Welcome to another episode of Spear Born of Fire.
Before we continue on the journey, let's take a look at the patterns I want to create.
Here are two spear heads with wolf tooth pattern and twisted stars.
Each episode you watch will get us closer to this result.
In this episode, I will be creating the twist pattern and weld it to the core.
I have a number of already prepared pattern-welded bars from previous projects and Tony and I
am choosing the one that looks the best.
In the pictures, you just saw you may have noticed that the twisted patterns on the spear
head came from one bar with different twist directions and a hairpin weld.
The first step is to create the different twists.
However, before we go there, there is something you can do to help me with these videos.
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Let's prep the bars for twisting!
The first step is to weld on two supports for my twisting jig and slow motion makes
that look almost magical.
Once the bar is in the twisting jig, I am using the oxy-actelyn torch to hear the bar
to a bright orange and then slowly twist it.
My method is to hear up roughly 2 inches of bar and then make a constant number of twists
so that the pattern stays even throughout the whole bar.
You may hear me counting out loud in the background.
To prevent the bars from shearing in the corners, I usually put on a slight chamfer to reduce
the transition angle.
With the jig and the torch twisting is usually a fairly quick process and becomes very repeatable.
Frequent brushing helps with removing scale and keeps the bars cleaner since they need
to be forge welded back to square later.
I twisted left for one half of the bar and now it's Tony's turn to twist right for the
other half of the bar.
Once all the twisting is done, we use a wire brush on an angle grinder to clean up any
remaining scale.
My usual philosophy is to keep everything as clean as possible to reduce the rate of
failure.
Since all of this work consumes so much time, I really want to avoid starting over.
The wire brush on the angle grinder can be quite dangerous.
I prefer to wear a full face mask and brace the grinder against my body.
Here you can see the supports for the twisting jig a little bit better.
It's just little metal squares that I weld to my bars.
After twisting the bars always need to be forge-welded back to square before they can
be used any further.
As with all my forge welding, I do this in sections and make sure that the bars are hot
enough for liquid flux to squeeze out easily.
To maintain the same dimension, I use a spacer on the power hammer.
Any true blacksmith would be horrified by what is coming next.
I need to bend the bar precisely in the middle and I am doing that free hand with the torch.
I have many excuses for that, the side-blast forge was not running and the propane forge
does not give me localized heat.
However, I don't have any excuses for what you are seeing here; that seems like a terribly
way to bend the bar in the middle.
So, let's use the coal forge after all and do some corrections with the hammer.
To successfully weld the bar I just bent to the core of the spear, I need a very precise
fit without any gaps.
This is easier said than done but for now it's good enough to cut the bar to the right
length.
As I had heated the bar for bending some of the resulting scale needs to be removed again
and small file is appropriate for the job.
I am getting ready for the final fit now and really hope that all of this is going to come
together.
A failure here would ruin all the work done so far.
Once the spear is hot enough to take flux, I apply plenty of it.
The next couple minutes are going to determine success or failure.
I will let the action speak for itself.
So far everything looks like it came together.
I will just do one more light welding pass before declaring victory.
If you have watched all episodes so far, you have seen 4 different forging welding steps.
There are several more to come.
Some of these steps could be combined but I prefer to do them separately since that
gives me more control.
In preparation for the next step, I need to taper the tip into a much sharper end.
This is necessary since we need to fit the cutting edge of the spear over the core that
we have built up so far.
As always I hope you enjoyed watching this video and will stay with me till the end of
the project.
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think twice.
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Alright, that's it for now.
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