*Writing Noise*
This is Man-At-Arms: Reforged
Today, we're making a Viking Dane Axe used by the Raider in
"For Honor"
Which will be available on February 14th.
In "For Honor"
You step into a Visceral battlefield and fight as some of history's greatest warriors.
The Vikings,
The Knights,
and the Samurai.
The Viking Age started in the 9th Century,
one of the most feared sights in Medieval Europe was a Viking ship headed towards your village.
That's because they were there for one thing, and one thing only,
to plunder.
Axes became their weapon of choice because of their versatility.
They could be used as a tool to fell trees or to chop lumber for boat building.
But in the hands of a trained fighter they became extremely versatile and deadly.
You can hook an opponent's shield and pull it out of their hand, smash through armor, and wreak all kinds of havoc.
So,
let's make one
Using the Nazel hammer Ilya now breaks down a stock to create the cross-section.
He's taking it from square to rectangular
Using the punch under the hammer, he now first marks gently where he's gonna work
And then goes in and drives the punch into the steel.
This tool has slanted walls which prevented from getting stuck in the hammer too much and it's made from S7 air hardening steel
after driving the punch [2/3] of the way through the material,
he'll take it out flip the material over and punch back through the other side creating a clean hole.
So next I go and use the tool known as the drift.
What the drift does it spreads the hole and to facilitate the process I dip it in oil
periodically to lube it up that way the hole does not get damaged and the punch does not get stuck
The next stage in making our axe is to make the back hammer part known as an anvil to do that
I made a pair of dies to produce the shape that you see in the game. These are known as Spring Swages.
Using different types of radius tooling and the edge of the dies on the hammer
Ilya now draws down the thick section and creates the blade of the axe
Now that we have the axe head forged to shape, it's time to start on the haft
Our haft is going to be made out of red oak. It's a little over six foot tall
I'm going to ovate the whole entire length add a little swell right in here
And then it's going to have knot worked carved all the way down it the first thing
I'm going to do is knock off the material for where the axe is going to be mounted.
So I'm going to check it to the eye that Ilya drifted as I go take my time to make sure
everything fits nice and snug.
So I have the majority of our haft roughed out now did it all in the sander's. As you can see some of these little notches have occurred
From the edge of the sanding belt now
I'm going to use a hand rasp and just get in there smooth everything out make it look a lot more organic.
All right, you guys know I love my sander's, but this is a lot closer to
how the Vikings would have done it so I'm just going to keep going take my time
I hand it off the Ferenc and he'll begin the carving.
Now in the game these weapons have unlimited upgrades and options
so we're going to take a little artistic license
that Ubisoft said we can use, and we're going to do some upgrades on the knot-work on this weapon.
We're going to go ahead and lay out just some basic dots and
start drawing this out so we can move on to the carving instead of the knot-work just running out off the end
we're going to use the traditional viking theme and terminate the top with a traditional beast head.
I have a very traditional mallet, and I have some small petite chisels that I'm going to be carving this with.
Now we're carrying the knot-work all the way down here,
we're going to let the knot-work interrupt here because this is going to get a leather wrap and then we'll pick it back up
to the rest of the bottom of the handle.
All right, at this point we now have the axe head forged. Luckily, Ilya did a great job
I don't have to do much profiling at all
just gonna remove a little material here and on the bottom.
And then I'm going to move to the narrow wheel and choke in these two points here
so they're lower than this plane here, and I'm going to remove the excess weld that's there from attaching the handle.
Vikings believed that the time of their death was predetermined
Which meant they had nothing to fear in battle it was either their time, or it wasn't.
This gave him a ferociousness that allowed them to control the seas around Northern Europe for hundreds of years.
Their ships even reached as far west as Greenland and North America in fact it was the Vikings who first discovered the New World.
Using a narrow contact wheel, Matt goes in and now cuts in notches for the detail where the anvil meets the axe head.
So, to terminate the handle on this axe
what we're going to be doing is we're going to be creating an end spike.
The end spikes got a fairly large offset piece that comes out the back
and then there's a series of six other large spikes that go on here, and then a thickened border.
We're using this pipe, it's fairly thick wall.
