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 :-)

Viking Dagger

Vikings didn't really use daggers as far as we know.  But that doesn't mean I can't make daggers in a viking style!

 I did all the forge-welding of this blade in J. Arthur Loose's Viking Dagger class at the New England School of Metalwork a year or more back.  I just didn't have time to forge out the bevels in class, and it sat for a year or so before I got around to it.  The core of the blade is two pattern-welded rods of 1095 and 15N20 that I was attempting to make into a serpent pattern, but ended up with something more like tangled strings.  I wrapped and edge bar of 1084 around the core and welded it on. The blade overall is finished down to 800 grit, but the wrapped edge I took down to 2000 grit so it's pretty much a mirror finish.  If you look carefully in the picture above you can see the snow reflected in the blade along the upper edge.  This is a larger version of this blade, which I made in the same class from the same billets of steel.

The fitting of the blade are all bronze castings I carved myself in wax.  I used this dagger as an excuse to push myself and see what I could accomplish, so not only did I try complex carvings, but I also taught myself to cast gems in place in the bronze.  That took some learning--you're looking at the third hilt here.  The first two I didn't hollow out enough space behind the gem for the investment to form a strong supporting pillar and the rush of liquid bronze into the mold broke the gems loose and they were lost somewhere in the interior of the hilt.  Between the hilt and the pommel I lost 6 rubies.  Luckily lab-grown rubies are only $3 each in this size.  They are 'real' rubies in that they are the exact same substance as a natural ruby, but because they come from a lab they are 1/1000th the price.

The decorative theme is kind of a mash-up of Nordic/Celtic and my own work which I think looks like Dungeons & Dragons meets Roman friezes.

The sheath is a core of quince wood.  I split the board in half and carefully carved out a space for the blade using chisels.  I took a clue from Japanese scabbard makers and didn't use any sandpaper, because you risk leaving behind a grain of abrasive that will scratch the blade when it is drawn/inserted.  The core is wrapped in leather, fittings are attached, and the whole thing is waxed.

The handle is ebony that had been sitting in my shop for literally 20 years.  Wish I'd stocked up more back then :-\

And then there's that question that always comes up with blades like this--is it a sword? The blade itself is 16" long, 23" overall.  I guess it depend on who is holding it.  For my 5'6" daughter it's a short sword.  For a big guy it would be a dagger, and for a hobbit it's probably a full blown sword.  I'm inclined to call it a short sword because of the way it handles.  But hey, whoever buys it can categorize it any way they want.

Little Things

Blōdlǣtere took me so freakin' long to make that I've been just doing some little things while I build up my patience for another big piece.  
I made this knife out of the piece of tang I had to chop off Blōdlǣtere so it would fit in the heat treating oven.  Given that relationship, I decided to name it Finger-Pricker as a counterbalance to the pretentiousness of "Blōdlǣtere".  

You can also see little thing #2 in this pic - the thumb ring.  It's a simple band of 20ga sterling silver I made in my jewelry class at Guilford Art Center.  I stamped it with the same stamp I used on the sheath.
Having gained a partial clue after 26 years of marriage, the second thing I made in class was a set of earrings for my wife.  They are sterling silver with bezel set  onyx:

 The third little thing is an amethyst ring I made for my daughter.

So in the future I should be setting some stones in the sheaths and handles of my knives, and I'll probably end up making some jewelry for sale too.

Blōdlǣtere

"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.

Bronze: Sprues & Captive Rings

Still obsessively casting bronze.  I have a 19"seax and a 16" dagger both of which will get cast bronze fittings and sheath work.  Getting bronze to pour is one thing, and getting the objects to come out correctly is another.  It's largely a matter of spruing them correctly (making the channels for the metal to pour in).  People call it an art, but it's really a science.  It's all about hydraulic turbulence in the metal and cooling rates as the metal flows through the mold.
I decided to try a complicated casting this week.  One problem I've been encountering  in making the sheathes for my seaxes is the relationship between the sheath hangers and the rings they are connected to.  If you look at the two hangers below you can see the problem.  The hanger on the left looks ok, but it's function isn't optimal.  Because the strap exerts some sideways pressure the hanger tends to turn, even if the rivet is very tight.  The solution is two rivets, which is what I did for the sheath on the right.  But it has it's own problem - the ring doesn't fit over the hanger, so you have to carefully bend in the 'wings' on one side and slip the ring onto the hanger, then flatten it back out.  That is not going to happen with cast hangers.

