It is another Saturday morning in sunny northern california.
In the last episode of a Day At The Forge, I was working on a fairly complex pattern
welded viking-age sword.
As with many of my projects, they take a long time to complete and this one is no different.
My goal for today is to forge the bevels into the sword and create a rough taper from the
base to the tip.
As I am done with all forge-welding, I am preparing pieces of wood to light the coal
forge.
The coal forge is in many ways much nicer than my forced-air propange forge.
The coal provides me with isolated heat and greater temperature control.
It is also less noisy and as a result feels more relaxed.
The large pieces of coal make lighting the fire on the first try a little bit challenging
though.
To create enough heat, I first need to get the wood burning really well.
Otherwise, the coal will not burn by itself.
In the previous epsiode, I was talking about rituals.
In many ways, lighting the forge is one of them.
It requires cleaning the clinker out of the forge, preparing the paper and wood and then
carefully controling the fire and air till everything is ready.
By that time, my mind will also have transitioned over to a day at the forge.
The pattern-welded sword containing a core of 8 pattern-welded rods is currently roughly
in the shape of a sword but still requires beveling for the cutting edge.
At the moment, the blade is roughly 36 inches long - roughly 92 cm - which is at the extreme
end of Viking-age swords.
A complication of that length is that it does not quite fit the bed of the forge.
As I am forging the bevels, I need to be carefully to forge both sides the same amount.
Hammering at an angle on one side, widens the cutting edge which causes that section
of the sword to bend slightly.
Switching over to the other side helps with correcting that bend.
While working with the coal forge is peaceful, the length of the sword was really getting
in the way of a solid heat.
The propane forge allows me to heat much longer sections and in the end will speed up the
work.
My process for forging in the edges requires heating overlapping sections of the sword
working from the base to the tip and then back again.
At this point, the pattern-welded core is not really visible and I need to make sure
that I work both sides evenly so that it stays in the middle and does not get too distorted.
I aiming for a straight and even edge, small hammer blows iteratively correct and accomplish
that.
If you have watched my previous videos, you may have been left with the impression that
the power hammer does all the work.
For the Day at the Forge videos, I am showing you almost everything I do with minimal cuts
of the video.
I hope you get a sense of the manual work required when workign on a sword or for that
matter anything else.
The heat was getting too close to my hands which means it's probably a good idea to switch
sides - assuming that the tang has cooled down enough.
To get the right taper, I am drawing out less of the edge towards the tip and leave the
material thicker there.
Once the whole sword has been beveled once, I am working backwards but this time at slightly
lower temperature and on a wetted anvil.
The water gets trapped between the anvil and the hot steel causing it to vaporize and blowing
off scale.
This reduces the amount of scale I will have to grind away later.
Of course with all of this I better make sure that my hammers don't catch flame and burn
away.
Once I am done with forging, I need to figure out the geometry I want to grind.
To get a better sense I remove some of the scale on the grinder.
When making a sword, the time spent grinding is quite disproportionate to the forging process.
I estimate that between forging and grinding, I probably spend 20% of it forging and the
rest in front of the grinder.
Grinding also generates a lot of metal dust that is not all that healthy to breathe in.
Ideally, I would be wearing my respirator but at the moment I am making do with a strong
fan that blow the grinder dust away from me.
My only objective at the moment is to get to a place where I can take a test edge of
the sword.
That will tell me where the line between the cutting edge and my pattern-welded core runs.
To remove some of the scale from the fuller, I am switching over to my grinding weel.
Free handed fuller grinding is not something I am very good at.
Because of that, you will see me grind very carefully here.
Alright that's enough forging and grinding for a day.
Now, it's time to dip the sword into my vat of ferric chloride and see what kind of patterns
I can discern.
As always this is difficult to see on video but you might be making out some patterns.
The important part is really where the lines run and that the other side of the sword looks
completely different.
Alright, my day at the forging is coming to an end.
I hope you enjoyed this video and will subscribe to my channel.
I plan on posting these kind of updates more frequently while I am working on getting projects
finished and documented.
If you like these videos, please share them with your friends and on your social networks.
And with that I will see you next time.