Very nice Moro dagger for comment!!!
 

Hi I have a dagger here, I was wondering why the metal bands on the scabbard had bubbled? And is the metal band on the hilt a swaasa band? Thanks.

dagger
 

how much! ! ! ! !

Nice gunong Philkid. It looks to me to have genuine age, late 19th-early 20thC. The metal work is nice. The only reason i can think for the bubbling on the sheath metal is that perhaps the gold color is not the main metal itself, but some kind of finish or plate. The copperish metal on the hilt could swaasa, but it could also just be copper. The other metal looks like brass to me since it appears slightly tarnished which gold would not do. Nice ivory. :)
Falcon, welcome to the forum. I'm sure a moderator would tell you, but since i'm here :rolleyes: this is not a buyer/seller forum, it is purely for study and discussion. We do have a swap forum for such things. I look foward to hearing your opinions and viewpoints on various blades and subjects. :)

Re the bubbling on the scabbard fixtures . If this decoration is constructed as Battara described so well in post #19 of Ceremonial Kris :

" Gold plating - not real plating, but as Cato uses the word. Here is why I hesitate to call it plating. Plating is a 20c invention that places a thin gold film of only a few microns on a surface (thus plating is going out of style in many jewelry stores here in the US). The layers of precious metals Moros used were an actual layer (32 gauge) of material fused to a base metal like brass or copper (more commonly). This is what Cato is really refering to in his book, though I take issue with the term he uses. Again, this was mainly used by the Maguindanao and Maranao. I have actually measured this in the Maranao and Maguindanao pieces I have. The technology is not that difficult because it took only a furnace (or bellows) to heat up the materials together to a point where they would start to fuse before melting. However, this would take precise control and experience. This technique is still used today around the world. "Gold filled" is the closest commercial equivelant in that a thin layer of gold is fused to a base metal of brass. The brass is thicker than the gold, but the gold is much thicker than a film a few microns thin, and that is why it wears much better. The Moro/Indonesian/Malay fusing of precious metal is thicker still, and is more economical than solid thin bands of pure metal. My kris that I posted has the swaasa bands of 32-30 gauge bonded (fused) to a thicker base of copper. "

The bubbling may be a result of either poor bonding or degradation of the base metal .
Anyway it seems like a very nice older example of gunong .

Falcon I'm pretty sure you were joking with the offer to buy ; if you are really interested in obtaining an example of this weapon they appear fairly frequently on ebay although few examples as nice as this one show up .

Another thing ; if you do end up purchasing one with an ivory pommel you would do well to buy the item in the USA as you may encounter importation problems from other countries ivory being a protected material under the CITES agreement .

The reason the metal has 'bubbles' is because the brass parts on the scabbard have been cast as one piece and then finnished ,pierced and ingraved. The original pattern was made in unrefined bees wax which can be get skumy as you work it, from ambient heat or from your hands. The bubbles are where very ,very small balls of wax are stuck to the surface of the pattern and thus appear in the final casting which odviously went well as it looks like the maker just polished it straight from the cast. Tim . I could also be very wrong. If they are gold plated? fire gilding has gone on for centuries. Judging by the guality of this piece it was made at the center!!!not in the back woods.

I am having another hard look and I am sure the piece at the top of the scabbard has been cast from a wax pattern as you can see that the top rings have been formed by a tool making indentations into a soft substance. Tim

You've got a point there Tim . ;)

Wouldn't thin sheet such as the main cut out area be the very devil to cast in lost wax though ?
Especially with comparatively crude equipment ?

You'd need to have sprues everywhere , no ?

Hi Rick.
On small pieces like this, I would not under estimate the skills of the casters. Casting a small thin sheet in a suitable alloy is not that difficult. As I said this looks like it was made where they knew how. Tim

This is a lot bigger than the scabbards decorative pieces. A cast temple complex from a wax sheet original. Tim

Fascinating !
I see your point ; now my only question would be why leave the finished piece so lumpy ?
I guess only the artisan could answer that one .

Yes to our straight line thinking minds you would want to file the bubbles off. There is some magic in casting and the makers may have seen a good and successful cast as a sort of pure thing. Without having a chat with them it is a little difficult to know. Tim

Hey philkid!
That gunong looks very familiar. Did you happen to pick it up in Aldevinco in Davao? I saw one there in May with an ivory hilt for sale by a Maranao merchant. The proprietor wasn't there, so his son quoted me a ridiculously low price which I quickly agreed to. However, since the hilt was ivory I was a bit paranoid of the CITES ban on ivory. I wanted to get a bill of sale and a letter from the proprietor stating that the gunong was an antique so that if I had a problem with US customs, I had some documentation. Unfortunately for me, when the proprietor came back to the shop to write the letter, he quoted me a more realistic price and yelled at his son for offering it to me at a steal. I wasn't upset, and both the proprietor and I had a laugh at his son's expense. It was a quality antique gunong and both of us knew it. If that is the same gunong I almost purchased, then you definately got a quality old example. Nice find!

ZEL

Very nice, wish we had better knowledge of when pieces like this were made. By the 40's, I think they can be confirmed by providence. Yours looks early. 1910-30's?

Hi Zelbone, yes this was the one that was sold in aldevinco. The one you met was not the owner of this dagger. It was only consigned to him. How much did they quote you for this piece?

This cast armlet from Africa illustrates the skuming of the bees wax pattern rather well as the lumps are a little larger and some look as if they were part smoothed before casting. Tim

There is one other possibility and that is when the thin layer of gold was applied (assuming it is gold), heating process to fuse or join the metals together may not have been well watched and the gold may have gotten too hot and bubbled that way on the surface of the base metal.

Well lets just say the proprietor's son had only quoted me P800!!!

I was quick to jump on that sale :D !

But realistically, the proprietor wanted around P18,000.

Still, I thougtht that was a good price for the quality of that gunong. I just got paranoid about having it confiscated at US customs without the proper paperwork.

Beautiful gunong!

zel,

...should've bought it anyways and sent it to yourself here in the states via FedEx or UPS. ;)