Pattern-welded (twist core) Budiak

[Lee]

I am going pretty far out on a flimsy limb, but, I do agree with the suspicions stated above and I believe this is well the oldest of my budiaks if I am to judge by blade surfaces. All of them have been taken care of over the years, but there are always little lapses that accumulate and leave their marks. (I have one more budiak to share.)

Similarly, while out on that limb, I will speculate that something like this budiak could have 'evolved' through the features we see in Maurice's Sulu budiak on the way to Rick's example on the right. But then I am ignoring Rick's example on the left.

Rick - It turned out to be simple and harmless to expose the base of the neck of my spearhead and it remains a simple square. Asomotif - I believe that, despite the tears and dents, very little silver is missing from the ferrule and that you are correct that it remains very restorable and deserves restoration. (If I can find copper pipe of the correct diameter, that might provide a definitive underlying support.) Battara - I have tried to give a better view of the okir below:

[Battara]

I hesitate to call it a true budiak since it does not have the usual chiseling for a budiak.

However the twistcore and the way it is done as well as the okir still indicates to me so far that this is an early Sulu spear.

[Lee]

Battara - So, if I understand correctly, Rick's spear on the left up in reply #2 would not be called a budiak as it lacks the chiseled panel, and only the 4th from the left in the panoply shown in Maurice's post (#4) would qualify for the name budiak.

In a playful vein, I shall, for the moment term this old Sulu spear as a protobudiak.

I have built a composite picture below - not to precise scale and digitally bleached to bring up more detail in the bases - in order of similarity of features. Our protobudiak is fullered and has no elaboration at its base; the blade tapers into a square cross section. (Maurice's splendid provenanced Sulu spear would come next in this sequence.) The second spear from the left below has a shallow chiseled panel which carries into a square neck as a line before an abrupt, but slight expansion into a round base. The two on the right are proper budiaks with a well developed chiseled panel and the thicker edges terminating in a classic floral? curve. These have rings around a round neck and re-expand substantially to meet the ferrule (or be partially covered by it in the right example).

Krieger's plate 6 does strongly suggest both forms (chiseled with complex base and non-chiseled with square base) remained in use by both the Moro and Bagobo until the early 20th century. So chronology versus geography (of manufacture) or more likely a bit of both.

[Lee]

This protobudiak was my very first 'Malaysian' spear. I bought it in a small (now sadly perished) private arms and armour museum in Kutztown, Pennsylvania in the late 1990s. I collected it as a superb example of pattern-welding for a small group of comparative ethnographic examples I was building. It was so out of place in the museum's small coop shop and it cost me less than a hundred dollars. I still delight in my memory of finding it. I have over the years mislaid that delicate silver ferrule cylinder on more than one occasion, but shall be careful not to again lose it, and I indeed look forward to seeing it put back together again.

So, ironically, the protobudiak gets to be the reference point as I pull something from the opposite side of the globe and a millennium further back out of the armoury to compare with it, namely a mid to late Viking Age (Carolingian) winged spearhead. The big, obvious differences are that the winged spearhead is socketed (with two small protrusions or 'wings' arising from the socket) and the tanged protobudiak has more pronounced fullering. In functional impact, however, these two spearheads are nearly identical in length (protobudiak 355 mm; winged spearhead 345 mm - measuring from where each blade begins to expand out from neck to the tip) and in mass (protobudiak as pictured including partial mounts and epoxy 469 grams; winged spearhead 409 grams with some losses from the socket on the opposite side).

[Rick]

If we are going to follow the thought train that this is an early Budiak; I think I might be able to show a transitional design with elements of both old and new .

Left hand spear in post 2, fifth picture down .
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=12569

[Lee]

Thanks Rick, I think that is about all one could hope for in terms of a missing link ... now is it time or geography or both.

I had missed that detail in the wealth of that museum photo tour, but worse I had totally missed Bill M's fabulous examples resurrected in Freebooter's thread - just look at the combination of features in the first pictured spear as well as the intact silver ferrule. Gorgeous!

Anyway, my protobudiak is about to head out the door for restoration and preparatory to this I have dissolved away the failed epoxy repair and revealed the end of the tang and fractured remain of the pole.

And just a trace of fall foliage reflected in the silver.

[Battara]

Glad you were able to get that thing off. Now it can be worked on easier.

[vilhelmsson]

Originally Posted by Lee

So, ironically, the protobudiak gets to be the reference point as I pull something from the opposite side of the globe and a millennium further back out of the armoury to compare with it, namely a mid to late Viking Age (Carolingian) winged spearhead. The big, obvious differences are that the winged spearhead is socketed (with two small protrusions or 'wings' arising from the socket) and the tanged protobudiak has more pronounced fullering. In functional impact, however, these two spearheads are nearly identical in length (protobudiak 355 mm; winged spearhead 345 mm - measuring from where each blade begins to expand out from neck to the tip) and in mass (protobudiak as pictured including partial mounts and epoxy 469 grams; winged spearhead 409 grams with some losses from the socket on the opposite side).

I recently received delivery of a similar Type D Viking Age spearhead. I was eager to see if it had pattern welding. The core seems to be pattern-welded, though it could also be some clever texturing, but it is consistent on both sides of the spear (see the contrasty, filtered images).

But when I held it in my hand, I was similarly struck by its similarities to a budiak spearhead that I had purchased earlier in the year. Their silhouettes are almost identical (from neck to tip), and they share the aesthetic of core pattern-welding. I haven't weighed them, but they have a similar heft. It's fascinating that cultures a world and a millennium apart made such similar design decisions on their spears.

(I promise to try to get better at taking pictures of my weapons...)

[Lee]

Two very, very nice spearheads.

The early winged one appears to definitely have one band of pattern-welding. If the meandering side to side is the 'mirror image' on the back side, then this likely results from one twisted rod also forming a core, and I suspect this is the case as the plane of the surface appears to be intersecting at the periphery of a twisted rod. I include an image from Lorange (1889) showing some similar patterns.

The budiak appears to have two bands well controlled and corresponding to the mirrored chiseled out panels either side of the midrib. Here the intersection is much deeper, even to mid rod. The pattern-welded budiaks that I have been fortunate enough to acquire are either like the one at the head of this thread or have a single relatively flat central panel without the midrib.

The similarity in shape and size of these spearheads coming from such different origins does suggest these must be well proven and effective proportions.