A very, very old Moro kris

[Ian]

Originally Posted by kai

Thanks for posting the digital X-ray pics, Ian!


Actually, I'm inclined to believe that this tang is close to square (with some tapering along its length) since the tilted pics (30°/60°) appear to show a slightly thicker tang than in orthogonal orientation (0°/90°).

Regards,
Kai

Kai, the apparent diameters are a little misleading because of the different degrees to which I cropped the pictures (and thus the magnification is slightly different). Eyeballing the pictures shown is misleading because of this.

That is why it is necessary to reference the measured diameter of the tang to some other measurement (such as the width of the silver hilt at that point). When I standardize for the slight differences in magnification resulting from the differences in cropping, the diameters come out to within a fraction of a millimeter of each other. The only view which is slightly narrower than the others is the 90º one. Alan may be correct in thinking that the the tang is slightly flattened, but it is unlikely to be rectangular according to the measurements I made.

A CT scan would answer the question definitively.