Bishops Boar

This is a commissioned piece I've been working on for quite a while.

The name is Bishop's Boar, or Bisceopes Eofor in old english.  We named it for the owner, who's last name is Bishop.  It's a seax in an Anglo-Saxon style.  The blade is 19.5"/49.5cm long, and the handle is 8.25"/20.95cm long for an overall length of 27.75"/70.5cm.  At this size it really is useful only for combat - though I suppose it could be used as a machete in a pinch.  I'm very happy with how the handling came out.  When gripped between the antler center ring  and  the hilt it feels very fast and light.  I brought it to the ABS New England Hammer-in (where it won best in show!), and one person asked me why "it feels like it weighs half of what it should".   The short answer is weight distribution.  Plus the blade is not overly fat. In total the whole piece weighs 1lb 13oz.

The blade is pattern welded using 3 bars of material.  The bar along the spine is wrought iron from an old wagon wheel.  The center bar is 24 (?) layers of 15N20 and 1095 That is twisted for part of it's length.  The untwisted part is inlaid with runes of orichalum (the roman's fancy name for 85% copper and 15% zinc).  One one side is the blades name, Bisceopes Eofor,  and the other is "MHB besmidede me" which is old english for "MHB smithed me in a forge surrounded by metal" (the owner is an expert in old english and did  the translations -any mistakes are mine).
The edge bar is 432 layer of 15N20 and 1095 in a straight laminate with the layers running up and down.  Between the hammering and the grinding the result is a wonderful pool & eye pattern.

The handle has ferrules on either end that were cast in bronze.  The red inlay is gem quality resin that I used in place of the garnets that the anglo-saxons were so fond of.  Putting real garnets in would have more than doubled the cost of the piece due to all the lapidary work.  The dark wood of the handle is 5,000 year old bog oak from the midlands in england.  These trees got buried in approximately 3300 BC and were preserved by the nature of the bog soil.  They also darkened considerably as you can see.  The center ring is carved moose antler.

This is the boar I carved and cast for the butt of the handle.

The sheath is 10oz tooling leather with bronze fitting I cast myself.  The embossed knotwork design comes from the british isles during the appropriate time period.

If you are interested in the construction/creation process take a look at my work-in-progress post on Bladesmith's Forum.

Beowulf's Sword

One of the things that kept me so busy lately was helping my friend Emiliano Carrillo with a project of his - Beowulf's sword.
The whole sword was a massive project.  He spent a huge amount of time making his own steel by the light of full moons, refining it, etc  (his account is here).  I came in at the end to help him get a hilt on it.  He had spent so much time working on the blade that 17 days out from his show he realized he wasn't going to have time to make a hilt worthy of the blade.  Luckily for him I had just retired.  He sent me pictures of an original hilt he wanted to reproduce, and off we went.

The original hilt from the 7th or 8th century.

One immensely helpful tool I got recently is an iMac on my carving desk.  No more working from bad printouts and memory.

First thing was carving the waxes based off the photos.  I start by laying out the rough design on the computer, then printing a carving guide and glueing it to the wax.

10 hours later I have something like this.  

I made copies of the parts using silicon molds, but used the more detailed originals for the sword...

...except for the plain parts.  I cast injections of those because there was no detail to lose.

The bare bronze parts being fitted to the sword.

A partial assembly of the pommel.  The red is jewelers resin, which I'm using here as a substitute for garnet.

Farther along.  The black horn spacers are being fitted.

And finally, the whole sword.  The blade is has crazy complicated pattern welding done entirely in home-made steel.   The handle is made of bog oak with a clear horn spacer in the middle, black horn spacers in the guards, and bronze of course.

2017 Jewelry, so far

I haven't posted in a while because I got too busy and simply didn't want to take the time.  But I should have a bunch of posts to make up for it.

I made a few new pieces of jewelry.  This is my nordic dragon bracelet.  The terminals are based on an original in the swedish museum.  I make it in bronze and silver, and you can buy it in my Etsy store.

I also made an extra-heavy version as a custom order.  I might make more of these, but I have to figure out a reasonable fabrication method before I start offering them as a regular item.

I also got a chance to make The Chelsea Ring.  It's an anglo-saxon ring they found in the Thames near Chelsea.  It's been dated to about 800AD, and it's one of my favorite historical pieces of jewelry.

Its construction was an experiment in ring fabrication.  I carved the ring as a flat strip.  This allows me to trim the ring to the right length for any size, and then bend it to shape using a couple different mandrels.

Again, it's in my Etsy store.

I also did what is quite literally my biggest piece of jewelry as a custom order.  It's an angel wing torc necklace.  And yes, I had to carve two different wings - every single feather.  It took a loooong time.

It weighs in at 11 ozt, but my wife reports it's quite comfortable to wear and no pokes from the feathers.

Next, I'll post about the blade work I've been doing in the last 6 months.