I've been a blacksmith armor for over 30 years.
I've created weapons for over two hundred feature films.
This is Man at Arms.
I really enjoyed Kick-Ass and Hit Girl's double-ended Naginata spear.
It was always a fun one and we have a ton of requests for it, so I'm really enjoying building it.
I'm basing what I'm building
more off of the concept art for the poster that shows a socketed spearhead
as opposed to what was actually used in the movie.
On Hit Girl's spearheads, I didn't really need a pattern.
I just knew that I needed quarter-inch thick 5160 steel
about 20 inches long
I cut that on the ban saw and then start forging the ends on the power hammer.
It's actually more work in making the spearhead for the socket
The shaft I start out with is a red oak shaft
inch and a quarter in diameter.
So we're looking at almost four inches. I need to take a piece that's two inches by quarter-inch thick
and spread out four inches wide. I switched out the drawing dies
that I normally use on the power hammer to a fullering die
to give it more abrupt spreading of the edge of the metal.
And then wrap that around using the swage block.
And then
joining it together, tig welding up the seam. And at that point
taking it to a mandrel and hammering it to round.
I forged the bevels on the blade which caused the plate to
curve outward like a scimitar, but I wanted it curve inwards like a sickle.
In this case, I should've put the curving into the piece beforehand.
Instead I have to do it after the fact which is a little more difficult.
So I held it up on the edge of the block on the anvil
and hit it the hard way down to cause it to curve back inwards.
After i've got the blade rough forged in
I took it back over to the plasma cutter and just trimmed all the
edges, so I didn't need to grind it all the way.
The plasma cutter will reach temperatures forty-five thousand degrees Fahrenheit.
it strikes an electrical arc with a high-pressure
gas stream going through it. And will blow through up to three-quarters of an inch of steel.
The blades are ground and look good. I'm now going to harden them
in the heat treating furnace.
When I quench this, I'm only to quench the blade. I'm going to do an edge quench.
The socketed spearhead I've made
are a very hard steel so what I'm trying to do
is maintain the socket softer
area so that I can drill through it afterwards so I didn't quench that
oil that leaves the socket still relatively hot probably about 1200 degrees.
Whe oil gets on the twelve hundred degree piece of steel, it's gonna catch on fire.
The fire department isn't going to be happy to hear this but
you know I probably have flash fires least once a week.
I tried putting smoke detectors in my shop few years ago
but it was useless crawling up on the ceiling and turning them off.
So I just kind of gave up on that.
I've tempered the spearheads and taken them over to the belt grinder.
And smoothed out the grinds on that.
I've also taken the wooden oak dowel and cut that down to 24 inches.
And tapered the ends to fit into the sockets.
Not only is Hit Girl's spear double-ended, but it comes apart in the middle.
I have Alicia working on the jewelry bench
making a coupling out of a steel tube with another tube on the inside.
It'll have a rivet through like a bayonette connector so you can use it as two blades
or you can use it as a double blade.
The final portion of this build would be to rivet the sockets to
to oak poles at which point I'll wrap the whole length of it in parachute cording.
I wrap the oak dowel in paracord and now Hit Girl's spear is complete.
Thanks for watching Man at Arms.
Be sure to subscribe and tell me in the comments what weapon you'd like to see next.