Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, as previous posts seem to all be articles about historic artifacts, not necessarily personally owned swords and repair. If there's a better place to ask, let me know and I'll move this there.
Anyway, a couple years ago I bought a sword, but I should have done more research into trustworthy retailers first because this one was not full-tang. It had a bolt welded onto the bottom of the blade where the tang would be, and the hilt went over the bolt and the pommel screwed on at the end to hold the assembly together.
So I did what any reasonable person would do (/s), I took off the hilt assembly and tested the strength of the weld. It was not strong, and the bolt broke off easily.
So now I have a bare sword blade with no hilt, and no way to remount the hilt without modifications. But I'm having trouble finding any tutorials about how to do this. It seems it's not a common problem.
The blade itself isn't bad, so I don't want to junk it, but it's been sitting on a shelf for a couple years. It's Damascus steel, single-edged cut-and-thrust style. The false edge is just squared off so I'm thinking about using a grinder/router to give it a bevel or fillet, but that's not a high priority.
The main thing is that I want to attach a hilt to the tang, so that the blade will be shorter but full-tang. I'll probably use the original hilt if I a can make it work, but I might replace the cross guard if I can. The original one looked like it had more hand protection, similar to a swept hilt, but the photo was only from one angle, and when the item came I realized the guard is actually flat and doesn't wrap around. But I don't know how I would acquire a replacement other than having a custom one made somewhere (or building my own smithy), and that might be more than I'm willing to lut into it.
So that brings me to the main task. My initial idea is simply to grind the tang so that it fits snugly inside the grip, although I haven't decided how to attach the pommel yet. I could weld on a bolt, but I don't have a welder or any experience welding. I could solder it on but it would be weaker. I could try using a threading die to attach the pommel directly to the tang, but I don't know how well that would work on layered steel. And I'm out of ideas.
Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with this to share? Know of any tutorials or blogs that will tell me what I need to know?
It's not a huge priority, so even if this post becomes old, any response would still be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.