Blade origin of Manding sword?

[blue lander]

Ah, okay. The blade on this one is 62cm long.

The blade has a cross section with the fuller in a depression termed 'hollow ground', characteristic of these 19th century military swords and not as far as I have known, ever produced in the more basic blade production of native artisans. While this one is heavily ground down so markings etc are gone, this hollow ground fuller is still visible. While native armourers are known to have been remarkably skilled at forging and fashioning quality blades, they did not have the industrial equipment to produce these hollow ground blades.

I didn't want to insult the capabilities of the native blacksmiths, especially after owning a couple of very nice native made Kaskaras which I admire very much, but my gut instinct was that this was a little too refined to have been made by hand over there. I do still wonder what this started out as, since the blade is much more curved than the 19th century sabers I own. It reminded me more of a Polish szabla or a turkish blade.

Another data point: I flexed the blade by hand and the "false edge" tip of the blade permanently bent very easily (I won't be trying this again). The rest of the blade resisted fine, so maybe the tip had been weakened since material removed to make the false edge. I bent it back straight just as easily. The only two European swords I have are an 1867 Austrian infantry officer's saber and an 1889 Prussian cavarly degen. Both easily resisted the same amount of pressure without taking a permanent bend.