Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Swordmaking at Weta Workshop!

hey guys it's time for another one day building this one I am crazy excited about because I have not in my shop today I am an apprentice I am as far from my shop in fact as I have ever been in my life I am literally on the other side of the world in Wellington New Zealand in Webb Workshop where their legendary sword maker Peter Lyon is gonna take me as an apprentice today okay essentially we we want to reproduce the blade maybe the cross guard maybe the pommel and aluminum but I understand that you've got some parts that we can use if we're running out of time and these are good donor parts too because United cutlery bought a stamp version of each of the swords they reproduce from us so so what they got was an exact copy of the hilt and they got an aluminum blade that they could use as the basis for the whole yeah for the whole pattern making really so if we do get stuck for time we can really grab these parts and in particular I think we're going to need to use the leather use the the hilt sorry the handle with the two two collars on it because I think that's where we definitely run out of time okay great that's I'm glad I'm glad this come in handy I yeah I love the fact that the real one is a lot more fine than yes so I guess really the difference is that they're making this out of a zinc alloy which is not as anywhere as strong as steel and they probably work on the principle that people are going to knock these around a bit so so the last thing they want is something that is fine and steel to be really thin but you don't want really having people break it off and then coming back to you so this is the original color here was yes so that green is what this was started office and the reason for that is that that's the black oak blood that they were using on set and you know and of course Aragorn was slicing and dicing all over the place and so awkward got rubbed into the the hilt so it ended up black and yet for several years afterwards I picked this up and I could feel it go a little bit squidgy and until it all dried out again and what would okay some assembly required [Laughter] that's a lot of what my job is is actually because I do Forge blades and other parts when it's useful but most the time I'll start with a block of Steel and carve essentially and what I'm doing is I am looking at the shape inside and removing everything that isn't the part that I want used to say we take large things make them smaller in size ways yeah that's the plan with no mistakes and here is the pommel yeah so we'd probably start with the blade the blade is always a good place to start because everything else attaches to it okay so we work out our basic profile there's two ways of approaching this depending on how confident you are at being able to do a grind like a fuller by holding the sword you can either do it the way I do which is I'll take a piece of steel a piece of aluminum like this I'll cut the Tang on to it to give me something easy to grip and then I'll be standing there at Alinea in doing this and literally I'm holding it at the exact same level as I'm moving it in me I used to use a guide but I found got in the way Wow yeah thirty years of practice that's all it is okay the alternative is I can set up a work crest just beside the contact wheel and you can use the work crest to help you keep it level and as long as you don't rock it you won't be lifting or dropping it yeah okay yep in which case we're better off starting with this as a strip like this because you've got yes yeah because as soon as you cut a taper to get the blade shape you make it much harder to make the follow yep so probably so in that case our first thing would be cut the fuller okay then cut out the shape of the blade then grind the edges excellent now something that you'll notice is that the fuller here narrows as you come along yeah that's not grounded initially initially this is constant width all the way and what's tape is it is the second cut at the edges okay so all we're looking for is a really even depth even would cut a consistent yep and then a scoop out where it comes out at the end here okay so we'll mark this out on there yep on both sides yep okay and then once we've got that we cut out yep probably a good thing would be to cut a tang roughly at the moment okay it's just as a little bit easier to than trying to grip that just actually have something smaller to grip yeah I tend to leave a little bit at the end because just the way I make swords I always seem to to grind the tip it's a it's a problem that you might run into you as well as that when we come to grinding this but it's very hard to keep it steady yeah and the tendency is to grind it in Kathir the bit narrower yeah but if we leave a bit of excess we can then just trim the profile and get it working again 14 millimeter width you see down here it's down to a 10 or 11 but that's only because of the edges being cuttin you all right so so I guess if we just get a start and end point for the fuller the nice thing is the fuller can run up right under the handguard right side here I want to if I'm gonna roughly cut the tango and cut it even lower like down there yeah you can all it's it's that thing that it's always easy to remove more material yes yep a little thing with the shoulder of the tang is it's not something you necessarily need