What makes a sword 'Real'? Some rules of thumb...

So first off I do not claim to be an expert in swords.  I've forged a couple swords that knowledgable people really liked. I've had some training from expert sword smiths.  I've had the opportunity to handle (as in swing around, find the node of vibration, the node of rotation, etc) some original viking era swords, and some old katanas.  I'm always trying to learn more about swords.  So I'm more knowledgeable than the average bear about swords, and have a good mix of practical knowledge and academic knowledge.
So with that caveat, here are my rules:

1) If it looks like sheet metal, it is sheet metal.  It's not a sword, it's home decor.
2) If it costs less than $400 new, it's not a sword.  It's a SLO - a Sword Like Object.  And I'm not talking about swords you find at estate sales, desperate buddies trying to sell their stuff to pay the mortgage.  I'm talking modern retail.  The economics of producing a quality blade even using CNC and all sorts of automation really dictate that a 'Real' sword will cost at least $400. You will find stuff that seems like a pretty good sword under $400, but it's probably a bad sword at best and will run afoul of rule #3
3) If you pick it up and think "Wow, I'd need to be stronger to wield this in a fight" it's not a real sword.  Real swords are light and fast.  I once was walking through a Ren Faire and we were passing a weapons retailer.  My buddy said "Wow.  Look at that two-hander.  You'd have to be a monster to wield that."  The retailer heard his comment and said "Naw!  It's only 16 lbs."
That's only about 11lbs over-wieght.  Most historical two handers weight about 5-6 lbs.  Most 1 handers weight less than 3.
4) If it handles like a baseball bat, it's not a real sword.  Real swords are carefully balanced for the type of fighting they do.  Which leads me to my last rule...

5) If you pick it up and it doesn't immediately feel right, it's not a sword.  A real sword tells you what to do with it.  You don't need to be a fighting expert.  You don't need to do a sword kata with it.
I got to handle an original Ulfberht viking sword.  I just picked it up off the table and my brain/body said "Oh yeah..."  No questions, no reservations.  I knew what to do with it.    It was light, fast and went where I wanted it to go.  I started looking around for some unsuspecting Franks...

And no, I have no interest in debating the meaning of the phrase "a real sword".

Busy,busy, busy

Too damn busy to even post until now.
I went to a gem setting class in August at Peters Valley.  These pictures are pretty crappy, but you get the idea.  Modern jewelry with faceted stones in a variety of settings.

Yes, you will start seeing gems in knives and jewelry now.

The second thing that kept me busy was putting up a timber frame I made for my brothers shed:

I felled the trees and cut the raw beams probably 4 or 5 years back, then I did the cutting to size and the joinery a couple winters ago.  Because of various reasons we didn't get around to assembling it until this August

It's real post & beam joinery with  giant mortises and tenons, and the corners are the classic english tying joint

The third thing that kept me busy was secretly making a bowie knife for my brother's 50th birthday in September:

 The blade is about 8" long, made from 1095 and 15N20.  This is one of the first billets of damascus I ever made.

 The fitting are made from old wrought iron we dug up at our mom's house (she lives in a 1815 farm house).  I etched them in ferric chloride and t hem hit them with a wire wheel, and now they look as much like wood as they do like steel.

 The handle is spalted Japanese red maple that I stabilized.  It came from a dying maple in my mom's yard we used to play in when we were kids.

I ran some vine pattern file work down the length of the spine.

And just to keep things interesting, I also made 3 custom rune rings, two of which were wedding bands.

I think it's time for a nap. 

And now for something completely different...

So my newest tangent is a bottle opener based on a viking ship figurehead:

Cast in solid bronze, they do a good job of ripping the top off a bottle (and pulling your pants down).

This one is based on a figurehead in the British Museum found in the river Schelde, Belgium.

I'm going to make some more based on other figureheads, but the others will take more time as they are sculpturally more complex.

Broad Seax

I finally finished the blade I've been working on this winter.

It's a broad seax - a style of knife from the dark ages common in continental Europe.  Mine is fairly historical in it larger features, but it's decorations are mostly pulled from my addled imagination so I guess this should be labeled a 'fantasy' seax ( a seax fantasy?).

The blade is 11" long, made from 1075 carbon steel.  It's quite thick (1/4" at the spine) right up until the curve of the tip.  I've inlaid two decorative lines of Nu Gold on both sides.

The handle is 7" long and the wood is caramelized, stabilized maple.  I sanded it to the profile of the two end caps, and then laid out  series of 3/16" deep saw cuts around the handle which I rounded into the ribbed pattern.  The front & back end caps (ferules) are bronze castings I carved a ways back in my casting class and haven't had a chance to use yet.  I carved the wood very carefully so it goes up inside both ferules quite tightly.  I epoxy everything together, but my goal is make everything nice and snug so the epoxy is really more of a sealer, and the real structural strength of the knife comes from the mechanics of how it fits together.  The tang of the blade is very thick and goes all the way through the handle where it is peened over to hold all the parts together tightly.

