There Will Be Piras

[kai]

Congrats!

That certainly looks like a broken "crest" to me. The hilt seems to have shiny patina rather than laquer.

Also, I've noticed that quite a bit of Piras (this one included) to be made of sandwich construction (steel in the centre, iron on either side). To me this seems to be the only method of construction in pira blades aside from monosteel in newer ones. Have there been any different examples? like patterned blades or twistcore, or did the Yakan produce exclusively sandwich construction blades?

Sandwich construction is the only traditional method for bladesmiths throughout the SEA archipelago aside from inserted edge (maybe more like a variant than a really different construction method at least as far as function is concerned) and very rare exceptions (like the odd keris without a steel core).

What is being used for the outer layers does vary though: Often it's "random" low-contrast pamor (usually of the mlumah type) - the inevitable result of forging out impurities; high-contrast pamor is for showing off and can be of the mlumah type as well as the miring type with Moro status pieces.So far, I haven't seen any pira (nor bangkung) with high-contrast pamor but I'm sure Michael will show us one with twist-core sooner or later...

Regards,
Kai