Hi, everyone!
Weclome to another episode of Forge Diaries.
Today, I will show how to make a jig for straightening a sword.
It is not unsual for a sword to develop a bend after heat treating.
Take a look at my latest seax here.
Correcting these bends often requires being able to apply pressure from three points.
To accomplish that I will make a simple jig from some angle iron, a flat and a round bar.
The flat bar will hang over the jaws of a leg vise and needs some curvature to stay
in place.
Since the flat bar is thin, bending it cold is easily possible.
Since I mentioned the need for pressure from three points, I will be making three separate
pieces that can be positioned on the vise as needed.
Usually, when I need to corrects bends in swords, I will first temper the sword that
it is less brittle.
Oftentimes, corrections can be done during tempering by clamping the sword to
a straight piece of steel.
However, that's not always successful.
When straighteng the sword during tempering does not work, the jig that I am making here
is another way to fix problems.
Right now, I am preparing the flat bar for welding by making some space for the weld.
Then I will quickly drill a hole so that the jig can be hung up when not in use.
The center punch makes it easy to drill the hole where I want it.
An old 3/4in drill bit makes for a convenient chamfering tool.
We don't want any sharp edges anywhere!
You might wonder how all of this is going to fit together.
The idea is that the angle iron hang directly over the vise jaw.
The flat bar will be attached on the back side and a piece of round bar will be welded
against the angle iron and be positioned inside the vise.
With three pieces, two bars provide counter pressure on one side and the action happens
with the third piece of bar on the opposite side.
Before, I can demonstrate that let's finish welding everything together.
The high contrast of welding is always difficult to capture on video.
I hope you likes how this looks.
Alright, all three pieces are done.
So, let's move over to the vise and see how they work.
To demonstrate, I hammered a few bends into a piece of scrap metal.
I will then show you how to take them out.
The idea is to find the raised spots and over bend them the opposite way to take the bend
out.
Since this piece is not heat treated this is much easier but the concept is the same.
By adjusting the three pieces, I can accomodate sharp bends as well as more gradual ones.
As you can see after a few minutes, I was able to remove almost all of the bends and
we are looking at a reasonably straight piece of metal again.
Alright, let's try this with a sword.
This is going to be much more fun and there is always the danger of breaking it.
This seax has been heat treated and tempered.
The steel is quite bendy as you can see for yourself.
I am just showing the concept here, actually creating and finishing this seax will be the
subject of another video.
I hope you enjoyed this episode and might use this jig for your own swords.
Before you make and break swords, there is one important thing for you to do right now.
That is subscribe to my channel.
You know you want to do it.
So, don't hesitate and just do it.
It's easy.
I promise.
See you next time!