to worry about but if you look at this this is a Boromir blade that I'm working on you'll see there's a slight curve at the shoulders some some companies that make swords have a really sharp cut here which looks really really crisp but what it does that creates what's called a stress riser so if you're gonna have a failure there's a good chance it'll crack across fear against annual blade can just snap off complete that's bad that's bad so having a rounded corner there eases that whole stress okay unless you're planning to start waking things with your finished sword not okay it probably would be a little easier to do a sharp cut okay which if we end up using this piece oh I see to that you can set the blade right in there okay that gives us options okay but yeah so the shoulders could be reasonably sharply cut for it we could always drill that out if you want a stronger tang I I mean there's it's just something that I do I'm a great believer and the tank should be as wide as you can possibly fit but then these guys yeah I think maybe we should stick with it you shouldn't make our lives too difficult now so yes so we're looking at about 17 and when we get to the pommel it should have tapered a bit oh I see it goes into a round piece ah so that's rectangular section then it goes round okay I've never actually seen one of these pieces before so yeah this is new to me as well alright and so it looks like in there it's a little narrower and up there it's down to about 13 so it looks like it's a pretty constant taper from 17 there to about 13 up there and of course of course I'm using metric yeah we don't you have to cut that off at all we could no we probably well we probably won't be able to form a rivet heat out of it so we do want to finish it inside the panel so whereas this one was all riveted together we'll probably end up either we could thread it or we could glue it okay depending on what works out okay I think right I like the idea of threading it that seems like a standard the other 20 though of course this is an American product Imperial and you might not have the TAT of the dice oh I might be able to find them but we'll see all right oh I can always this is a good solid insert so I could always drill it out and put a metric through the door sure sure yeah okay I'm open to all of them all right so okay so we've got our points mate so I think we stood we then get a centre line marked that becomes our reference for everything else sounds about right [Applause] yes the nearer to Center it is the easier it is that you can you can then decide if you want to flip the blade your work crisp and Stewie it about the right height yeah if you leave it a little narrower we can always grind it back later mm-hmm sorry a little bit wider we can grind it back afterwards at this point it's really just giving you an easy handle to to use and I'll get you another ruler that's a little bit longer than that yes bring over my toolkit okay yep so we begin if it's a little bit longer it never hits we can decide to do what the with the ACS afterwards now we have you've got the end of you're full of deer mm-hmm so if you make that across and then also transfer them around to the other side and make this yep yeah all I do is I just tend to put a little mac across the edge flip it over and then mark across with that sort of thing yeah you can be as precise as you like with this sort of thing but what tends to happen is during the grind things happen so there's always a little bit of adjustment to try and get things like the Fuller's roughly lining up on both sides of the blade okay so you don't have one fuller here and one full of finishing back here but some of that is just happening during the process so this is the tank that sits inside the handle will cut this off first and then we'll use this to grind the fuller in along the centerline oh it's probably a good thing at this point to also just mark the outside edges of the fuller and if you mark them a little bit narrower so 14 is your outside edge I don't I again I always tend to over grind so what I've learned is I'd mock my my finish points a little narrow because because then I always I always have this habit of grinding up to the lie I mean having to tweak and sorry cleanup grinding past the line 12 yep that gives a good starting point well the 30 years of practice has been about making the mistakes less often really but in something like a steel sword I do hundreds of grinding passes to get the fuller and the edges ground if I make a big mistake on any one of those I should I might as well put it aside and start again so so in the early days I started off by making lots of mistakes and then figuring out how to try and work around them and getting better is just about making the mistakes least often another little thing I do is because we've got to scoop it out another thing I do is like I work out say from about beer onwards good thing about yeah from about here onwards plan to just scoop out their fuller and this just gives a reference line to try and not grind past it I see now it's only a rough guide it's more of a memory aid right it's like it's like do not cut square do the other side if you want yeah so it's again only a rough guide because whatever the plan where the handmade blade other bowls as you're working on it each one is a little bit different so even if they made to the exact same pattern the weight and