Thank you all!
I have attached below a photograph of the smooth wood surface exposed where the paint has been worn away from where the hand naturally carries this club. I too would aesthetically prefer this underlying nice polished wood surface to the dirty oxidized paint covering the vast majority of this club - and I doubt there would be much more than an hour's effort to transfer that old painted finish to paper towels in the trash. My problem is that I suspect this finish to be original to Fiji and to the time of the club's 'working life.' Clunie mentions blue, red and white paint being used to decorate clubs being used in dances. I presume this has always been black, but the coat thickness is rather variable and I suspect this is not commercial paint. And Vandoo has provided us with another example cursed by black paint.
If this were a piece of antique painted early American furniture, a coat of nasty, dirty old oxidized paint is a 10x value multiplier. I aesthetically prefer refinished examples of such furniture, especially if I were to be living with it, but I have learned from television that such refinishing is catastrophic in that particular market. OK to polish silver, but never brass or copper - makes my head spin. I am guessing that cleaning this club would enhance its value. Are not the art and antique markets bizarre at times?
Anyways, the black paint will be staying for a while - unless and until I convince myself that it has nothing to do with the 'working life' of this club.
This club is 1.05 meters in length and weighs almost 1.5 kg (or 3.3 lbs) exactly; about 3/4 of the weight of my other Fijian club, which is a hardwood gata that has a significantly greater shaft diameter but is a bit shorter. Perhaps this is indeed made from a lighter mahogany, but the density of the wood seems similar for both clubs. One can see in the third picture above that there is a crack that would additionally shorten the stump of the spur were it to propagate.
The 'rings' in the last picture are definitely variations in the surface of the wood from when the club was made and are just like those on the gata which is a 'known good' early hand-worked item.
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