Anticipation: is it or isn't it somali?
 

just picked this up on ebay, described as a 'rare vintage native hunting knife'
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s...kew/billao.jpg
6 in. blade, 10 in. loa.

looked like a somali billao dagger shaped blade from the scabbard, only pic on ebay, am looking forward to see the whole knife & blade. ebay item no. 300273343158

Hello, you can find variations of this knife in southeastern and southern Ethiopia.
Regards,

Martin

I would say it started out as a billao dagger.

Lew

it arrived today, after cleaning off the cosmoline on the blade:

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s.../Dagger001.jpg

not exactly what i'd expected from the scabbard shape, but interesting. guard appears to be aluminum and horn spacer, brass, alumminum and horn grip with a heavier brass pommel, roughly hand checkered.

Kronch

Click here and you will see Tim's bone hilted billao thats how yours started out. Someone decided to regrind yours into a standard dagger shape.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...=billao+dagger

that's more what i was expecting, oh, well, still makes a nice dagger.