ron, your question on the tang shape kept me thinking all day long.
and so i spent the whole morning (wed.) reviewing those ancient gold hilts at the two museums here in manila. and then i have to dig up hutterer's findings on those cebu daggers that's about a thousand years older.
and here i am still pounding away at the keyboard at 1:00 am the following day. therefore, you owe me a drink of sarsi and a lot of popcorn!
so let's start with the oldest one --
figure 2b according to hutterer is 'early iron age'. iron age in the country is
between 500 bc to 900 ad. thus let's say '2b' is 500 to 100 bc. as we can see, the tang appears to be
cylindrical.
fast forward to about a thousand years later --
figure 2a per hutterer also, is from "the first millennium a.d. ... [up to the] late 9th century to early 10th century a.d.". and what i think i see is a
hexagonal tang. and the hexagonal cross-section appears to carry through, up to the beginning of the blade's forte. these scientific illustrations are pretty accurate. thus i think the hexagon we are seeing is real.
next up are the 10th to 13th century gold hilts ...