400 Year-Old Dandao Sword - MAN AT ARMS: REFORGED

[Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'm Matt I'm Kerri we are the stag my brother's a Baltimore knife and sword we're gonna be building some of your favorite weapons some weapons you've never seen before this is man-at-arms reforged this year 2016 is the 400 year anniversary of the Dante Emmanuel in honor of this anniversary we decided to make that sword the Don Dao is the longest of the Chinese two-handed sabers it comes out of a tradition dating all the way back to Qin Shi Huangdi unifying emperor of China it was recorded in the manual called the dolphin strand by man named chung dong-young in 1616 if the first manual of its kind to incorporate illustrations along with each technique and also to write down those techniques in a straightforward fashion rather than the palms and things of the time our friends at Smith and Forge have once again challenged us to use 19th century techniques and to do that they've shared this large rolling mill with us this rolling mill actually came from victory racing plate where it's made horseshoes for the last 80 years in addition to using the rolling mill we'll also be using the Smith and Forge Bradley power hammer that they shared with us on a previous episode we're gonna be using some earlier techniques as well there'll be a lot of handwork that you would have seen going right back to the beginning of the Iron Age here you see a smelter similar to the early period Tatara and the Chinese smelters we used iron sand to turn it into steel as the iron sand passes through the charcoal it is reduced it is separated from the slag the molten glass and the steel the steel lands at the bottom and the slag comes out right below my feet now that we've been running the smelt for about an hour time to start slag tapping Ilia use an iron rod to plunge in about four inches from the bottom we're leaving that slag from our blue [Music] we have to remove the slag from the bloom well--we're block not only our inlet for our air but also contaminate that bloom and make it a lot tougher to Forge later we've been running it for already five hours and soon very soon the piece of blue the steel that we made from sand is going to be birthed out and made into this fine sword it's finally time to remove the bloom we decided to go the traditional route and knock the whole smelter over and remove the bloom that way [Music] [Music] now bloom was so big we couldn't extract it whole there's more steel stuck to the walls in the bottom of the smelter however the whole smelter is too hot to safely extract all the pieces at the moment after collecting all the little pieces of the bloom we stuck them all together and get rid of the slag so now Matt is assisting me in pre feeding the billet in the charcoal forge so we can continue with the consolidation in the folding next I'm going to go to the bradley power hammer and start slowly massaging the bloom all together into the perfect shape so we can cut it unfold it Ilia now directs me while i strike he's not only gonna tell me where to hit but how hard to hit and how often [Music] folding gets rid of impurities and makes a heterogeneous billet into a homogenous piece of steel once the steel is homogenous it is ready to produce the blade [Music] since we don't have a lot of time on this build we're gonna go ahead and move to the Smith and Forge power hammer to speed up the consolidation a bit some people might consider this cheating but if you watch a lot of documentaries of traditional forging they often have a power hammer just like this [Music] the 19th century is known as the Golden Age of mechanics the power of human muscle has been divested onto the power of steam electricity and cold steel Europe United States Asia have all started industrializing in producing steel rolls wrought iron in crucible steel in mass the shops of Sheffield use giant rolling mills to roll out sheets big enough to cover the side of a ship the rolling mill right here the power hammer over there have made mass production possible I'm gonna be working from sterling silver ingots they weigh about an ounce and a half we're gonna be taking them down from eighth inch thick rolling them all the way down to 18 gauge in a single strike [Music] Sandow came about at a time when China was threatened in the north by Manchus and Mongols and in the South by piracy it's not knowing why two-handed swordsmanship had a resurgence at this time but perhaps it was because when you're dealing with a mounted opponent as a foot soldier it's very useful to have a long grip it adds a stability for counter cutting cutting the horse going by and also defending yourself and that particularly long blade allowed the foot soldiers to be able to reach a rider as he passed by the Don Dao is also particularly effective weapon against the spirit which is a very common weapon on the battlefield at the time the long grip allowed one to deflect powerful spear and the particularly long blade allowed one be able to move in close and deliver a counter right after a long discussion with Scott he pointed out that most single edged Chinese blades have a hardened edge insert so Ilia decide to use from w1 using our w1 insert as a hot cut tool he cuts into the bloom instead of removing it like you'd normally would with a hot cut he leaves it in there lets it radiate the heat so nothing will scale up returns it to the forge brings everything up to welding temperature and then Forge weld it together now time to turn our billet into a sword Illya moves to the bradley power hammer and starts drawing his bar out [Music] you can see him here using the hit turn technique which keeps everything nice and true and allows you to draw it out a little quicker and keep your even heat the last step to do before beveling is to remove the excess material off the end of our bar Ilia holds a hot cut tool as I strike afterwards he throughs it up with a file and then forges that point over to the proper shape now that we have our bar forged out to length it's time to start laying in those edge bevels Ilias gonna start on the back spine and then flip the blade around and start working on the edge [Music] while Ilya is forging in our bevels on the blade figured now is a good opportunity to show you the layout for our piece Scott Road L was nice enough to provide us with a one-to-one scale drawing of this sword the suggested length is 35 inches of blade that's from shoulder to tip and then the cross-section was measured every 5 centimeters all the way down the blade so it really gives us a good indication of what the taper should be