West Sumba knife

[ausjulius]

Originally Posted by JeffS

This Sumba chopper was a recent Ebay purchase. Nice patina on the handle and scabbard, seems to have some age. The figurines are fun, cool to see a nod to their horse culture and the clever use of handle and the kabeala scabbard style to create the interlocking horse and rider. Would the forging flaw on the blade visible in the photo below indicate layered construction? Also, I was surprised that the spine does not taper until it almost reaches the point. This is much more common in blades made by stock removal.

hi. these are still made in the traditional way today, exactly as yours. generally they have very little taper bigger ones are normally about 7-8mm at the base to about 4mm at the tip for example.. .. the smiths are just skilled ant forging and leveling the blade.. before was by hand with a scraper but now with an angle grinder.. they are not making them from flat stock with stock removal.. i have a bunch of these they are generally well made blades, even ones made today are well made and well finished, and dont normally show a quench line indicating some degree of tempering is taking place, from what ive seen its a broad partial quench and then they let the hot spine partially temper it back,