Bornean Parang (4 photos)

[trekkingnut]

Another one of my random bits and pieces from home. This is an every day parang given to me by the Taman Balo tribe from the Puttissibau district of Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo)

I was initiated into their family and they said that every man needs two things, tattoos and a parang, i got both from them but this is my parang.

Its nothing special as far as parangs go, more a spare they had lying around i dont doubt.

one solid piece with an easily craved wooden handle. Sheath interested me as its two separate pieces of wood that have been tied together.

All in all, fantastic memories for me, looking forward to seeing them again come september. Thought you guys might appreciate it as its the real deal!

 

[Harry The Camper]

Very nice parang! The quality of a blade is not the hardness of its steel or the intracacy of its carvings but the story behind how you got it. I you do come past west malaysia give me and bandel4 a pm...

 

[trekkingnut]

Very nice parang! The quality of a blade is not the hardness of its steel or the intracacy of its carvings but the story behind how you got it. I you do come past west malaysia give me and bandel4 a pm...

usually work in borneo but you never know! ill be out in borneo for the latter half of this year. i sometimes jump from george town, pinang over to medan in sumatra so i do hit the west coast occasionally!

 

[Retired Member southey]

That looks fantastic , I really like working tools like this mate, its the way there rough and ready but still wouldnt look out of place behind glass in some museum display, very cool. how far down the blade does the cutting edge go?

 

[trekkingnut]

That looks fantastic , I really like working tools like this mate, its the way there rough and ready but still wouldnt look out of place behind glass in some museum display, very cool. how far down the blade does the cutting edge go?

if it was sharp, until it starts to thin out. i love the way its been edited over the years though, thats whats great about it. you can tell that its a working tool cause there are quirky little updates. the green and white weave used to be rattan but it came off at some point and someone found a vehicle wreck somewhere (apparently, who knows) and pulled two long electrical wires out, obviously one green and one white and then wove it into that design round the handle! magic!

 

[Retired Member southey]

Brilliant, had the chance to work with some Amerindian chaps in Guyana a few years back and the little fixes they had made to there kit were brilliant, one chap even had a wheel barrow made out of a crashed plane tail section and one of the wheels, ha ha loved it.

 

[trekkingnut]

Brilliant, had the chance to work with some Amerindian chaps in Guyana a few years back and the little fixes they had made to there kit were brilliant, one chap even had a wheel barrow made out of a crashed plane tail section and one of the wheels, ha ha loved it.

its amazing what they use eh! i still love it that when i go on expeds, we take all this kit and the local guide has a machete and a pair of shorts with a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. that is all.... over the years ive ditched most of my original high spec gear. like just folding a leaf for a bowl/plate/cup... no washing up to do... no heavy metal things to lug around. just a leaf...

kfs??? snap a twig in half and you have chopsticks.... hence why ive never learnt how to carve a spoon! hahah

 

[Retired Member southey]

ha ha definitely worth following the guides lilt on kit, I feel it our security blanket some times to take a lot of kit that we know as ESSENTIAL, but most would have a far better time if you left it in the airport lockers and learnt from the guys taking you places.

 

[trekkingnut]

ha ha definitely worth following the guides lilt on kit, I feel it our security blanket some times to take a lot of kit that we know as ESSENTIAL, but most would have a far better time if you left it in the airport lockers and learnt from the guys taking you places.

peoples "B.O.B" bags absolutely astound me. the amount of gear they take for a two hour walk in the woods blows my mind.

work likes us to wear webbing so we have a b.o.b bag strapped to our body should the worst come to the worst. if you get lost in borneo, you are very lost. even then, i prob take no more than anyone has in their b.o.b bags for wales!

im not saying ultra light is the way forward at all, whatever is comfortable for you is what you should take i guess.... but i think a lot of the time people take a lot more than they need because they lack the knowledge to live without it. damned western society. sniff sniff. makes me sad!

 

[BOD]

By the blade design and cordage it looks a lot like a duku panjai made by an Iban or someone else in the Iban style. Are the Balo a subgroup of the Iban or like close to Iban communities?

The handle is possibly a replacement as it seems quite a bit cruder than the sheath and the 'turks head' style binding is telephone wire while those on the sheath look like rattan.

 

[trekkingnut]

By the blade design and cordage it looks a lot like a duku panjai made by an Iban or someone else in the Iban style. Are the Balo a subgroup of the Iban or like close to Iban communities?

The handle is possibly a replacement as it seems quite a bit cruder than the sheath and the 'turks head' style binding is telephone wire while those on the sheath look like rattan.

the taman balo are not iban, they are a sub group from the main taman tribe with both similar language and ethnology. in my personal experience the iban and the taman tend to look quite different in physical appearance as well. the iban having much thinner and longer faces whilst the taman having rounder faces.

there is an iban community about a days walk, possibly a little further. however, there is a man about half a days walk who lives on his own and not in a long house, origin unknown, that makes parangs, he makes the most beautiful full ceremonial parangs that ive ever seen but they were ludicrously expensive for a white person to buy.... ill get one one day but through a friend i think instead.

origin of the wire stated below.

i would have thought it was original by the way the handle and the sheath slot together so perfectly. it really is perfectly flush and doesnt rattle or anything. that doesnt rule it out as a replacement at all. its a working tool so its undoubtedly been used and abused over the years.

 

[trekkingnut]

this was the guy making the following parangs:

A friends house, my adoptive families uncle i think.....

Alternative handle design:

My adoptive families house, they had a few lying around eh!

This one was photographed in the Iban long house where i got my tattoos done. They said it hadnt been cleaned, sharpened of used since WWII when they had used it against the Japanese.