Jambiya, Amber hilt, Before & After a Little Restoration

[derek]

I got this jambiya recently and saw several things about that bugged me. First, it looks like an amber hilt, but I'm open to comments on this. It doesn't melt at a hot needle, when it breaks it behaves a bit like glass, but it can be filed and smoothed. It has been broken and repaired.

Anyway, as you can see the "nicer" fittings on the grip are facing the back side when it's in the sheath. the dagger looked arabian peninsula to me, but the scabbard looks very Indian. In fact, it's much like a kukri sheath in construction, design, decoration, etc. So, my first thought was that the scabbard was matched to it after the fact. But it fits like an absolute glove, so I'm just not sure.

Then I started to think that maybe when the repair was done the person reversed the silver floral-looking studs without realizing it. The thin, lower-quality coin-like studs were added when the repair was done, I believe.

I decided to tackle it as a project. I worked all the silver loose and pulled the broken amber off, removed the blade, and wiped out all the gunk.

Then mixed up some orange acrylic paint into some epoxy (thanks Tom for that idea on a previous project). I put the blade back in, slide the silver stud and pin back through the right way (there is a hole in the blade tang for it to pass through), added some epoxy, place the broken piece back over and into place as perfect as possible, and let it set. then I replaced the rest of the fittings and polished up a few rough spots. It looks better and the repair is definitely stronger now. I still can't decide the origins of this one though.

Any thoughts?



I decided t