Welcome everyone!
It has been a while since I completed the last video covering the broad seax.
Some of the slow down can be attributed to significant changes in the shop as well as
my office that aligned with perfect precision to hamper my ongoing video production.
However, now I am back to completing the broad seax and you see me slowly forging out the
bevels to establish the cutting edge of this single edge pattern-welded sword.
As you see me hitting the sword edge with the hammer, several distinct observations
can be made.
First, the sword develops a bend where its curves aware from the cutting edge.
This is due to the steel in the cutting edge expanding more than the steep at the back
of the sword.
Second, the tang is also getting bent which is due me excerting too much pressure with
my left hand.
It is an iterative process to straighten the sword back out first and then going back to
forging the bevels which in turn will cause the sword blade to acquire a bend again.
Single edged seaxes have the broadest part of the blade at the base of the tang and gently
taper towards the tip.
When drawing out the bevels I am trying to make the blade as broad as possible.
I repeat this process several times until I am happy with the overall shape of the blade.
With a pattern welded blade, I need to be careful to not distort the lines and work
the blade as evenly as possible.
By hitting the blade on the edge with the back against the anvil, I can straighten out
the bend that was introduced by drawing out the bevel.
Another way to straighten the back would be to forge the back of the blade but I want
to keep that as thick as possible.
When forging a sword, the actual time spent forging is much shorter than any other part
of the process.
However, time spent here can significantly reduce the time I have to be in front of the
grinder.
However, even then what you see here on video is only a short window into the overall forging
time.
Once I am done with forging, I normalize the blade by bringing it up to critical temperature
and letting it cool in the air.
This relieves some of the stresses that were introduced by forging the blade.
As the blade is much longer than my short forge, I need to move it back and forth through
the heat and try to increase the heat in the blade evenly until the whole blade is roughly
at the same temperature.
Another phenomenon that can be observed here is recalescence where the temperature in the
steel briefly rises while it cools down to a change in crystal structure.
You have to look very carefully here to notice it.
After normalizing, it's time to take the blade to the grinder.
First, I even out the lines and then I will start working on thinning down the cutting
edge.
I am also using the grinder to refine my tang shape and even out the transition to the blade
part of the sword.
Once I am happy with the profile, a few more adjustments are necessary to make the sword
completely straight.
Afterwards, I spent a lot of time to remove scale and hammer marks and to further thin
down the blade.
A push stick allows me to apply more pressure and to easily control where steel is being
removed.
As the sword has not been hardened yet, I don't have to worry about controlling the
temperature.
However, it gets quite hot after prolonged grinding and needs to be cooled in water occasionally.
My final step before heat treating is to remove vertical grinder marks which could become
stress risers.
I do this by grinding along the length of the sword rather than perpendicular against
it as you saw me doing before.
I draw file as the final pass to get rid of grinder marks and then I am ready to heat
treat the sword.
My heat treating oven makes it much easier to get the sword to an even temperature although
if need be this could be achieved by stroking the blade through the forge as well.
Before quenching the sword, I will normalize it one more time and give you another chance
to observe recalescence.
This is a little bit more difficult to see as the sword essentially has the shape of
a wedge and thus does not lose temperature at the same rate across its width.
Once I am done with normalizing, I place the sword into the heat treating oven again and
bring it back up to critical temperature.
This is also a good time to get ready mentally for quenching the sword.
I will have to draw the sword quickly out of the oven and then plunge straight into
my high speed quenching oil.
To avoid a sharp transition in hardness at the tang, I move the sword up and done in
the hope of creating a more gradual transition in hardness.
I also quickly inspect it to find any obvious warpening.
It looks like the sword came out successful and did not break.
Next, I will get it ready for tempering.
Afterwards, I will remove any remaining warpage.
However, all of that will have to wait until the next epsiode of forging a viking broad
seax.
As is usual for me, producing new videos takes a lot of time.
Between work and other responsibilities, I only get a few hours every week to work in
the forge and on producing these videos.
I appreciate your patience in following me along on this journey and I expect that the
sword blade will be completed soon.
As always many thanks to those of you who have joined me on Patreon.
I very much appreciate that.
If you like what you see and want to watch more, please subscribe to my channel.
See you next time.