Welcome to Episode 7 of making a Viking Broad Seax.
Remember from the last episode that I just had heat treated the blade.
Now, it's time to check if there were any problems with heat treating.
The most severe would be a crack in the blade but bending and warping are quite common as
well.
So, let's take a look.
In terms of cracking, it looks rock solid.
Starting in the middle, unfortunately, the blade developed quite a severe warp both on
the back and on the cutting edge.
Despair not.
I will show you my secret trick of fixing this the easy way.
The trick requires a straight solid bar of steel and a bunch of little c clamps.
The idea is to straighten the whole blade against the completely straight bar and run
another round of tempering.
This is something I usually do after having already tempered the blade which I am not
showing in the video here.
If my memory serves right I probably did an initial temper at 400F or so.
My final temper which I am showing here will be at 550F - much higher than I would temper
knives at but this seems reasonable for a sword that needs to withstand a bunch of abuse.
I usually temper for about an hour and then remove the blade.
Because of the heavy steel bar this requires some heavy gloves.
In this case, the gloves were not thick enough so I am rushing to my bucket of water.
Once I remove the clamps, I should be looking at a blade that is magically completely straight.
Unfortunately, although such magic would be great, don't expect perfection.
It should look much better though.
Let's take a look.
You will see a glimpse over my shoulder.
This does indeed look much much better.
However, it's not perfect and I will try to remove some of the remaining bends over the
anvil.
Once that is out of the way, it's time for my favorite activity.
Standing in front of the belt sander for many many hours.
Since these many hours come with exposure to a lot of grinding dust, I am wearing my
powered respirator which provides me with clean air - something that everyone in California
is wishing for at the moment.
My goal in grinding here is to establish a flat surface from the black of the blade to
the cutting edge while also slowly thinning down the edge as well.
As I am now working with a hardened blade, I need to watch the overall temperature and
cool the blade down occasionally.
A bucket of water is strategically placed next to the belt sander.
Another aspect of sword making is the overall weight of the blade.
I am measuring it occasionally to see how much more material I want to remove.
My overall goal is to produce a sword that weighs less than one kilogram including guard
and pommel.
As you can see more steel needs to be removed.
Overall I am getting close to where I want to be in establishing the correct bevel as
well as weight.
Once I am done with that, it's time to go to much finer belts.
To get a sense of how much metal dust accumulates, let me show you my occasional clean up of
the floor.
After a couple more hours in front of the belt sander, the blade needs to be cooled
down again.
This is also a good opportunity to check in on its weight one more time.
It's getting better but probably needs a little bit more work.
Let me show you a close up to see where more grinding is needed.
In particular, you can still see some spots on the back that need to be removed.
Another technique I like to use is using a push stick which forces the blade against
the grinder much more aggressively.
It also makes for a more even grind.
Let's take a look at the balance of the sword assuming that some hilt hardware has been
attached as simulated by a couple of c clamps you are barely able to see in the video.
One measurement is the point of balance.
In my case it's going to be a few inches in front of the guard.
Balancing can be tricky.
Alright, this is all I had time for in this video.
As usal, I would also like to say thank you to everyone on Patreon.
Since I am producing videos only as a hobby, it takes me a while to put a new one up.
I hope you liked this one and give it a thumbs up.
See you next time.