Sources for gladius hilt materials

[marcos]

LUCIUS, of course I agree , a lot of hilts have survive, but - be attention - some in your pictures aren' t original. They seem so , but aren't ,also if they are in a museum.
Then , take a look at the guard of the mogontiagum (the first sword in your post), and precisely take a look at the hole of the guard to insert the tang and then to the width of the bottom of the tang . Sounds strange.

here some other original handles
The following , well knew and already published , is an amazing spatha , sold around 1 years ago by a auction house



and then some others unpublished , not available on internet (only the grip is original )


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Jesper , I have some more pics , if you are interested .

About materials for grips, I have re-hilted some original gladius and thus I check a lot of kinds of bone , and I have to say that it isn' t easy to find the straight one . Pigs bone are absolutely not good , the same for the big part of the cow , just a little better for horse legs bone, but until now I have not find the perfect bone . I can say that it doesn't exist.
I'm sure there is a "backstage" but I have not again found it .