Help with identifying this blade.

[cozun]

Originally Posted by Jason Anstey

I received this info from Serge, he seems to be very busy so I thought I would post a snippit and he can fill in the rest

"under the logo, the "2509", that can only be the year it was made, so now being the year 2550 in Thailand (according to Buddha's birth year) that piece is indeed 41 year old - back from 1966."

Cheers

Jason

Thanks for feeding in Jason.

Now to the historical background of this sword: during the fabrication period of that sword, the village of Aranyik had a kind of sword fabricators' guild or association, thus the name 'co-operative', and this involved around 70 people. It is now not possible to say who exactly did what part of the sword yet one detail that is interessting is that the leader of the group was none other than the father of Khun Lung Boonsom of 'Sor Arunyig', my main source for swords in the village at the present. After the man passed away about ten years ago, the co-operative was disolved and nowadays each fabricator, workshop or shop is working independently, still with now and then participation of another fabricator, yet the occurence is rare and only for specific tasks, this being related to the production process or combined with common business.
What is also not done anymore, at least not to my recent experience, is the numbering of the blade, like the number 15 of the concerned sword in this thread.
Further, the used steel is difficult to identify, yet the resemblence of the work compared to what another smith in the North of Thailand is doing, allows me to speculate that the blade has been hand polished and that the steel might be of the W1 sort (steel used by the smith in the North for his blades that I will introduce soon).

I trust these latest information will satisfy your curiosity, if I find out more I'll post again.

Yours,
Serge.