Kris/Kalis with straight blade

[kai]

Hello Wayne,

the pommel piece was dangling loosely by a thread of leather, so i replaced it with a bit of twisted silver wire. it is silver plated brass sheet metal.

I believe this needs to close a bit more (after removing the leather).

the baca baca are firmly attached to the hilt, which is firmly attached to the blade. the baca baca are a bit loose on the blade and can move towards the centre a bit if i press on the sides along the bolster. might fix that when i re-wrap.

Some play of the clamps is not unusual - no need to go at great lengths unless you plan to hit a lot of tough objects with the sword...

the ganja is definitely different metal. the blade is by comparison grey and the ganja looks quite like silver in comparison. it was a bit grungy so i cleaned it with a rag & some soap & hot water, rinsed, dried.

Real silver is a great catch! I have seen a very few kris with a non-iron gangya like this that appeared to be made from brass. One more made from silver; and one suassa?

the baca-baca also looks like they are silver. some hammer dent marks where the baca were fitted to the ganja do not expose any base metal, so they are not plated.

Are the strips soldered to the clamps? If so, I'd posit this attachment mode to be fairly recent (and non-traditional) - probably being done when doing that leather wrap.

Please post close-ups when you disassemble the hilt! (I'd suggest to cut those strips and replace them with thinner silver bands which could probably run inside of the ferrule. IMHO this would look much neater.)

Regards,
Kai