I could make bigger rings, but they'd look stupid.  They'd be out of proportion.  I could split the rings and then solder them back together, but that's a bit of work and feels...  like it's too much of a compromise.  I've looked at the original baltic area seaxes and they solved the problem by making rings out of a couple of wire wound around a couple times.  It's authentic, but not what I'm looking for.

The solution I'm trying is sheath hangers with captive rings. What's a captive ring? It's a ring that can't be removed from another object without breaking the object.  What I did with both of them is create the hanger in halves in wax.  Then I took the wax ring and put it over the neck of one half, wax-welded the two halves together and voila!  a captive ring.

The big technical problem now is spruing.  The hanger & ring that are closer in the picture below were a success because the metal was delivered as directly as possible to the parts

The ring below failed to fill because the sprue to the outer ring was connected to the corner of the hanger, so the hanger essentially stole the rings metal.  By the time the hanger was full the metal had cooled too much for the remained metal in the pour to get to the ring.  Bummer.

Here's a shot from a couple ours later where I've gotten the spruing down.  Note the each sprue has one and only one destination:

Here's the final result - a nicely proportioned sheath hanger ready to install.

Bronze!

I have wanted to be able to cast my own bronze pieces since I first did lost wax bronze in 1985 in Senior Sculpture Seminar.  I finally got there this weekend!  It was more than a little bit nerve-wracking.  I was heating the metal for my first pour and it wasn't melting.  I started getting flashbacks to my last attempt in 1994 when I had a primitive set-up and the furnace just didn't have the juice to melt the bronze.  I was doing it just like we did in class - what could be wrong?  All the little mental hamsters were running around in my head panicking:  
"Oh my God! We're doomed to failure!"
"All that money wasted you idiot!"
"We should have stayed home and darned socks you moron!"
And then the sleeping polar bear in the back of my head opened one eye and said two words:
"MORE POWER"

Duh.  I turned the torch up, and it melted.  Unfortunately I was still discombobulated enough  that I forgot to turn the vacuum puller on and tipped the crucible too fast, so half the bronze ended up on the machine, on the counter, and on the floor.  So I ended up taking this nice wax tree:

And turning it into this pile of bronze poop:

Luckily I calmed down and the second mold went much better:

This is what you should end up with - an exact replica of the wax tree in bronze.  If you look carefully you'll see one of the rings didn't fill completely.  I thought about it for a while and decided I hadn't let the bronze get hot enough.  It had just gotten past the slushy stage (yes, metal gets slushy. It's a very weird sensation.  It's just like stirring a margarita except that it's 1800 degrees warmer.)

Saturday I made a second set of molds, and things went much better.  Again, I forgot to turn on the vacuum on the first flask, but remembered 2 seconds after I poured the metal, so I only lost one of the two fittings.  The second flask went great.

I'm sure this weekend will go even better, but I consider this a pretty good haul for my first solo casting attempt with a new set-up: 

You should see these pieces again as part of completed knives & scabbards.  That is if I can tear myself away from sculpting and casting long enough to actually put a knife together.

Wire Inlaid Blade

I made a utility knife that's a little different than my normal style.

I went with a simple geometric theme.  It started because this knife was a proof-of-concept for inlaying non-ferrous wire into the blade before heat-treat.  Cutting the dovetail grooves in the steel is way easier when the steel is soft.  I've seen people do it after hardening by only hardening the edge and leaving the back soft so they could still cut the steel.  I didn't really want to do that because it limits your design options, and it probably wouldn't work well on a knife this small.

Luckily, it worked!  I left extra metal sticking proud of the grooves when I did the heat treat, and hammered it in some more after the blade was tempered.  I don't know that I needed to, but i figured why take chances that stuff moved around during the heating & quenching.  The inlay metal I used is Nu-Gold, which is a copper &Zinc alloy that looks a lot like gold, but only costs about 1/1600th what gold costs.
the 3 lines on the blade became 3 right angles on the guard, which I cut in with an engraving tool.

And the 3 right angles turned into this when they got the pommel.

The handle is some stabilized maple from Pete's woodpile (again).  It was nicely spalted (invaded by fungus after death).

And just because, here's a shot of the knife without the wooden handle on it.  It lets you see how the tang of the knife extends through the handle to the back.  It also shows how thick the tang is which is important for strength.  And yes, it is a pain to cut a tapered rectangular hole through the wood and not break through the surface of the handle.