Basket hilt

[MacRob]

Thanks you for the replies.

Luke, you pretty much answered my next question, which was going to be: How to take it out? Perhaps it's best left alone.

I would leave it alone. If I remember correctly, the Cold Steel sword has a pommel which screws onto the tang. That makes the basket easier to remove than one which is peened but it is still possible to bugger up the threads on the tang while doing so, which creates some problems. Basket liners are correct for the 1828 pattern sword. Most of the earlier swords were originally equipped with a pad at the front of the basket to protect the hand and a few may have had partial or full liners but this did not become common until the 1828 pattern was introduced.

The Cold Steel sword is pretty well made and does have a nice blade but I agree that it combines a Jacobite era blade with a basket which would have been much later. However, no small number of newer baskets attached to older blades survive in Scotland.