"My name is Blōdlǣtere. I burst asunder mail. I rend flesh. MHB made me."
Or at least I
think that what the runes on the blade say in Old English. Blōdlǣtere is old english for blood-letter. I feel like I've been working on this puppy forever. It took me well over 100 hours to make this.
It's a broken-back seax, the kind that would have been used in the British Isles during the Dark Ages. I think it might qualify as my first sword: the blade is a little over 19" (490mm) long, and the overall length is 28". It's 1 3/4" (45mm)wide at the break (the peak of the blade). It's a fairly thick blade (made from 1075). The spine is 6.5mm thick at the break, and it tapers slightly back toward the handle where it's 4.5mm. Despite it's size it only weighs in at 1 lb 7 oz. The point of balance is 4" in front if the handle, and the node of rotation is about 1" in front of the break (12" out) so it handles just about right for a hacking/slashing blade. It feels very good to my hand.
As you can probably tell from the photos, I hand-sanded it to a fairly high polish (600grit), so it's hard to get a good picture of the runes. This is the best one so far:
The runes were cut into the blade when it was still soft, and I hammered Nu Gold wire into the grooves. Nu Gold is a copper alloy that looks a lot like 18k gold.
I have to say my favorite part of making this seax was casting all the fittings in bronze. It really lets you take the whole package to the next level of bling:
Most of the hardware here is stuff that I posted about already when I was making it - I carve the original in wax and then cast copies of it
The handle is a piece of black walnut from a tree my brother and I felled. I carved a couple of Celtic fighting dogs on it. Unfortunately it appears Dover is not longer listing where the images they put in their books came from, so I can't tell you about it's origin. Color me peeved. And the same is true for the leather carving on the sheath:
I hardened the sheath by heating it to 200 degrees and brushing on liquid bees wax. This makes it fairly waterproof, but more important in this case is the stiffening. With such a long blade and heavy sheath hardware the sheath tended to bend. I had visions of the owner sheathing the blade and the tip coming out the side of the sheath - not good at all.
I also learned my lesson with my last war knife: here's a shot for scale. Definitely not a pocket knife.
I'll probably put this up for sale on Etsy in a couple weeks, but first I have some saplings to cut with it, and a conference to take it to.
