well, it was my first try modeling with splines, that alone took me 2 hours :/

and the pommel is seperate from the hilt. if you look, the hilt was done with diamond splines, while the pommel was done with square splines (might have those mixed up.)

I'm not very good at using splines (explain the symetry and the screwups) all I did was model it with splines, then used loft nurbs to make the splines into a solid object.

I'd love to learn how you do it though :P