welcome to part three of creating the viking broadside in the last two
episodes I created four long bars two of which are pattern-welded by twisting and
the other two will form the cutting edge and the back of the sword in this
episode I will assemble these bars into a sword by Forge welding them together
that's a refresher for ch welding is the process in which multiple separates your
peoples are fused together with strong hammer blows at high temperatures this
process requires that the steel is very clean and not oxidized Forge welding a
long sword is particularly difficult because the surface area is narrow but
also very long as a result this step is difficult to complete successfully you
just saw me grind the scale of the bars squaring them off at the same time if
the bars are not square to each other for example because they are slanted
hitting them with a hammer will cause them to slide apart rather than welding
together clamping the bass together is a good way to check if they're square
enough if the bars are already trying to slide away from each other it is very
likely that fortune welding will fail I often times need to go back to the
grinder to make more adjustments and clam happy with how the bars hold
together and a clamp pressure once I'm satisfied with the fit and welding the
ends together within the quarter the bars do not come apart in the Forge the
recipe for success is patience and diligence it is not something that can
be rushed I usually work for four hours at the time and at this point I probably
spend close to 20 hours on the sword already should give you some perspective
whenever you hear someone say you have three hours and the clock is starting
now that's just not how this works once the bars are as for swelling
temperatures I set the weld with light tapped on the power hammer the liquid
flux sprays away when the bars meet and helps preserve a clean surface for the
wealth as before I would like to ask for your
help by sharing a link to this video on your social networks these videos are my
attempt get showing how bladesmith really make sorts of knives you may have
noticed that the bars I assembled were not all of the same length in particular
the material for the high carbon cutting edge was shorter the paths that are
sticking out will provide sufficient material for the tang
however I need to create a transition on the grinder to help with a forge welding
step that is going to create a smooth blade to tank transition now that the
Tang has been established the blade needs to be profiled a little bit more
in particular it's a little bit of white towards the tip at the moment that is
the tip that you cannot see it however helps with quickly creating the
appropriate thickness at this point and reasonably happy with how the bars came
together another important consideration is that the grains and the metal
continue to grow on the heat large grains make a steel brittle the grain
growth can be controlled by normalizing the glazing that is to let it slowly
cool down as an optional step is sometimes moved to scale and even out
the blade on the grinder this allows me to see if the worlds really came
together and if their areas in which more material needs to be removed before
the world lines disappear
as I said it is not strictly necessary and I don't always do it however lately
I have been struggling with for welding longer blades and want to more closely
inspect the wells before sinking in more time
so far so good since this is a single-edged blade I need to establish a
tip my preferred method for that is to cut your reverse tip that needs to be
forged back the reason for doing that is to ensure that the pattern on the blade
smoothly follows the blade edge creating a reverse tip is the method to do that
this is mostly an aesthetical consideration since I find patterns just
running off the blade edge to be somewhat ugly the reverse tip method has
its own challenges as you will see forging back the tip is very hard on the
worlds so this is also a good test to validate that the welds or solvent
after forging at the tip at the summer steep angle I slowly adjust the profile
of the blade further to make sure that it contains a smooth taper at this point
in the process I'm still trying to maintain a fairly even thickness of the
material so the tapering will happen as I fortune the bubbles the bevels create
a thin cutting edge while maintaining a thick profile on the back of the sword
my initial beveling happens under the power hammer with a beveling jigger maid
they usually do one complete pass on the power hammer and then do further passes
and refinements using a handheld hammer beveling causes severe bends in the soft
blade that need to be constantly adjusted the bends happened because more
material moves at the cutting edge then at the back of the sword unfortunately
making pattern-welded swords is not easy it turns out that while everything was
looking good initially they did not manage to complete you up the rod iron
bar to the rest of the sword for now I will need to throw this plate into the
pile of fingers I might still be able to make a couple of smaller blades from
this but the sword project is doomed however I will not give up here and
we'll start over without hesitation in the next episode I will catch you up on
my progress and continued failures including a brief analysis of the root
cause if you liked what you saw please subscribe to my channel my goal is to
provide in-depth explanation and much deeper insights on the process then you
may be getting anywhere else you may also join me on patreon or you can get
early access to posts as well as credits on these videos thanks a lot to all my
patterns so far and I will see you next time