Wolves and cutlers

[urbanspaceman]

Here's something I picked up on Jim, outside of the Hunting Hangar thread's purpose:
"In Hounslow Johann Kindt 1630-40 used the running wolf...."
Much debate has attended the issue of the Wolf appearing on Hounslow blades suggesting imports from Germany; I have always maintained that Solingen smiths everywhere were entitled to use the Wolf as a quality mark.
Again, staying with the wolf theme: I have always understood that the use of the Wolf by Solingen was originally due to their supply to the city of Passau. There does not seem to be any indication, that I have seen (limited of course), to indicate that Passau produced their own blades, and if they did, were they marked with the Wolf, which originally was a mark for the city. It crossed my mind that perhaps Passau was like Koln in being a market of cutlers.
This brings me to another issue I have wondered about: during the period they were using the Wolf, did Solingen hilt as well as produce blades. I've searched through Bezdek's listings, and compared with all of the other trades, cutlers represent an extremely small percentage of the family names to the extent that over 90% of the blade output must have left Solingen un-hilted. Obviously the city developed into a world of full-service factories but not much earlier than the 1800s.
This leads me to a serious curiosity regarding Koln and those other market cities: is there any written history of the metalworking industries in these cities pre. 1800s?
I came across this issue in researching such activities in Rotterdam but did not get very far.
If these cities were hilting the enormous output of blades from Solingen then there must have been huge industrial complexes there. Does anyone know?