It arrived in the mail today. My impressions:
The blade is extremely thick and heavy. It's 8mm thick at the base. It has no flex whatsoever. The steel's heavily pitted and the edge is all chewed up, but it looks like it's from blunt impact, perhaps hitting a nail or a rock, rather than blade on blade damage. It seems to taper naturally to its tip which I wouldn't expect if it was a cut down blade. That is unless the also ground the blade thinner towards the tip when they did it. The whole blade's a little crooked and twisted but I don't know if it was made that way or if it came that way through hard use.
The hilt is definitely horn. I attached some pictures of it from a few angles as illumated by a flashlight, but I don't see any signs of tubules or anything that would indicate it's rhino. I'm guessing it's goat horn that's been compressed into a flat shape?
Overall it reminds me a lot of a Prussian Faschinenmesser I have. Both have thick heavy blades and the edges on both are in similar condition like they were used for construction rather than fighting. I wonder if this was a similar tool/weapon designed for building fortifications and whatnot? There's no reason it couldn't have once been a full sized saber that was cut down for this kind of use. But to me it seems perfectly proportioned as it is rather than a resized saber.
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