Curious massive knife or machete

[francantolin]

On the scabbard it seems that something was braided on

[Ian]

Hello fran,

Interesting Item. It seems to have been assembled from a bunch of largely unrelated parts. Given the thickness of the blade, I'm thinking this may be a cut down sword—perhaps a recycled broken sword—and what we are seeing is the ricasso end of the blade. Even so, it is a beast of a knife. You won't know a great deal about the tang and guard without taking it apart (a considerable task by the look of the hilt).

The criss-cross markings on the wooden scabbard suggest to me the application of a heavy duty reinforcing tape. There are some strong packing tapes that have a similar fiber pattern embedded in them. Given that the structures on your scabbard span a crack in the wood, this seems like a possibility.

At a guess, I would say this is a WWII piece assembled by a serviceman for a general purpose jungle knife.

[francantolin]

Hello Ian,

Thank's a lot for your message,
Do you think the blade can come from a cut down klewang ?
Or something more european ?
It looks like a shortened pioneer sword-cutlass .
Small original or shortened blade..

Here in comparison with my largest butcher knife

[francantolin]

Or if I cheat,
It can looks like an xxl bowie knife 😁
Can be good , the tang goes through the hilt until the red line

[Ian]

Originally Posted by francantolin

Hello Ian,

Thank's a lot for your message,
Do you think the blade can come from a cut down klewang ?
Or something more european ?
It looks like a shortened pioneer sword-cutlass .
Small original or shortened blade...

Hi fran,

Best I can tell, the blade seems to be monosteel, which might suggest a European blade, but there are plenty of 20th C examples of local blades made in Asia from monosteel also. In one picture you show a red line around the the top of the blade, where there is a narrow, flat section of blade adjacent to the guard that looks like the bottom of a traditional European ricasso.

I think it is a much modified blade recovered from another weapon. In this regard, Japanese soldiers were proficient at repurposing captured blades during WWII. American GIs did the same but to a lesser degree.