Welcome to another episode of a Spear Born of Fire.
In this episode, we will actually create the spearhead.
If you have watched any of the previous episodes, you have seen a lot of the work leading up
to this.
We now have everything that is required and will put it together.
The wrought iron has been combined with the high-carbon edge steel and is now being forged
to the same width and thickness to prepare for forge-welding.
For now, I am making sure that the surfaces are straight and free of scale.
I am paying particular attention to the inside surfaces since the fit with the spear core
needs to be very tight.
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End of message.
A great benefit of steel is that it is very malleable when hot.
This allows me to bend the arms back into place.
All of these manipulations are a little bit scary since I don't want any of the forge
welds to come apart and wrought iron can be a little bit tricky.
While the spearhead still requires a fair bit of extra work, I will reward you with
a quick glimpse of the pattern at the end of this video.
For now, as before, it is important to make sure that I have clean surfaces free of scale.
When forge welding, it is also very important to have a good fit.
Since I cannot aggressively forge the shape, closing up gaps will not be possible.
As you can see here, the fit is not good at the moment.
So, let's heat up the outer part and fix that.
Also, the process looks pretty easy on video, it took a couple of iterations to get right.
Closing the gap at the top opens up the arms, closing up the arms, creates more of a gap
at the top.
Since the adjustment was done at high temperatures any newly formed scale needs to be removed
again.
We are getting closer now to the final forge welding step in this project.
As before, any failure here will doom all the work we have done so far.
So, I am having a fair bit of tension about what is going to happen.
To counter that, we are taking our time and slowly tune everything till it's perfect.
As of now, you may still be wondering how this misshapen construction you have watched
over so many episodes will ever turn into a spear.
Just have a little bit more patience.
The time for the final forge weld has arrived.
Because of the irregular shape, forge welding on the power hammer is not going to be possible.
So, I have to forge weld by hand which always a little bit more difficult.
However, it looks like everything came together alright.
Now, it's time to slowly create the right profile.
I am still not entirely happy with the process that I have come up with since it wastes a
fair bit of material.
However, instead of forge welding the material back into the socket, I am only fullering
it somewhat and will remove the rest of the material on the grinder.
The plywood form closely resembles the dimensions of the Finnish spearhead and that's what we
are using to approximate the final shape.
My videos usually include a lot of visual detail that I do not explain.
If you look closely here, you can see some pieces from previous but failed attempt to
make this spear.
The grinding you are seeing here is also good for removing any of the remaining tag welds.
I am now removing the scale covering many of the forge-welding steps so that I can see
if everything has come together correctly.
There are a couple remaining forge steps and one of them is to forge in the edge bevels.
Another challenge is to avoid distorting any of the pattern welding, so there are many
iterative adjustments to make sure that the edge lines flow smoothly and that everything
remains centered.
I hope by now you have a much clearer appreciation for all the work required to make one of these
spears.
While I started with creating the socket at the beginning, I am getting back to it now
and to ensure that the taper is smooth.
And here is the result.
A spear fresh from the forge with magical patterns hiding in the steel just waiting
to be revealed.
While patience is a virtue, I think all the work so far warrants at least a little sneak
preview.
So, let's grind up a surface and take a quick look at the pattern.
The visual inspection reveals that a little bit more forging is required.
However, that's going to be a topic for the next episode.
As always, I hope you enjoyed this, so subscribe to my channel and share the word.
See you next time.