After a little discussion with Dave Henkel, he has the following to share:
- The hiltcarver might have replaced the buah pinang with horn because the wood there might have been naturally disfigured or insufficient.
- Another possible reason is because the material added has some talismanic function. Dave has a terengganu badik stupa has a little ring of a separate kind of wood that Mr Nik Rashidee [master carver and owner of the "Spirit of Wood" exhibits] from Kelantan thought was added because the wood had a certain "semangat" (roughly = "spirit") or perhaps came from a special piece of material (wood from a childhood home, or an old keris sheath or something like that).
From my perspective, seeing that both Shahrial and my hilt's horn buah pinang have split while the wood of the hilts are largely intact, is it then reasonable to say that horn is a better repair material then say kemuning wood?
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