ly
smoothed and finished by a flexible, bamboo knife-blade machine. It
consists of about a dozen blades 8 or 10 inches in length, fastened
together side by side with string. The blades lie one overlapping the
other like the slats of an American window shutter. Each projecting
blade is sharpened to a chisel edge. The machine is grasped in the
hand, as shown in fig. 6, and is slid up and down the shaft with a
slight twisting movement obtained by bending the wrist. The machine
becomes a flexible, many-bladed plane.

Baliwang alone makes the genuine Bontoc battle-ax. It is a strong,
serviceable blade of good temper, and is hafted to a short, strong,
straight wooden handle which is strengthened by a ferrule of iron
or braided bejuco. The ax has a slender point opposed to the bit or
cutting edge of the blade. This point is often thrust in the earth
and the upturned blade used as a stationary knife, on which the Igorot
cuts meats and other substances by drawing them lengthwise along the
sharp edge. The bit of the ax is at a small angle with the front and
back edges of the blade, and is nearly a straight line. The axes are
kept keen and sharp by whetstones collected and preserved solely for
the purpose. Besao, near Sagada, quarries and barters a good grade
of whetstone.

FIGURE 6

Bamboo spear-shaft dresser.

A slender, long-handled battle-ax now and then comes into the area
in trade from the north. Balbelasan, of old Abra Province, but now in
the northern part of extended Bontoc Province, is one of the pueblos
which produce this beautiful ax. The blade is longer and very much
slimmer than the Bontoc blade, but its marked distinguishing feature
is the shape of the cutting edge. The blade is ground on two straight
lines joined together by a short curved line, giving the edge the
striking form of the beak of a rapacious bird. The slender, graceful
handle, always fitted with a long iron ferrule, has a process on the
under side near the middle. The handle is also usually fitted with
a decorated metal ferrule at the tip and frequently is decorated for
its full length with bands of brass or tin, or with sheets of either
metal artistically incised.

The Balbelasan ax is not used by the pueblos making it, or at least
by many of them, but finds its field of usefulness east and northeast
of Bontoc pueblo as far as the foothills of the mountains west of
the Rio Grande de Cagayan. I was told by the Kalinga of this latter
region