new old tulwar hilt

[Stan S.]

Originally Posted by David R

You do actualy get old brass tulwar hilts, not as common as iron, but they do turn up. As far as I know generaly they are Southern Indian, rather than Northern, and I believe they sometimes they turn up on "issue" tulwars formally in British Imperial service.
I saw a reference to the Southern ones in a book in the Royal Armouries Library, and I have seen brass Tulwar hilts on some definately old swords with good blades, in regimental style sheathes, ie with matching lockets and chapes.

David,

With a few rare exceptions, all brass hilts are early 20th century or later. if you ever look at any of the traditionally shaped brass hilts (the one with disk pommel), you will notice that a little skull crusher spike on top is actually square in cross section, whch is an indication of being machine cut. This is not so easy to tell on this one, and as I said before, it is a very nice hilt, it is just not as old as it may look. I bet the Jodhpur seller had a few other hilts for sale all in various state of being "used"

Lets understand that because of technologies and methods applied to produce these, it really doesn't matter all that much if they were made 100 years ago or last week - they are still very cool and matched with a good old blade will only increase in value