The sheath is fairly historical in most respects, but the embossing on the leather is purely stuff that just came to me.  Lots of tangled vines, a wolf/hound doing something to a deer, moon-phases, women's faces and a skull all are mixed up in it.

This blade has no name.  Funny how some of them seem to spawn name right away, and some never do.

The next project is another seax someone commissioned from me.  The blade is done, but it will be a while in the works I suspect.

Winter Jewelry

It's nice out now so I'm working on knives, and I should have another one done in a week or so.
I never posted some of the jewelry I made this winter, so here it is:

I carved a wolf head terminal and used it to make bunch of bracelets and arm rings.

I  also did a  lot of different sizes of the Kingmoor ring, and started casting it in silver as well as a couple flavors of bronze.

I've got  couple more jewelry projects I will do over the summer, but not much.  It should be mostly knives until the snow hits again.

More Jewelry

I just couldn't do it.  I couldn't dig a 140' path to my workshop every fucking week for a month just to have the wind blow snow into it anyways.  So there was zero knife work in February, just jewelry:

A jade and silver ring for my daughter's birthday.

A one-off anglo-saxon rune ring in bronze for a customer in Australia.

A hedgehog torc (neck ring) in bronze commissioned by a young woman in Boston.

A ring inspired by a viking grave find, but I deviated too far from the original to call it a reproduction.

But it's March now, the snow is finally melting, and I've got a commission for an ornate seax.  So hopefully there will be a blade in the next post.

Kitchen Knives

I finally got a knife past my alpha tester (my wife).  The last kitchen knife was deemed too thick for general work but has found a home as a chicken & root vegetable disassembler, a job it does very well.  The new knives are much thinner, if you can call a millimeter "much".

Making these knives has been a real learning experience.  The scale of too wide vs too thin is very very small to someone used to making combat and field blades.  I also had to switch steels to do it.  The problem with basic carbon steel is you have less than a second to get it from the forge to the quench tank before you start forming soft steel instead of hard steel.  I just didn't think I could get a blade less than a millimeter thick over a majority of the surface from the forge and into the quench in less than a second because they start cooling the milli-second they hit the air.  Thicker blades hold their temperature much better in the transition from forge to quench.
So these knives are made from O-1 tool steel.  O-1 is designed for cutting and edge retention, and it has a 10 second plus (I can't remember exactly) window to get to the quench.  Compared to plain steel that is a lifetime.  The only bad part about O-1 is that you really need an electric heat treat oven or salt tanks to heat it because it needs to hold at 1500 degrees for 10 to 30 minutes in order for it to harden properly.  You just can't do that in a fire.
So enough technical babble.  This first knife is a 6" chefs knife with a handle of brass and caramelized stabilized maple.  The blade is 1.3mm thick in the visual center of the blade, and .25mm just before the sharpening starts.  The previous knife that was too think was 2.1mm in the middle, and .5mm just before the sharpening.  This one now has a permanent home in my kitchen.

This knife is pretty much exactly the same except for the handle.  In this case it's stabilized standing-dead apple wood.  Since this one made it past my alpha tester, it's going on to my beta tester who is a professional chef - fingers crossed.

This is an O-1 paring knife that failed with my wife because I made it for my hands, and hers are smaller.  The blade is to wide by about 1/4 inch for her to use it comfortably.  The handle wood in this case is stabilized spalted pussy willow.

No really, pussy willow.  Turns out pussy willow wood is very light, very hard, and has some spectacular grain and color patterns.  The only reason I know is I have been trimming 3 pussy willows in my yard for 14 years now to be trees.  They look like 2 story tall broccoli plants.  The October blizzard a few years back knocked one down, so I had to cut it up.  That's how I discovered the wood.

Treasure

As usual I got side-tracked again.  I've been seeing lots of Viking and other dark ages jewelry and decided to make some 'treasure':

So far I've made arm rings, bracelets, and rings.  The bracelets and arm rings are designs of own that fall in the viking aesthetic.  The difference between the bracelets and arm rings is just the size of the twisted ring.

I made two terminals for the ends.  A wolf that came out so-so:

And a raven I'm happy with:

The rings are all attempts at reproducing the Kingmoor ring, an Anglo-Saxon ring in the British Museum:

The first is fairly far from the original:

I started cutting the wax with a graver and it gave the wrong kind of cut.  But I liked the style anyways so I went ahead with it.

The next one is much closer:

The runes are almost right stylistically, but I made it to fit my finger which is only size 9 so it's a bit out of proportion.  The original is about size 13, based on photos and measurements I've gleaned from the web. I'm working on a full size version of the ring now.  We'll see how that goes.

These are all made from copper-based alloys that attempt to mimic the look of gold.  The wire for the twists is Nu Gold (or red brass), which is 15% zinc 85% copper.  The castings (finger rings & terminals) are done in manganese bronze, which is 58% copper and various amounts of zinc, iron, manganese, aluminum, and tin.

And yes, I'm selling these on Etsy :-)