Congrats, Michael, for snapping this up! It's good to see the effort put into this old Sulu warrior.
I believe the central twistcore panel of most Moro kris was supposed to develop a topographic etch (like seen in e. g. many keris Bugis blades) while the edges were kept smooth. That can make repolishing such a blade a pretty difficult task.
Why didn't you replaced the missing silver topping of the upper katik? I bet Jose could have made 2 nice asang-asang to complete the whole piece before replacing the missing grip wrap. More likely than not, there also must have been a silver ferrule and another band of silver near the pommel for such a status piece.
Regards,
Kai