Hi delor,
The answer is easy – yes and no. The older katars, and some of the newer are made in one piece, or possible in several pieces and forged together, but a number of the newer katars are made in more than one piece and put together, you can detect rather easily as the side guards and the cross bars tend to be a bit loose. In other cases an old blade has been used, so the side guards and the cross bars must, of course, have been made by itself, and a hole made for the blade. When later, gold decorations are added to the side guards, the way it was made is hidden.
I also have a theory that at least some of the hilts with more elaborate carvings, may have been made using cire perdu, but so far it is a theory.
Why don’t you try to ask a museum with an Oriental arms collection, maybe they will let you examine their katars?
Good luck
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