on this blade some of the major differences of Japanese and Chinese construction are up here at the point where there's no defying to sake it just rolls right in down here at the tang where our pommel is not just kept on by that Micucci pin it's actually pinned on you can tell by this little part on the tang so instead I like Japanese construction where those fittings are put on the wood and everything's held on by the Micucci pin this has a makuu v pin and the pommel is actually pinned and it's a little bit heavier so it works as a counterbalance to really give you some more leverage on this really long sword [Music] since Smith and Forge once again as challenges to use old-school 19th century and before techniques I can't use my Sanders so I'm doing the rough forming with a draw filing technique it's really not that big of a deal since Ilya forged the bevels both the back and the front about 90% of the way through already just using the file and truing up those lines now I'll hand it off to him for heat treating [Music] so Kari has rolled up the metal and brought it over to me I have painted it blue and inscribed the design that alia has given me on it and we're cutting out two dragons instead of doing a die press to get to exactly the same or to etch out the pattern we're going to use a traditional jewelers saw the fine saw blade with the teeth that go down and out so I'm going to put the metal on the bench pin between the V's so it supports it I'm gonna take the saw blade and slowly start to get it to catch and I'm going to saw it and follow the pattern and I'm gonna let the saw do all the work I'm not going to push on it because the minute I push on at the blade will break we keep the saw blade extremely straight so that we don't have any beveled edge happen which will make it easier and we don't have to do any finish work before alia is going to inlay it [Music] we now need to anneal or soften the metal this will allow Illya to be able to force it into the cavity when he inlays it into the iron [Music] while the blade of the done doll is going to be made from the steel we smelt ourselves the fittings mainly the guard are going to be made from this Victorian era wagon wheel well we'll have to do is to heat it up in the charcoal forage cut it in half heat it up and take it to the rolling mill to reduce the stock to the appropriate thickness much like the original way that wrought iron was produced we're going to be using this large rolling mill and progressively close the dies down so that it makes it thinner and thinner to reach our final thickness after a heat of the wrought iron and hand the doctor carry as he pushes it into the rolls Matt is catching the reduced stock on the other side we have to do it multiple times to get the dimensions we need [Music] we might have been a little bit overzealous getting this new awesome tool all that wrought iron stretched only for this small piece I've already cut out my gar from this big piece of wrought iron and now I'm starting to file the edges so they're completely smooth which will get me ready for the inlay of the dragon fix the guard to the plank of wood which is now clamped in the vise I've traced the outside of the silver dragon and started carving away the background after the background has carved away I'm going to dovetail the edges right now they're like this I'm going to pry them so there's an angle and when I press the silver in like this it will occupy the empty space and be locked into the garden [Music] [Music] [Music] with this really long blade Lily's got to be super careful to make sure his heats even so he moves it back and forth over the charcoal and when it gets to that perfect temperature he moves to the quench [Music] first step for making the handle in this sword is carving out the recess of the tank after tracing it onto these pieces of wood Illya is gonna use a couple different chisels and just remove that wood out of his way he's then gonna clamp them both together get the shape he desires and then we'll wrap it later [Music] continuing his work on the handle he now begins to engrave the metal fittings [Music] all right I've been at this polishing for a while now really happy with this blade it looks great but it probably has several hundred thousand layers and it may be even more trying to bring out some of that pattern so you can see it's really fine so I'm having to use a little slurry and so two thousand grit sandpaper and I'm just taking my time oh yeah you can start to see it now looks great can't wait to see the beauty shots as we're now into the final assembly the last step is to add our handle instead of using a silk wrap we're gonna use a paracord wrap you'll see similar wraps like this on traditional Chinese pieces this being our first hundred-percent historical build on many ARMs with no modern tie ends really proud of all the Smith's on this one we did everything from smelting forging all the intricate inlay and detail on the fittings we stepped up big-time I think we did our first historical build justice and I hope you guys feel the same way too [Music] [Music] [Music] click here to subscribe or click here to watch more episodes thanks for watching man-at-arms reforged we need to know what you want the guys to build so tell us in the comments below what weapons you want to see next [Music]

Channel: AWE me

Views: 7,386,835

Keywords: chinese swords, diy cosplay, prop making, prop building, aweme, aweme channel, weapons, cool weapons, weapons on fire, weapon making tutorials, behind the sceans weapons making, man at arms, samurai, samurai swords, katana, sword, sword cutting, samurai sword technique

Id: NhdFygUJOek

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 25 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/AmerikanSteve]

This was very fun to watch with my eyes, lent to me by our friends at Smith & Forge™.

[u/Narokkurai]

Must... consume... hard cider...

[u/shmusko01]

When did Kevin Nealon become a sword master?

[u/Tyrog_]

Great stuff. One of their finest work in my opinion. Ilya is an amazing artisan.

I'm still a bit curious as to how they manged to get that curve on the blade. When they quench it, it's perfectly straight. Maybe during tempering ?

[u/Prsop2000]

Loved the video, I did laugh when there was a strategically placed drink fridge in the back ground that stuck out like a sore thumb. I felt like the huge steel logo and the call outs to the company sponsoring the build were enough.

[u/cheekwind]

The cider product placement got a little out of hand

[u/Fluffymufinz]

It was nice of them to let Steve Buscemi play with the sword.