A Saturday afternoon African riddle

[Iain]

About time I updated this thread. My restoration was stalled by cold weather and an outdoor workshop. But now spring is returning and it has been warm enough in the last weeks to work on this sword.

I have to say this piece should have some good age because the level of scale on it was (and is) incredible. As most of you know I am usually in the school of do almost nothing to pieces in my collection. But in this particular case the corrosion was deep enough it needed to be cleaned as much as possible.

I started with light treatments of pineapple juice, then I tried coke... Nothing was moving. Absolutely nothing. I was cautious to use more aggressive methods because there was a good chance parts of the blade were unstable, however with a very slow process of vinegar and carefully monitoring the application each hour I made a lot of progress. The scaling that remains needs a little work, but is so deeply in place I am hesitant to do much more to it.

I was told by the seller this sword came directly from the Lobi, but the sword does not seem characteristic of that group... It is possible they acquired it by other means as several kingdoms in the area raided the Lobi (such as the Kénédougou Kingdom).

Obviously I want to clean up the sword a little more but I am quite happy with my progress and wanted to show it off as I think it is quite an unusual piece.