Jambiya Blade Construction

[kahnjar1]

Hi Artzi,
Thank you for your interesting pics, and your input. I have seen sandwich blades which are only spot welded every couple of inches along the edge.
This is usually very evident in any pics of the blades.
I think it would be fair to say that you have put my mind at rest regarding these blades being genuine or not. By "genuine" I mean a weapon blade. I will continue to avoid them.
Regards Stuart

[Gonzalo G]

I don´t know if I understood well. Does it means that the yemeni two-pieced blade jambyyas have the rib arisen from the inside, meanwhile the one piece blades have the ribs forged from the surface? Does anybody knows what kind of tools are used to do the last operation? Is it a female swage kit with the negative form of the rib to forge it over hot metal, or it is made in other way? The rib is forged over a straight blade, latter curved, or is forged over the already curved blade? Thank you in advance for the information you can give to me on this matter.
Regards

Gonzalo

[Michael Blalock]

Here you will find many answers to your questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpDjvuj9f4

The feed is very slow though.

[Michael Blalock]

Here is part 2. Making the scabbard. We may look at the displays of Jambiyas in shops as made for tourists but the Yemenis obviously take a lot of pride in manufacture of these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fblhiKMOPvI

[kahnjar1]

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the two You Tube links. Interesting to see the process, I can see that I will have to improve my anglegrinder skills! I think this confirms my observations, that most of the items coming up regularly on "THAT AUCTION SITE" are indeed very modern items, and in my humble opinion not worthy of wasting $ on.
Regards Stuart

[kronckew]

amazingly short tangs on them...

[Berkley]

This article suggests another reason for the proliferation of inexpensive jambiyas:

The number of jambiya thefts has been greater this year than ever before, said Abdul-Salaam al-Shibami of the Sana’a police department in Bab al-Yemen.*...In recent years, people have started avoiding dressing up with a nice jambiya, for fear of experiencing such an incident.* Costly jambiyas are generally worn only on special occasions, not in daily life. Ateeq Abdullah Mis’ead, head of a tribe in Dhammar, says that in the past, as well as in some places today, people base their respect for each other on the kind of jambiyas they wear.* In those days, said Mis’ead, your value depended on the value of the jambiya you were wearing. “If you wore an expensive jambiya, you were considered a big man, and people would respect you more than they would the average person. The jambiya had great value to it in the past,” Mis’ead said. “Today it is the opposite—people avoid wearing pricey jambiyas, fearing that it could bring them more bad than good, and could even be life threatening.”....According to the latest World Bank Report, 42 percent of Yemen’s 21 million people live under the U.S. $2 per day, which means that it would take one year and a half of work for an average Yemeni to earn the cost of a jambiya.* Moreover, the most encouraging factor for jambiya thieves is that jambiyas are very easy to sell, and the prices are known, and demand for expensive jambiya’s is higher than ever.* “All thieves’ have to do is walk into a jambiya shop with an I.D. and they can sell it in minutes. In Old Sana’a, there are over 30 jambiya shops and all the shops wait anxiously for people trying to sell their jambiyas.