Repairing the hilt on a visayan sword

[zelbone]

Great job on that binangon, Ian! Looks like a good solid fighting piece with a very nice blade. The repair looks great. There's only one thing I would have also done while you had the sword apart and that would have been to clean the ferrule. What material is the ferrule? It looks like it is heavily oxidized iron. When I have one of these swords apart with an iron ferrule, I usually soak the ferrule in a cup of straight vinegar for several hours or overnight to loosen the oxidation. Then with an old toothbrush, brass brush, or steel wool, I just brush off the rust. This leaves the ferrule in a raw metal state which is how it originally looked like. It just gives a nice contrast with the darker wood/carabao horn deity hilt. Here's a couple of tenegre hilts that originally had rusty/oxidized ferrules that I soaked in vinegar and cleaned off during restoration. This gives you an idea of what the ferrule looked like originally.