Welcome to another epsiode of Forge Diaries.
Still rough, unpolished and in this case unfinished.
In a previous episode I showed some experiments creating a wolf's tooth pattern.
Inspired by Owen Bush, an extremely skilled UK bladesmith,
I have engaged in a few more experiments.
In this epsiode, I show the beginnings of a long sax that will feature this pattern.
I start with a 1 inch wide and 1/2 inch thick bar of W1.
I mark this bar with scribe in 3/8in intervals.
The idea is to make cuts on the bandsaw up to the line I am scribing here.
Cutting steel on the bandsaw takes a long time.
To prevent you from getting bored, I am showing it in 8 times speed.
Alright, I am finally done.
Actually, that's a lie.
This was just the first pass.
I now start over and split the existing cuts in half to get cuts every 3/16th of an inch.
As you can see there are a lot of cuts here.
The plan is to create the teeth using wrought iron.
However, the wrought iron I have access to is not very well behaved and I am strengthening
it by mixing in some mild steel.
I have wrought iron on the outside and mild steel in the middle.
The packet now gets forge welded under high heats.
I fold the whole thing until I get about 21 layers.
Now, I am forging it out into a very thin bar; so thin that it can fit between the cuts
I made previously
The fly press helps to forge the bar to the same width on every hit.
I take the bar and clean it up so that there is no scale left.
This will help with forge welding.
Since the bandsaw kerf is quite small, I take a cutting disk to widen up the cuts
a little bit more.
I use a punch to deform the cuts at the bottom in the hope that it will give the wrought
iron something to grip on.
This is a very laberous process and is taking much longer than I would like.
Driving in the thin slices of wrought bends the W1, so some additional widening of the
cut is required.
Alright more next time but I have one more project to share.
In the following, we are making a Viking-age padlock inspired by finds on display at the
Jorvik Viking center.
To save time, we won't be historically accurate.
In particular, we are using some steel tubes to make faster progress.
The lock plates will be held in place by several steel rivets.
We are using 1/4in square bar to start with.
For visual appeal, we are twising the bars cold.
This creates a very regular twist.
We then cut the bar into several 4 in sections.
We will forge tenon on each side of the 4 in twisted bars.
To make it a little bit easier to see where the tenon should start, we mark them on the
bandsaw.
This small cut is easy to see if when the steel is hot.
Forging the tenons actually took most of our time this day.
We use a blacksmith helper that has a butcher and square dies.
The tenons need to fit through a 3/16in hole.
We use a somewhat primitive way to set the shoulders but it works alright.
Now, it's time to make the shackle for the lock.
This start out with a 1/4in round bar.
One side is kept flat as you can see here and the other side is being tapered into a
point.
The power hammer as always allows us to save a lot of time.
Once the basic shape has been established, it's time to bend it into a U; an operation
I always find something challenging.
I should have started using scrolling tongs to begin with.
The next piece is forming the springs that will keep the shackle in the lock.
We use an oxy-acetelyn torch for welding and bracing.
This is very bright.
Don't look too closely.
Now, it's time to start working on the plates.
We mark the points where we want the rivets to be.
To make it easier for the holes to align, we welded the plates together.
That's cheating but it also saves time.
Things are sort of fitting together and we use this phase to fine tune the length of
the rivets.
The next step is to create the opening in the lock through which the shackle enters.
This requires some time intensive file work but also makes for a pretty close fit.
Now, we can also fine tune the springs to make sure they really lock savely
While I would have been nice to be able to completely finish the padlock that will have
to wait till next time.
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Using a Viking-age inspired hammer made by Jim Austin in Oakland, I slowly fit the wrought
iron pieces into the W1.