Twistcore kris with... erm.. Wha-- What is this?

[Spunjer]

yo dave,
i'm with kai that it could be a piece of cloth.

kai, yes, the damask was widely used. far as the unscientific test i suggested, the logic behind that is, had it been changed in the western world, i highly doubt whoever did it was a competent restorer.
here's my line of reasoning:if you are indeed correct in your assumption that this particular hilt wasn't original, why would that restorer go to all the trouble of using plant resin just to attached a hilt that is not even typical to this type of sword? and btw, on my suggestion of heating the blade. i meant to say the removal of it is unnecessary. once the plant resin melts, you should be able to smell it. just hold it together for a minute or so until it gets hard again. (dam, that didn't came out right )
i realize dave doesn't have this kris yet, but for the sake of argument, you said:

I suspect this hilt make the kris pretty much dysfunctional.

i would say the same thing have i saw a gasah for the first time.

I also have a very hard time to imagine any self-respecting Moro to come up with this weird pommel

we know little of what's out there, kai, really. i'm pretty sure you realize that just in sulu alone, the tausugs back in the day has, i believe, eight or ten different nomenclature for a half-wave/half straight type kalis? so how do we know this is not one of them?

a bad (smooth) grip wrapping

the barung and gasah comes to mind as far as smooth grip..

with 2 human figures representing a kind of deity outside the Muslim realm?

you're thinking present tense, kai. yes, nowadays, that would never "cut it", but we're talking, back in the days when Folk Islam ruled the majority.Datu Kalun has a crucifix on his kalis (he was a tagalog). also, a barung brought back by mr. hayes has a crucifix engraved on the scabbard. anyone could've done that, but considering the time frame on when it was brought back, i believe it was original. i've quoted this before:

The Sulu Archipelago seems to have become the dumping ground for the Oriental world. Here you find renegade Arabs; native Indian soldiers, for whom India has become too hot; even the Sudan, bad as it is, occasionally has a man so bad, he has to drift to Sulu. Like a Western mining camp of old, Sulu is full of adventure. - John F. Bass, Harper's Weekly, November 18, 1899

with that in mind, any of these foreigners could've brought a hilt from his native land, or broke a sword he originally carried, or decided to have a local artisan designed him hilt based on his description, etc, etc. and had it attached to a blade he found in a marketplace, or had the local smith made him one, or a blade he found on a dead moro, etc, etc.