Removing Epoxy

[A. G. Maisey]

I've never worked on one of these Philippine pieces, however, a couple of things do occur to me.

Firstly I'd remove the covering on the hilt if this is possible, in order to ensure there was no pinning of either the tang or the support stirrups.

The second thought is this:- if those stirrups go up into the hilt and there is adhesive holding them too, it is entirely possible that the heat transfer through these much thinner pieces of metal is insufficient to heat the adhesive to the point where it will let go.

If you can get the metal hilt covering off it might be easier simply to cut away the wooden hilt inside the cover and replace it.

The tangs on the things I work on are very often bonded with rust, and then it becomes a matter of repeated heat treatments over days , or even weeks, and working the hilt back and forth under heat, Eventually they let go, but sometimes the rust is so bad it totally penetrates the tang and you need to replace that when you get it free.