Jade hilted khyber knife
 

Dear members,

Here the khyber knife I had the chance to get ,
These are the pictures of.the auctionhouse
I hope I will receive it soon.

The jade hilt is interesting ,
I saw a lot of 1900 and recent peshkabz with this kind of hilt of average quality but I hope this one is a good one
and I just found one indian ''khyber knife'' with jade hilt.

The blade seems good too but has no special decorations or engravings, or damascening .

''Just' a good fighting weapon more than a parade tchi tchi one ??

There is a chance this might be wootz.

Would agree with Gustav!

Thank you for your messages !

Yes it is fine wootz , that's what said the auctionhouse,
Said too it was not common to have a high quality blade and hilt on a ''fighting'' or ''military'' model .
Maybe made for an high rank army member...
I will post pictures when I'll receive it.

I finallyreceived it,
I'm going to clean it soon and see what's going on with the blade.

Interesting on the scabbard the first 7 holes with fake rubies or some kind of resin. Have any of you ever seen something like this ?

Another thing I wanted to highlight was the small size of this Khyber, 48 cm long. Could it not be a large Indian kard which would then have been mounted with an Afghan military type scabbard at the end of the 19th century?

A kard like this one ?

I don't think these grips are of true jade. More likely what is known as Jade Onyx.

The one I get oh yes,
nephritic jade, certified by the gemologist of the auction house i personnally know since a decade.

I already cleaned it and polished the blade,
Just need to receive etchant to finish the job...

Here some results using ferric chloride,
few time...

Not the best
but we can see on both side an
homogeneous fine grain structure.
I hope to get some Nital but there are problems with
customs 😬🙃..

Looks like a type of crystalline wootz to me.

Similar to Turkish or India crystalline wootz.

Wow beautiful blade!!
( and nice job ! )
for the sheath I have already seen an identical one for a Khyber with ivory handle but I cannot put my hand on the picture .
The handle is nice too and not common.
Congrats

To me the pictures look like nephrite handles. Nice polish on this pretty knife. What grit did you take it to?

Thank you all for your replies !

It is not made of jadeite jade ( the number one )
But yes good nephritic jade ( certiified as I wrote )

I found this ottoman dagger '' kard'' with a similar jade handle ,
Interesting wootz blade who links with the comment of Battara about Indian or Turkish crystalline wootz .( still thank you )

For the grit, I started with 400 ( they where a lot of scratches /stains , then 600, 800, 1000, 1200 and 1500,
the finest grain I have.
Then etching , ( and sure baking soda neutralisation ! ) results I think would have been better with Nital but I finished my small bottle time ago and can get it again easily 😑