We're going to mount this plate on the backside,
big offset spike on the bottom,
six additional side spikes that will go all the way around here
will be welded on and then we're going to put on a big fat border.
Okay, our next step is we're going to grind off some material from the side
it's going to lighten it to make it a better cutting weapon and it's also going to make it look a lot more like the
piece from the game.
I have an axe to grind
Now that Carrie has the end cap assembled, it's time to start forming the spikes.
There's six on the outside and one on the bottom,
he's just going to grind these out of some round stock and then apply them later
Ubisoft has really gone out of their way to make sure all the weapons and armor in this game
have very specific textures.
Anywhere that I've ground and polished this surface has to have the texture re-added like it's forged. While I'm at it also has some langets,
strips of metal mounted up the handle so I'm going to use this strip of metal while this is heating up
I'll beat on this one, too.
After grinding the six spikes that will be mounted around the side of the socket
Carrie now grabs a larger piece of round stock and grinds the bottom spike with a slight offset.
Since the body of our axe is so massive,
we only have to worry about getting the edge hard.
Ilya is going to be really careful getting his heat right where he wants it and then quench it into water.
As you can see, or rather hear, is the vast difference in sound between the edge and the back.
The back has a softer sound.
The Edge has a loud glassy-ceramicy sound the reason for that is the edge is hard and harder materials
oscillate at a higher frequency
but lower amplitude.
The next step in assembling the butt cap for our axe I take our sleeve
Carrie made up a spike for the end
I'll weld that on
and we'll take the ring that we forged; weld it on
then we'll take our little spikes, and weld them into place.
We're nearing completion on our axe head. It's now been heat-treated and tempered.
We just have a few final things to do before we can get it mounted. One is a slight curve in here in the beard
I'm gonna mark it, with some chalk and just grind it in.
When I grind axes
I usually start at a really steep angle and then push it back slowly.
Since this one is so large, you'll see that
I'm actually
bracing the side of the axe against my body to keep it nice and steady or I'll slip and it will look really sloppy.
It's now time to start adding in our battle damage.
The marks on this blade
look like they're supposed to mimic as if another large axe hit it; so I don't want all of it to be done with a
hand grinder. I'm going to do some of it with a chisel to really make it look like there's been a nice hard strike.
Normally after making something really beautiful
I hate adding battle damage, but this is a really neat process and way to do it and this one has to look right.
All right, now. Let's move on and do one on the edge here.
Alright looks pretty good from here. I'm going to just flip it around, do the other side and it's ready for mounting.
To create the right texture on our butt cap,
we're just going to get it red-hot, and let it cool unevenly; repeat that process a few times,
then we'll have the proper scale on the surface. While I'm doing this I'm going to forge out some nails.
First I'm going to forge the taper then hot cut them off move to the vice and upset the head of the nail.
Ferenc did an excellent job on the handle carving.
I really like some of the extra details he added to terminate the knots at the top.
My next job, I'm going to use a torch and lightly burn the entire surface,
do a little hand scrub and then coat it with linseed oil, which will not only seal it,
but will actually give the handle a lot more strength.
So, working from the pictures on this axe, we're going to wrap it spiral from this direction,
wrap it in a spiral from this direction and bring the two centers together and tuck them in,
everything will be glued tucked under then this leather will be distressed afterwards,
we'll probably do a little die over it to darken it down
and then we'll do the same thing over the langets that hold the butt cap in place.
Now the langets are attached to the end cap, it's time to put it together.
First I use a plastic hammer and drive it on until it fits nice and snug, and I attach my nails into the holes of the langet.
Now it's nice and secure and will never fall off.
The Viking age came to a close in the 12th century.
In the end it was their independent
spirit that prevented them from uniting into a kingdom; leading to their downfall.
With their knowledge of the seas and warrior spirit who knows how much of the world that could have controlled.
Cause just look at what these can do.
Until next time, stay sharp!
Thanks to For Honor for sponsoring this episode.
You can wield the dane axe and fight for the vikings in the game available February 14th.
If you want to see the construction of the knights Peacekeeper armor featured in this episode demolition segments click the box on the right.
If you want to see the Kensei Nodache on the last Man-at-Arms click the box on the left.