Yes Spunjer it is definately a seperated two piece construction and the blade itself had many small seperations along the nickel iron lines, one especially large at the tip. I had thought that this type of seperation came with age when these two metals were mixed. Additionally while my photos aren't the greatest the luk are quite worn down apparently from sharpening.
The wood on the scabbard is brittle with age and must be handled carefully, the water buffalo end cap on the scabbard has turned a bleached brown with age and I'm told here (heresay from locals) that the carving pattern is of an old variety (I'll post some other pieces with what they claim is a newer variety, before they went to shaved tortoise shell and mother of pearl.
All that said and the reaction I get here when I show it, I would've thought that this piece would have been mid-19th century.
Mabagani, will try to pm you this evening if the power holds.
Now as for the cleaning I've added some shots of how we did, literally you wouldn't recognize some of these blades after we finished. My thanks to COL Alamia who just retired to Lugos island for his help in explaining the old ways.
First off a good soak in Cabulan, which the fluid left over after making coconut oil. Hollowed out a length of bamboo poured in the cabulan and SOAK! Some blades took 2 days, some took 4, most showed whether they were sandwich laminated or folded after about 24-36 hours. The dirt and rust was just gone when we pulled them out only a wipe reqiured. We reused the cabulan on all the blades we had as cabulan is not for sale here, you have to wait till someone makes a batch of coconut oil out in the country and ask them to save it. I think it loses some of its efficacy after a few blades and it definately starts to stink and mold after two weeks!
Getting the gangya soaked posed a problem as even the widest bamboo couldn't fit the gangya. We improvished a cut-off bleach bottle with gasket seal across the bottom and pushed the sword through the bottom. Second time we rubber banded a plastic bag of cabulan around the gangya, neither was an optimum solution aas both leaked and the area around my bunk stinks
After the soak it left the blade a dirty white which was easily removed. Now the traditional way was to then rub it with calamanci (small green citrus) while this does keep it from rusting, we found after time that it continued to etch the blade and turn it blacker. We used Break -free, our all purpose lubricant that we use on our guns and got much better results. The blade seemed to suck up the first heavy coat and then the second sucked it up till it left a dull shine without affecting the lamination.