1. Your right. It's just stock removal. Sorry, My uncle mentioned the process once, not in much detail, so I looked it up in a book at the library, the book didn't help much so I'll try the other one.
2. Metal would probably not be a good idea, though I wasn't going to use solid metal. I was also going to wrap it in leather and leather thread.
3.Thanks for the tip on wood, I don't have the tools to cut the hilt in half. my uncle has a ban saw that should work pretty good.
The name and signature. inside story.
My uncle Lee owns a metal working shop and he has done smithing and nearly anything with metal. they sell custom metal furniture, nearly anything metal. He has his own propane forge and at the shop he has about 30 specialized workers. Anyway, uncle Lee told me the first day he took me to show me the shop. that your mind was the most important thing with metal. You had to know what you were doing and you had to be confident. his dad, my grandpa, had owned the shop before him and had taught him most everything with the metal. my grandpa's slogan, my uncle's and now my slogan. "Master yourself, Then master the sword." My Grandpa was a great smith, and so he brought in several people during the great depression to work with metal, lots of them went off on their own but some stuck with him and that's how his shop got started. You have to know what your doing before you can become good at it