Sea cow used for Iban hilts

[VVV]

Originally Posted by David

snip...
Michael, do you have a good Natural History museum nearby?

Actually only a 5 minutes walk from the University. But no way I will walk around with an old head hunting sword, first among 1000's of museum visitors and then just as many at the campus. It's enough with those ninja wannabees that you read about in the newspapers now and then running around with practice iai-to and scaring people.
So I wait for the blade smith working with this material to get back to me, hopefully tomorrow or early next week, so you can read his explanation.
I had around 80+ dayak parang, all of them with patination of different kind, in the room for us to discuss. After he showed me the first one it took me about a minute to spot the second one. None of the other hilts were even close in looks.

Michael