Welcome to part two of Forging a Viking Broad Seax!
In this part, I will continue on my journey to create a broad singled edged sword that
might have been used in the early Viking age.
In the previous episode, I created multi-layer material for the middle as well as the cutting
edge of the sword.
However, I still need material for the back of the seax.
I often prefer to use wrought iron for this as it has interesting patterns due to the
inclusion of impurities and on top of that is very soft.
Unfortunately, the wrought iron I use comes from the 1887 globe elevators and is very
high in phosphorous.
That provides very nice contrast but also means that it comes apart easily and is difficult
to work with.
To increase the chances of success, I am folding and forge welding the wrought iron a couple
of times before forging it out into a bar.
This is very similar to the process that Europeans and Japanese used during Viking times as the
iron was won from a bloomery process and needed to be refined and cleaned by repeated folding
at forge welding temperatures.
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I have now folded the wrought iron a third time and will forge weld it again.
As a reminder, the bloomery process reaches temperatures in which the impurties are molten
and removed from the iron which remains as a sponge.
I made a video on this a few years ago, so please check that.
However, the forge welding process may also help with further removing some of the retained
impurities.
The ultimate test is if the wrought iron can be twisted without coming apart.
As with all my pattern welding, the wrought iron will also be forged out into a 3/8 of
an inch square bar; that's about 9 mms.
While these dimensions can be achieved by eye, I usually place a spacer on the power
hammer that stops the travel of the upper die at the right dimension.
So, let's take some inventory.
I created 2 long square bars with 9 layers of 1075 and 15n20.
These will form the middle of the sword.
I also created a 1/2in square higher layer bar for the cutting edge and you just saw
me finish the wrought iron bar which will form the back of the sword.
As I just told you, my bars for constructing swords or seaxes are always 3/8 of an inch
wide.
Also, this video is about a broad seax and to achieve the width of the blade, I will
forge the 1/2 of nich cutting edge bar flat to 3/8 on an inch.
This will significantly widen the bar that will form the cutting edge.
If you look closely, you can see where part of the bar is much wider already.
The spacer on the power hammer makes it much easier to quickly get to the right dimension.
However, care must be taken otherwise the die and spacer will suffer.
As you see, I have quite a bit of material.
Instead of making a seax for giants, this will form the cutting edge of two blades.
While not really necessary, I am grinding off the parts of the bar that I had welded
together in the previous episode, this also gives me a clean line to measure from.
While I will explain this later, creating this pattern-welded Viking Broad seax will
require stacking four bars on top of each other.
To be able to later weld them, they need to be really square to each other.
That is always a struggle and I don't necessarily get it perfect.
So, keep that in mind as you see me working.
In addition to the edge bar, I also just cut the middle bars to the right length and will
briefly clean them before moving on to the next step.
To create a herring bone pattern, I will twist one of the bars to the left and the other
to the right.
My twisting jig makes the quite easy but before I can use it, I need to weld the bars to little
steel squares that fit the jig.
I often wonder how blacksmiths a thousand years ago would have gone about twisting these
bars.
I have not seen any finds of specialized tools for this but find it hard to believe they
would just have used tongs for this.
The other tool that really helps with twising is the oxy-actelyn torch which provides a
mobile and high temparture heat source.
I am using a rose bud and need to dial in the actelyn and oxygen until I get the right
flame.
Even twists of these layered bars are important to me since I want an even pattern on the
finished blade.
To achieve even twists, I heat up a couple of inches of the bar and apply two complete
rotations and then move on to the next couple of inches by making sure there is a slight
overlap to the previous section.
Since the twisted bars need to be forged welded back to square, I also make sure to remove
any obvious scale with the wire brush.
As you can see I am twisting the first bar to the right.
While not entirely intuitive, these directional twists are orientation invariant.
That means no matter which way you flip the bar the direction of twists will always look
the same.
That also means to get a herring bone pattern, we need different twist directions.
For that reason, I will twist the next bar to the left.
Alright, the first bar is completely twisted.
If you take a close look, you will see how the twists have a slant to the right.
Keep that in mind when you look at the slant for the next bar which I will be twisting
left.
Perhaps, counter-clockwise would be the more appropriate term here.
The tricky bit with this process is that the temperature cannot be too high otherwise it
is easy to shear the bar leading to a waste of a lot of time.
During twisting, I make sure to count all the quarter rotations so that I always end
up with complete revolutions.
This is not important when completely twisting a bar but is a good habit for any situation
where there are interrupted twists.
Alright, the final bar is the wrought iron.
I will not twist it as tightly but so far it looks quite sturdy.
Also, when you look at a table you may see how these two bars may lead to the herring
bone pattern I am aiming for.
Here is a close look at the wrought iron.
Another aspect I have not mentioned is that I always chamfer the bars to reduce the stress
on the edges.
I have gotten quite lucky here that none of the bars sheared.
The next step is to clean off any scale so that they can be forged welded back to square.
Before I do that, let's take a closer look at the twists and here you can also see how
the chamfer helps with reliefing some of the stress; without it, the raised twisted would
be much thinner.
A wire brush on angle grinder easily gets to all the recesses and the result is a clean
and shiny bar that just screams to be forge welded again.
However, before I can put the bars back into the forge, I need to remove the little metal
squares I used to fit the bars into my twisting jig.
Since the bars are round now, I need to re-establish a square profile and I am using a spacer again
to maintain the same dimension across the whole length of the bar.
Again, it is important to get the bars hot enough to weld and to keep oxygen away from
them for which I am using borax as a flux again.
Here is a quick look at the bars after they have been forged welded back to square.
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