i'm kerry stagner and we are the blacksmiths of baltimore knife and sword
we're going to be building some of your favorite
things and fantastic objects you've never seen before this is man at arms reforged
today on man at arms we're going to be doing something completely different than what we've
done before but you've asked for it many times we're going to be doing a historical build
we're going to be building an aztec macquaddle it's actually made out of wood and then the
obsidian blades are set in kind of what you would think of with a cricket bat it's a large hardwood
bat we're going to be using white oak for that there's a lot of ornamentation ference and rick
janney have spent a huge amount of time to bring you something very special they're going to be
doing all the ornamentation on this model here on man at arms the unique thing about this particular
build is that it's going to be for a customer he saw a previous version that we made on man at arms
art of war and instantly fell in love with it he contacted carrie and asked if we could make it now
the species of wood that we've selected for this particular build is white oak the reason we chose
this type of wood is you can see that it's very tight-grained white oak is indigenous to central
and south america and likely the aztecs would have used such a dense hardwood to create a mock wattle
so there's one thing about working in a blacksmith shop when you decide to do
a build where you're just working in wood and stone in this case you just got to use what
tools you have i'm sure if we were in a wood shop and we wanted to get thickness down or
whatever we could cut it on a saw or we could do all kinds of things but here our choice is
we burn it or we grind it i don't really have an easy way to take it down to a simple form
where you could profile it with say a bandsaw if you were in a regular wood shop and you were set
up for it so i'm going to grind this thing down to shape i've made one of these before with rick
i'm going to get it down to the size that he needs we'll do some nice finishing for it we've got the
slots already set up so they're set up so that we can set those obsidian blades down in there and
then from there it'll go over to the other shop with ferrence in it and ference is going to lay
out all the artwork that rick's designed for him we'll get this thing together and start chopping
in order to make the bladed portion of our aztec mock wattle i have pieces of obsidian
which is a type of volcanic glass that produces a razor sharp edge here you can see a portion which
is raw and unworked now originally what they would have done instead of taking a tile saw like i did
they didn't have that they would have struck a larger piece of obsidian to get a piece of dibash
which is actually the correct term for a small flake which is landed off and they would pick that
up and nap it into this which is a fully finished insert they would cut a groove into the wood and
use like pine sap or they would use some sort of pitch in order to secure these into place here you
can see i have pressure flaking tools these are made out of copper and they have various points
from a wide point to a fine point there's several different ways in order to flint nap there's
hammer percussion with hard stones like granite then you would step it down to a bone mallet or an
antler mallet that's called soft percussion your final step is using these pressure flaking tools
now for the inserts going along the side of the material pushing in and down to remove
flakes of material with my first insert finished i have 17 more of these to make
there has to be nine spaced apart on either edge of the weapon to complete it these take
roughly 30 minutes to 40 minutes to complete just one so i have a lot of work ahead of me
one of the things you really need to be careful about as you can see i'm wearing
these really thick nitrile gloves a flake of obsidian produces the sharpest edge known
sometimes these edges can get down to one micron in thickness which is far sharper than a surgeon's
scalpel
you can see here where i have this first side completed almost down to the very end all this
does is really give me a platform to start with i have a lot more material to remove as you can see
in order to get it to this final refined blade shape i started with a larger
pressure flaking tool i've now switched to a smaller one to get more detail work done
carrie has gone and drilled a hole for the pommel of the mock waddle this is going to
allow for a lanyard to be attached a lanyard is used in combat so that the weapon doesn't
become dislodged from your hands and lost now the only thing i need to do in order to sort
of clean this up to make it so it doesn't chafe the lanyard material is to carve and
cut a facet to the inside of the pommel i have a set of chisels i'm going to use to do that
so with the removal of a few final chips of wood the lanyard hole in the pobble of the mock waddle
is finished it's now ready to get finished sanding for the rest of the blade portion
so when you saw this last it was a pretty beefy thing what you see here is actually
about a 60 grit sandpaper rick's been going back through and shaping the handle the way he wants
it and then knocking down that big crest i keep putting in but it's going to see a big transition
because even though we're going to sand it to the 150 240 400 rick's then going to do
some artwork and that artwork's going to be burned in with a wood burning tool
after that we get some color transition and then we're going to be able to put
in the obsidian and then you don't even want to touch the damn thing
so carrie's gone and treated the surface of the wood by sanding it and smoothing it out nicely
for me so i can begin my drawing have a nice clean surface to draw on the drawing that i'm
going to be putting onto this is quetzalcoatl the feathered serpent it's one of the chief
aztec gods in their pantheon so he's kind of like the main character once it's drawn on
i'm going to hand it over to ference he's gonna wood burn the surface
and then we're gonna paint the design and give it full color and really bring this thing to life
so
so rick and carrie have finished the woodwork for the macaquiedo and rick has drawn out quetzalcoatl
the winged serpent very traditional in the aztec culture and i'm going to take
a wood burner and begin to burn in the outlines
once we have that finished later on we'll move on to the paint coloring
wood burning in the way that we're doing it now is not as much
pressure it's more about speed and contact
thing about this particular kind of wood also is it's really big grains like any other thing
tools tend to take the path of least resistance
if you run on a soft spot in a hard spot it's real easy for it to go like that
so you got to really slow it down
when we built this weapon for the art of war series i was off doing other projects and i
really didn't get to see the transition from the original artwork to the finish it's it's
really neat to be part of this process and just watch through and see what these guys are doing
parents and rick have got it figured out we're going to move on to paint it's gonna be beautiful
rick and i have tag-teamed on the wood burning going back and forth we've got
a completely finished staining check now it's time to move on to painting and really
get some beautiful color into this so that it really has that traditional look of a maquito
so
as you can see ference did a fantastic job painting in the depiction of quetzalcoatl here
on the other side of this weapon you can see we have royal eagles the skulls
which represent humanity and on top of them plumes made out of parrot feathers that's a symbol of a
headdress of of royalty and prowess here you can see a jaguar the jaguar is a symbol of ferocity
and prowess in combat it was a symbol that warriors often had on the dorned on their shields
they also wore jaguar pelts into battle to make themselves actually appear as the animal did but
now it's time to give it some teeth i'm gonna put the obsidian inserts into it using pitch
and that will truly transform it into a deadly weapon so what we're using is a modern day
pitch has some things in it uh like plasticine and some other properties to it that make it
really good for doing things like chase and repersay but it also has a nice tackiness to it
now originally what the aztecs would have used would have been a tree sap that was boiled down
to make pitch and in my opinion that probably would have been a little bit stronger
although this isn't a bad alternative it's easier to clean up a little bit faster to work with
with the final pieces of obsidian set in
we're just waiting for the pitch to cool and this aztec weapon is complete
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