I'm Matt, I'm Kerri, we are the Stagmer Brothers of Baltimore Knife and Sword.
We're gonna be building some of your favorite weapons and some weapons you've never seen before.
This is Man-at-Arms
REFORGED
Xena and her Chakram are already a worthy build for Man-At-Arms,
but since they recently announced they're going to reboot the series, we figured we better tackle it and since she carries two very different ones
we figured we'd show you two very different ways to make 'em, so let's get right at it.
We're going to be making two versions of Xena's chakram. One will be plasma cut and one will be forged. I'll be doing the forged one.
I'm going to utilize an industrial technique using this mandrel and this jig that I've started to construct here
to forge a seamless ring by taking a slug, upsetting it, punching a hole,
sliding it over this mandrel, and then putting this whole operation under the power hammer and drawing the ring to its finished large dimension.
Sam now mig welds this entire unit together and then he actually welds to the sau plate of our power hammer.
Later, we'll cut this loose, fit a dovetail to it, and make it removable.
But we just don't have time to finish it out that way.
So we're gonna use the same steel
1045 for the punch and the Mandrel for Xena's Chakram, and I'm gonna cut it on the old marvel saw.
Like my namesake says Sam, "Safety Always Matters" and what the safety hands told us always keep your hands-free of the bandsaw.
Sam pre-hardened a piece of 1045 to be used as a punch so that the hot steel will fit over the mandrel.
Using the Iron Kiss 75 with the Mandrel system set-up,
Sam drives the material down and carefully rotates the ring around the mandrel to keep the ring even.
After forging out the diameter that he needs, Sam has to turn the material so that it's thick on the opposite direction.
Using a hand hammer, he lays in the bevel working around the ring as he goes to keep it symmetrical.
The main build on this episode is the Yin-Yang Chakram Xena carries at the very end of the series,
but I figured you guys would really like to see the original one as well.
So we're gonna go ahead and plasma cut that out then I'm gonna move on to the sanders.
When the original Chakram that Xena has is thrown at her by Callisto it hits her and spine and shatters in two
So then she has it reforged into the Yin-Yang one that Sam will be making now.
Now that Sam has finished the forging, he goes to the sander to clean that profile up.
He now goes back to the forge to soften the material so that he can straighten it on the anvil.
Matts now working on the plasma cut Chakram. He's grinding in the edge using the baiter sander.
Since Sam has forged 90% of the edge, he actually can start with a much finer grit.
He'll be working with an 80 grit belt and just
redefining the edge that he already hammered to shape.
Matt now uses the handheld sander to smooth the inside of the Chakram so that it's smooth in his hand.
I really wanted to make sure we got a really nice even finish on this Chakram, and whilst sanding on 'em,
I got a really pleasant surprise, if you hold it just right they spin while sanding and make that finish nice and even.
So to do the gem placement, what I did since there's nine instead of figuring all the math out
I cheated, I went up on Autocad put a line, drew an array with nine different sections, printed it
and then I just extended the line using a ruler. That's going to give me the location so that I can evenly space them
before we do the rest of the cut work.
So I'm just going to put some sharpie marks down, then take my finger lay out an even circle on the inside.
They're gonna get drilled all the way through so that the light will go through and then just slightly cut down with the mill
so that the gemstones sit inside the surface.
I'm using the Gorton mill to drill these holes out. I'll then be coming back with a larger cutter cutting the seat for the bezel.
Using a small paper template and a Sharpie, I lay in where the design will be on this ring.
I then take it over to the screw press and use that to press the chisel deep into the steel.
This is going to make this pattern permanent so that after we finish it, polish it and paint it everything is still easy to see.
Kerri carefully rotates the Chakram in the forge to make sure it has an even heat.
We're shooting for a critical temperature of about
1500 degrees I'm going to have to rotate it a few times because it doesn't quite fit in this forge.
This is a very important step, if the heat isn't even, then we'll get warping and that will cause the Chakram to fly unevenly when thrown.
When the temperature has evenly soaked into the ring I remove it from the forge and quench in water.
After the heat treat, Kerri moves to the wire wheel to remove as much scale as possible before he places it in the kiln for tempering.
Xena's Chakram, the last time you saw it, had just holes drilled in it, and I have since soldered in sterling silver bezels
so that I can set the fiber-optic stones,
we've got green on one side, blue on the other and I'm going to do this using old fashioned jewelry tools
Wo ho ho
Sweet
All right now we just got to do the gold on the inside portion.
We'll be good to go.
So I covered the Chakram with blue tape,
followed those guidelines that Kerri chiseled in with a razor blade and remove the tape and sprayed it gold.
Alright I'm pretty excited, this is our very last step is to remove the tape and see what this bad boy looks like.
Yin and Yang describes how opposite and contrary forces are actually complementary,
interconnected and interdependent in the natural world.
Now that we have the outer ring forged and ground to shape, John can start working on the inside handle section.
He's going to use the plasma cutter and cut out two parts, that way
that Chakram can come apart just like you see in the series.
So for the first Chakram that comes apart, we've been struggling a little bit with how to lock it back together
so that it can be thrown and still stick together. We're going to put in biscuit joints to give it a lot of strength
We'll have a pivot point down here, a locking mechanism
up above and the center will just be an additional biscuit that will run between both pieces to give it a fair amount of strength.
I'm going to take the milling machine, this is a piece of 3/8,
I'm using a 3/16 cutter, going to work right down the center of it, put my slot in, three positions on each one
they'll match up and then we'll add in some hardened steel so that the pieces go together and stay registered properly.
Now to fit this ring into the two-piece handle, I cut it in half.
I'm pretty sure I can see Sam cringing.
The inside surface of these forgings is still irregular.
Since they have to be fitted to an even plasma section Sam's going to grind them on the bator.
I've had John weld a couple of bars to the inside of these two loops.
That's going to keep them from bending during heat treating so that they still fit.
I now take these two sections over to an 80 grit belt,
this is going to clean off the scale so that John gets a good weld.
Using a series of clamps on his flat welding table
John Begins to weld, move around the pieces so they don't warp and then he'll flip them over and finish the weld off.
Matt blends these welds off so that we can begin the polishing and fitting process.
Sam now uses the grinder to begin the polishing process and help me fit the pieces closer.
So this is the piece that was forged in one ring, which we cut, we have plasma cut centers
we'll finally get it back to where we have tabs in place. that'll be locking. The piece is going to go together,
locks into one so that it can be thrown and then afterwards to be pulled apart into two separate pieces again.
This build really allowed us to showcase a lot of different talents everything from tricky forging and grinding, to even some gemstone settings,
not to mention trying to keep these things from warping during the heat treating. I can't wait to see these fly true in the demo.
Hey
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Thanks for watching Man-At-Arms Reforged.
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