Kai; I've handled the piece now; fairly good eye you have there. The blade is definitely old, wedge- sectioned, and as you can see, thickens and widens toward its base. The guard also appears to be very old, and though simple, more worn than crude. It does not appear to have a socket for the handle a la kampilan. The handle, while seeming to have some age, is newer, and it does display a genuine crudity, being formed entirely by rasping. Good eye on telling fuzzy object from fuzzy photo. The dark spot visible at the back edge of the handle is indeed the tip of the tang emerging, fringed with cloth or string of some kind. This shows the grip was not mounted at the angle originally intended; more forward, which argues both for European/euro colonial and intention of serious use. The assemblage is pretty solid. The fit of blade to guard is quite good, with the shoulders of the blade going up into the guard (in almost exactly the way the handle doesn't
). The fit of the handle to guard is less well executed, with a notch having been cut to notch the grip into (as you can see, perhaps), but then the grip doesn't quite fit in it.
Cutlass/dirk; maritime private issue w/ sailor made hilt? Could the ebay title have been accurate
anything's possible, I suppose.
A light and nasty slashing sword, BTW