Third party observation
 

Had a friend have a good look at the hilt, who has a lot of metal working experience. He cant find any indication of cast marks removed or any indication of parts joinded together. The hilt is one single piece!
Cheers all
Andy

Andy, what you do is this, you take the sword under your arm and go to the nerest hospital, ask them to X-ray the upper part of the blade and the hilt, then maybe we will know if Fearn is correct in what he writes in mail #15 - it sounds possible.

Hi Andy,

Wow, I am impressed. That was a tricky bit of casting work for whoever did it.

Hey Jens,

That's an excellent idea. You can also add the X-ray to the sword's file, to increase it's value (provenance, don't you know... :D)

Fearn

The decoration looks like the decoration on a pichangatti blade I have from Coorg, but this kind of decoration was used over a rather big area.

Yeah, increase its value by about $800; put the bill in there, too..... :p
No casting or soldering marks means that it was cast. Often craftsmen remove all sprues and completely resurface castings. Several small casting flaws are visible in the surface of the hilt, such as are typical of preindustrial brass castings; not knowing whether there were solder lines that didn't tell us much though, as to was it cast in one piece or several (which could've been made in reuseable molds). Now we know. Pretty cool. Thoughts on is the transverse internal tube that goes thru the pommel part of the casting, or just the copper inner sleeve we see? Just the copper is my vote, though I doubt you can see well enough into that hole in the butt?
How 'bout an endoscopy, too?
Actually I know the xray would show this; just cracking wise ;)

Are the crescent marks considered the same mark with or without teeth? With teeth to inner or to outer side? (I don't think the teeth are always to the same side?) It doesn't seem enough is known to make assertions (?), but just a subject of thought.