Inside the hilt of a typical production Han Jian

As part of customizing my Han Dynasty Jian I took apart the hilt... and this thing deserves it's own FYI thread.
(I'll be using euro sword terminology as I haven't looked up the equivalent names for each part. Feel free educate me if there is a better word for any given part)

I must add the disclaimer that I do not know who made this sword. Last year I purchased it here through the classifieds and prior to that it was bought through eBay one or two years earlier. I was never able to verify the manufacturer. I am reasonably certain it came out of Longquan. I imagine this is typical of any average Longquan forge for a lower priced production sword but of course that is just my speculation.

I found both good and bad surprises 'under the hood'.

Pics!

Let's start with under the chape- not a good start. Where'd the rest of the wood go?



Here's the hilt before I stripped off the cord wrap



First surprise- as the wrap started to reveal the core underneath I asked myself "what the heck is this grip made from?" Feels like cork and indeed that's what I thought it was for a moment but I quickly found it to be some sort of dirty soft wood. As I finished unwrapping it I found the peg- interesting. This was a promising surprise that I hadn't expected.



Next surprise- the pommel. Had a bit of the design element hidden under the wrap, and what's that? The little thingys sticking out from the bottom of each side? Well, those are tiny 0.5cm long finishing nails holding the pommel in place. Ugh.



I pulled the nails out with virtually no resistance and wiggled the pommel off. Seems some kind of glue was also used but it did not adhere to any part of the sword and I was able to peel the glue off of the pommel easily as well. Inside the pommel I found that the tang has been secured with a threaded nut which unscrewed cleanly. Possibly another positive.




After pushing the peg out, pulling on the wood core with meduim effort and a bit more wiggling I came to find a full tang with a decently threaded end which was good... but a very questionable hole in it for the peg. At the hole one side of the tang is 2.05mm thick and the other 3.95mm thick. Just how bad/dangerous this is I do not know. The guard is also shown in the following pic- that sucker was kept tight on the grip with some kind of hardnend clay crap that had been jammed up in it. You can see it next to the guard, broken into two pieces.



Yet more tang trouble- wtf!? Seems whomever was grinding the shoulders into the blade had some trouble and gouged out big chunks of the tang. I noticed this and the peg hole at the same time and actually pulled a face and made a gutteral sound "Ghguughhk" which expressed my distaste for what I found.


My bottom line? Overall this really is a mixed bag but at least it's a full tang with a threaded end and a single peg to secure the grip to it. As I plan on keeping this sword on display only these features are enough to keep me satisfied that I can handle the sword safely when inspecting it and looking it over for the fun of it. Once I have finished customizing it it'll look the way I want it to and the rest is good enough for me.

Whaddya think about it?