

When repairing breaks, I found it no real problem when working at the spine of the blade but where the blade becomes very thin Towards the cutting edge I found it quiet difficult not to burn through the blade.

Did you find differential cooling a problem, I did in so far as I had to heat the blade either side of the weld to help ease the contraction of the metal from forming cracks.

Best regards
Ken

Hi Robert.

Yes, I have seen Luzon knives of this shape before, but not frequently. The curved blade with a prominent "belly" reminds me of the general shape of some of the older Visayan garab. Two examples of this form are shown below from the History of Steel exhibition. The prominent angle of the garab hilt is not present in the few Luzon knives I have seen with this general blade shape.

Ian

Robert,

Here is another blade of similar style from the History of Steel site. The Macao Museum called it a Luzon tabak.

Ian

Hello Robert,

what a beautiful and unusual bolo with it's tin scabbard. :) And a very good restoration you have done until now. Please keep us updated with the further steps you will do on it.

Regards,
Detlef

Sorry that it has taken so long to reply, but I have had a long difficult weekend.

Ken,
As far as welding goes I prefer either Mig or Tig over gas welding as it is much easier to control the heat. I always attach a piece of steel formed to fit tightly against the blades surface with a ridge contoured so that the cutting edge fits tightly against it. This is done by fixing the piece in place using thin gauge steel wire. Not only does this act as a heat sink, but allows the weld to be started on the ridge and continue up onto the thicker part of the blade without burning through. Of course it will have to be cut loose from the blade before the weld to the opposite side can be done. I also use heat sink paste on the blade about an inch on either side of where the weld is to be made. After the welding is completed the blade is then inserted into hot sand to slowly cool again before the clean-up and final shaping are done.

Ian,
Thank you again for your comments on this piece and for the photos you have added as examples. I have examples of both styles of knives/swords that you have shown, but this piece is much larger with a much deeper belly than both of my examples of these two other styles do. Just for added information I have added a photo taken from a book (that I will have to look up the name of) that shows one style of the bolos that we have been calling "tabacs" as "katana". There was a slight mix-up of the letter designations of the items in the description section, but the corosponding names have been added to the photo itself.

Detlef,
Thank you for your kind words on the work that has been done to this point. I will add more photos as the work on this progresses. If it were not for your help I would not have been able to add this most interesting piece to my collection.

Best,
Robert

I understand the "katana" one to be from Pampangas.

That and their being called "tabac" is what I was always lead to believe as well. According to the header both these pages are from "The Pinatubo Negritos" by R.B. Fox of the National Museum so I am not quite sure now where the "katana" originally originated from. :confused:

Robert,

Thank you for the very interesting plate and reference. The Pinatubo Negritos are, I understand, members of the Ayta tribal group. The term negritos came via the Spanish to describe the dark skin of these rather short people. US servicemen at Clark AFB and the Subic Bay Naval Station would have come in contact with Ayta because this was part of their home territory. In the 1990s, when I visited the Subic Bay area, there were many of the Ayta in that area and they were closely associated with the Jungle Environment Survival School (JESS).

Of the examples shown in Fox's plate, the hilt of the second one sticks out like a sore thumb. The hilt is clearly of Tagalog origin and Jose's attribution to Pampanga is probably correct. Not that Pampanga is far from the Ayta at all, and this style of knife could easily have been acquired in the area they occupy.

The first knife (called here a dipalata) has a style of hilt that caused much debate on this site some years ago. A studio portrait of an Ilongot man showed him holding one of these bolos. At the time of that discussion it was thought that style might be attributed to the Ilongot, a tribal group of former headhunters in northern Luzon. Fox's plate suggests an Ayta origin, and given the staged nature of the picture of the Ilongot man, it is possible he was holding a bolo from elsewhere merely as a prop for the picture. However in both cases, Ilongot and Ayta, this hilt style is not consistent with other weapons used by these respective groups.

The remaining knives shown in Fox's plate are more typical of what I have seen among the Ayta, with rather nondescript wooden hilts of functional (rather than decorative) form.

Robert, I tried to find a digital version of the Philippine Journal of Science online, but volume 31 (?) does not seem to be available. Perhaps you could scan and post a copy of the article here for future reference as this seems to be a rare publication.

Ian

One more comment. The word dipalata is not one I recognize as Tagalog. Although dila does mean tongue in Tagalog I don't recognize the construction of dipalata as being based on dila. My Tagalog-English dictionary does not have the word dipalata, so I'm wondering if it may be from the Ayta dialect. Does anyone know from which dialect the word dipalata may have come?

Ian

Hello Ian,
Sorry it has taken this long to reply to your question. As my computer decided to drop dead I am just now (after quite a bit of updating) able to use the wife's gaming computer to get online again.
I received this information from our friend Lorenz and have sent him a request for help in locating the entire article for posting here. As soon as I hear back from him hopefully I will be able to either post the information directly to this thread or at least a link to where it can be found.

Best,
Robert