First try at a Xiphos

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Hello. The guards are actually usually solid. The two solid parts are connected with a thinner sheet , under which the grip scale is secured and riveted. At least some times this efect was achieved by having solid piaces on the guard, and then add a longer sheet of iron to cover them and connect them, so that an empty space was created in the middle grip. The solid guards and the additional sheet were riveted together and then probably filed together so that it is very difficult to distinguish the seam.
Not that there aren't any hilts with just an iron sheet over the organic guard, but they apear much more rarely. They were more common in Etruscan swords.
What i have never seen is a completely solid guard, like one piece of equal thickness riveted on either side of the blade. They probably considered a solid piece on the grip as a waste of weight.
I have not seen a silver covered guard. I have seen many covered in gold sheet, although they were probably added only for the funeral. Only the so called Philip's sword (one of the five burried with him) seems to have solid gold guard pieces, or they might be guilded silver.
The pommels often had two iron rings on the edges of the cylinder, that were nailed in place with four tiny nails. Some times the space between these two rings was filed so that the cylinder was slimmer in the center than in the edges. It is always overlooked that about 1/3 or more of the pommels shown in art, and about the same percentage of the originals have a conical or hemispherical pommel, usually covered in sheet iron. Some times it looks like half a fruit, and indeed in greek they are called "apples". They don't look like apples though, more like a round fig. There is a great variety of shapes however. In art certainly there are one or two more types of pommels that i have never seen on originals, but i don't doubt they existed.
Khairete
Giannis