Help identifying a possible East Asian ornamental knife

[jerryd6818]

For the purposes of AAPK posterity the forum in the links identified the knife as a Bonan Dao, a utility knife from the Bonan ethnic area of western China across the border from Tibet. They got a little detailed with ethnic aspects of it and lost me with the geography of China but I think that's what it boiled down to.

[twdroppoint]

For the purposes of AAPK posterity the forum in the links identified the knife as a Bonan Dao, a utility knife from the Bonan ethnic area of western China across the border from Tibet. They got a little detailed with ethnic aspects of it and lost me with the geography of China but I think that's what it boiled down to.

See ... I think their first attempts to identify the knife (with the un-ornamented sheath) was to call it a Bonan Dao knife. But then Derek came along and called them Khampa utility knives, and said that they usually have a bit of rayskin beneath the throat (unlike the one initially posted in that one thread), and that the dealers he dealt with made no distinction even if they didn't have the rayskin and called them Khampa utility knives regardless. Upon looking at the second link, where you have a knife closer in resemblance to mine with the sheath, I thought Derek nailed it down mo-better lol.

Just to add lol ... Derek and a few others DO say it resembles a Chinese trousse

The farther the thread derails into the long swords and whatnot, they seem to begin to disagree, especially considering they start referencing the knives in the second link instead of the ones in the original post in that thread lol ... the Bonan Dao knives have a distinctly different style than what some of them decide to call Tibetan. So after weeding through the ethnographic side trail posts, I concluded that the knives like mine (with the rayskin, the ornate sheath, the shorter blade, the non flaring pommel) were more along the Tibetan style, specifically what Derek said that dealers were calling the Khampa utility knives.

Did you understand the thread to conclude they were the Bonan Dao ? I don't want to misunderstand what I'm reading there, as it *does* get kind of convoluted and confusing with their cross references to different knives than what was originally discussed.

I still don't know why it wouldn't let me register, otherwise I would just ask them about their own words of course lol. It wouldn't even let me try : / Edit: I just *now* clicked on more links on that page however, and it said that immediate registration has been disabled and that you have to send an email to their webmaster directly to request registration lol. So I'll try to do that as well ...

*** further edit: I see that to join that forum, you have to email someone what your PASSWORD request will be ? No thanks lol.

[jerryd6818]

I tried to distill those threads down to the essentials and what I posted is what I got out of that "convoluted and confusing" mess. Doesn't mean it's correct. Just means it's what I came away with after trying to ignore all the chaff.

I did a little research on the Bonan ethnic group and even that is a real bucket of worms.

[twdroppoint]

I tried to distill those threads down to the essentials and what I posted is what I got out of that "convoluted and confusing" mess. Doesn't mean it's correct. Just means it's what I came away with after trying to ignore all the chaff.

I did a little research on the Bonan ethnic group and even that is a real bucket of worms.

Hmm ... I'll re-read them over one more time then before I decide to post that knife, to see if I missed something. I don't like selling stuff I'm just throwing wild guesses at, but I also don't want to call it a khampa knife if it's a Bonan Dao. And I'm def. not going to send some random email address a password lol. What would be grand is if I could find someone in my area (Dallas) to lay eyes on it who knows about these things as a dealer or through experience with them obviously, but I can't believe I haven't found someone And I don't think it's worth taking to an antique appraiser who will do exactly what I'm doing here lol.

Thanks for reading through those threads dude, your help is much appreciated I didn't feel as though anyone was pontificating about donkeys

[jerryd6818]

I didn't feel as though anyone was pontificating about donkeys

You may have to be satisfied with that section of the world. When you sell it, you could just say it's either a Bonan Dao or a khampa utility knife and you were unable to get closer than that. In the grand scheme of things, they're pretty close to one another anyway. That's close enough for government work.

[twdroppoint]

I didn't feel as though anyone was pontificating about donkeys

You may have to be satisfied with that section of the world. When you sell it, you could just say it's either a Bonan Dao or a khampa utility knife and you were unable to get closer than that. In the grand scheme of things, they're pretty close to one another anyway. That's close enough for government work.

Close enough for hand grenades and government work

I'll probably take it to the Asian Market area of town later today and ask around ... see if I come up with anything. A couple of miles from me there is a predominately Chinese market district, so we'll see. I know it's only worth a couple of hundred at most probably, but still ... it's fun to research and whatnot