Bagobo and T'boli hilts are lost wax cast in one piece, and have a hollow, tapered cave inside for the tang and often a hollowed butt, too.
Are you saying the butt plate appears to be of one piece with the rest of the hilt? On old work, solder that exactly matches the colour/alloy of the joined pieces is rare, if not nonexistent; if there are soldered seams as on a tulwar hilt, they should be visible to close inspection in person. Down the edges of both grip and bolster, as well as around the butt and at the ends of the knucklebow, are good places to look. The little projection on the hand edge of the bolster appears to be all brass and decorative in nature. It would not be unusual to cast an object to achieve the general shape, or to cast parts to be soldered together, and then decorate the item by other processes. A bolster is a (metal) structure at the base of a blade that in modern Western thought is spoken of as bolstering (strengthening) the blade and/or the joint of blade and handle. Bolsters are integral (forged in, of a piece with the blade) or applied in a variety of ways; soldered, pinned, or with a hole thru the middle of the bolster for the tang/blade. Integral spear/chisel/arrow type bolsters and flat pinchy bolsters that may hark back to tangless daggers/swords seem to me to be two seperable threads of development, as perhaps does the habiki and other E Asian sheath tensioners, but there is a good deal of crossover. on bichaq and yataghan, the flat overlay that sometimes extends out over the base of the blade, much as seen with this piece, is usually spoken of as being part of the bolster, which structurally is usually true; ie it is an extension of the same piece of metal.
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