Giant Tenegre Part 2, it is WOOTZ

[Roland_M]

It is a few years ago, since I wrote my last comment.
I hope, that no one missed me.
Me was thinking, that it could be not the worst idea to show something beautiful in that current dark times. Yes, it is a weapon but definitely nothing for modern conflicts.
In that time I had much to do and was also able to learn a lot of things by self training. For example the treatment of high end low contrast wootz. High End wootz and I mean the stuff for the battlefield often got a very low contrast but extraordinary beautiful patterns. I developed my own, very mild techniques to make low contrast wootz visible.
So here I have now pictures of a recent etching/staining, the technique is between etching and staining. The treatment went not perfect, I was so excited to see a clear pattern, that I forgot to treat the cutting edge. The next attempt is already prepared.

In my eyes it is absolutely sure that we see wootz here. The knobbly structures I highlighted in picture 3a are wootz-exclusive.
Picture 5 shows the blade after polishing with non abrassive metal polish. Picture 7 is the beginning of the differential hardening, this is the only pattern on this blade, visible without etching/staining.

I hope members and anonyme readers will like the pictures and the big question is, where is this blade from? I can add, that the wootz shows similaritys with northern Indian and early ottoman blades. That makes me believe, that a Wootz-smith from India or Turkey went to the Philippines and showed them how to make battlefield ready wootz blades. This sword has seen a lot of combat, I have plenty of evidences for that an my other computer.

I am sure, that there are more Malay wootz-blades but they are very rare and difficult to recognisze.

Best wishes,
Roland

Btw. please no offers on this sword. The grinding, polishing plus my secret chemical treatment alone is worth easily 2000$ and I guess no one is willing to pay for that.