Kepings or Barongs

[xasterix]

Originally Posted by RobT

Xasterix,

Since you said in Sajen's thread that, "these blades have often been dressed up and mistaken for barungs. In many cases the dressing up is deliberate, so that the tourists will buy kepings, thinking that they're barungs", I didn't mention that the ferrule on the first blade isn't original to the hilt because I didn't think, in the case of kepings, the hilt was a reliable identifier. My bad and I apologize. The wood part of the hilt came with the blade but the ferrule that came with it was a piece of aluminum tubing which looked as if it had been just kind of stuck on. It looked horrible so I made a barong style ferrule. I was basing my id of the blade as a possible keping by the rather flattish spine (especially the distal half). That is admittedly a rather subtle feature but, if it isn't sufficient to distinguish between keping and barong, I think that the only reliable way to tell the difference between the two is to have a radically non barong hilt and/or a radically non barong blade.

Sincerely,
RobT

Dear Rob: It's all good! Another identifier for me would be the spine...keping usually have thinner spines than barung. An assessment of the sword's different parts would be best to ascertain whether a leaf-blade is a keping or barung