Thank you Timo!
I had a quick chat with Paul Binns. It seems that in the Late-Medieval and Tudor periods knives were often made by welding a shear steel blade to a wrought iron handle. The bolster was the junction of the weld.
I got the Iaroslav Lebedynsky book, a very good source to have. There's mention of the bolster feature appearing on tatar sabres. These are generally the tounkou feature seen on Mongolian and Chinese sabres, and they area separate. The text suggests that these "manchons au talon" were sometimes forged integrally to the blade but it glosses over this without examples. Frustrating.
Unfortunately the pictures of the JUM knives aren't good enough to tell for sure. I see a collar at the base of the blade but is it integral?
Along with the examples I've listed in my original post I'll add the Bou-Saada knives and the Genoese knives they resemble.
On all of these 19th century weapons we see a thick integral bolster on thick blades, when earlier blades were thinner and did not need an integral bolster.
Emanuel
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