balance will end up a fraction different now if I was a real sword user I would probably notice the difference but yeah for onset use that's all quite close enough yeah one of the hardest things is actually making a reproduction of something it's like if I make somebody gives me a thing of make three of these it's fine I can make three of these now make them identical yes when you're hand making stuff that is that's actually the hardest part of the whole job truck precisely because one of the most difficult things I ever meant to do yep it climbs like the bumpers yeah all right so we cut yep for the bandsaw yeah yes now this should also be very familiar to you [Music] [Music] now one little thing I do is yeah you've got nice hard edges there yeah if you if you move your hand along you can slice yourself on that so what I do is I'll just get a linear maybe with like 120 grit belt belt and just oh and just do about a 45 on there just remove the sharp but it's just it just loses time if you start bleeding everywhere excellent you're getting that you're getting the sword grinders to step as well with witches one side flip flayed hit across the other side alright okay well the next thing will be setting up a grinder with with a work crease now this grinder here was made for my height the ideal is your working so I tend to work my elbows tucked into my side it gives stability if your elbows are out yeah your hands can wobble a lot so elbows tucked into side gives stability and the ideal is you know with your forearms pretty much labeled so for me this works fine it may be a little high for you okay but maybe just okay oh we can sit up on here okay so I'll get the little contact wheel get a get the work crease set up on here and probably start with a slightly worn course belt if we start with the new course belt when you're doing something where you're removing only a little bit of material like the fuller it's so easy to just if you get a little point where it steps next moment that's just gone right because fresh it's too fresh it's too harsh yep yes all those little tricks yeah we're creased yep yep so we can get we'll take that out just figure out that's probably almost right for a one-inch the nice thing is if you build your own you can make it specific to what you need yeah so one thing with these is that the the arm out here is quite long longer than say a knife makers machine because you don't need the room if you're making a knife right but if you're working on swords or armor you need to be able to move around the Machine quite a lot it does vibrate a little more because you've got a longer arm but just machine more rigid or better balanced how long ago did you build this ooh this was the first second minister that I made for myself so this would be about well 20 years ago maybe a bit longer in this as well no this was this whole unit here is a replacement the original one wore out oh yeah yes oh this machine has done thousands and thousands of hours of grinding it's it's probably getting a little tired actually but it's still hanging in there the other two ministers we've got in here were purpose-made after I started here and they've got things like adjustable height so whatever your height you can set up for whatever you need now this one runs into a slot so you can lean that lets you adjust the height and there's a screw clamp there so you can adjust where it is all of this is this one has the tightener that one also does double duty because if you want to work on a flat so say you've got a diamond section sword blade do your coarse grinding and your blade will always have these little wobbles and so then what I would do is I get the flat plate and I lay the blade and run it that way to get the the flats really really smooth and so that one clamps into there so that's so that's why that handles this partly to help with it the flat grinds are tedious but they're actually a little easier to do so so you've picked the challenging now I have two sets of contact wheels look I have the ones that everyone else gets to use this is what happens after a bit of use it's good though that started off as a cylinder oh wow yep yes and then sometimes you get something like that happen so this is why I had one set of contact wheels that I leave out here and I have another set that's for when I'm driving to yours right yes so which one do we use this one it's probably about the right size yes I think that I think that started off as a one-inch it's still about one inch there yeah that's like barreling could be a good thing because what will happen is you the ideal is you run the blade exactly in that groove but if that blade twists at all even by a couple of degrees one one end or other of that is going to be cutting in and so very suddenly you're fuller can can get wider can do things like this whereas the barreling actually gives you a little bit more leeway to play with and a little bit more if you moving that way so that's what all the practice for 30 years for me is about as is being able to run it precisely in that groove and it's a it's a urethane I think different hardnesses this what this is a pretty firm rubber and then there are other ones where the the wheel here is actually like tire scoring cabinets so like things like radial grooves this one will give this one's a little bit less forgiving that it will give you a really crisp grind so so when you're grinding a blade that ridge line can be very crisp with these yeah the the ones that use the the grooved wheels they're a little bit softer they are a bit more forgiving but you won't be able to get quite a crisp grind with them now because this one is much smaller than the other contact wheel it's spinning faster yes there is a risk I it's a one inch the smallest one I use is half an inch this machine runs at about 30 meters our second that's about yeah 30 meters a second so it works out about 60 Mach 5 miles now something around there and the way I tell people is if you hit your knuckles against there and make them you're driving your car on the motorway and you open door you do this on the road that's what you're doing if you hit that course grinding belt that was my next question because we're using aluminum which is excellent at transferring heat I have some gloves I do I think I wouldn't be that mean III I find that the grinder and sanding scars are the worst ones because there is always happen on the knife yep yep yeah and you were always doing that and they always get infected because yeah it's just ripped your skin open yeah the thing that the reason I use gloves all the time as their ablative right yeah so it's so essentially you've it's like I can feel it or I can smell it yes I've got that half second of oh yeah but before you hit skin so we'll get this set up well fiddle with this a bit it's always a little bit fiddly getting it yep that's exactly it 13 first and on this one just use the weight of the motor to keep the tension on the belt okay every everybody who does knife and sword making armor has their own dream Lanisha basically because it's such a universal tool right yeah every the unit linear is so essential these days but really they didn't exist till World War two really yeah and even the whole idea of coated abrasives is only a bit over a century old and you can imagine before there the jobs we will do with a high speed grinder they were doing with grinders files in the good old days they literally were finishing a sword by sanding it with sand on a lever belt for example so you can imagine how to use that was you can see that was the apprentice job yeah yep yeah see I always spin it up by hand first and you can see this is tracking off to the lead so we've got these two adjuster screws here and what they do is they change the angle on on the idler wheel and if I spin it up again or just especially because we've got this on here now if that runs too far off and hits that what will happen is it will just go boom and drag itself off damaging probably not damaging you but we but it will damage the belt yeah what's really important is if the belt gets branched these edges can get a bit softer where is that the moment in ice and stuff which will help you get a good full up okay another little thing I've learned from experiences when I'm starting up I stand to the side you never know yeah these belts do wear and eventually the join the joint is really amazingly tough but when it gives that can give very quickly you know you were lucky when when my one failed with one of these course belts on that hit me on the top of the heel and I'm ashamed my head right because yeah me me if I let my hair and beard grow out I just look old but of course I had no protection so for the next few weeks everyone was asking me what did you do to yourself because cuz it lifts these yep so yeah so if we probably the best thing is put the blade up against here and get a feel for where that whether it's touching your centerline yep so - so until this is all tightened up should be able to just tip that down it may be a little low yeah and also you can you can adjust the way it sits by just being by turning the blade a little bit so you can adjust your height within limits right but the best thing is to get it centered so maybe at this point we'd we'd clamp it you do a little you do a short grind and just see if it's running more release Center okay and then we can tweak it from there okay and you're already adopting the the sword makers stance which is you're actually this this is this is why I stoop a little bit less understanding because yeah because we're not grinding you're actually leaning over the blade looking backwards at what you're doing there's no other way to do it unfortunately okay yeah that's all bio dynamics there there would be other ways of doing it but this is the way that just sort of works best for most people nose off yeah so Cal how nice do you want this to be I was just writing you want to do all the grinding yourself yeah oh if you if you reach a point where you think you're losing it I can all I can do the finishing for you and yeah sounds like it's a bit of a new skill for you it is well maybe doing this particular way of doing things what's yeah yeah absolutely actually we had a magic trick in our stage show in which I had a steel blade and just a knife blade mmm and I got a little bit of an experience into that isn't it was I was shocked at how difficult it was yeah I would I wouldn't try and do this in one pass I tend to do something like this in two or three segments and then blend them so so try and get a good clean cut though in this case you can actually grind way past there because the handguard is going to cover there and then stop it wherever is comfortable because I've got long arms as well as long fingers so I can do a fairly long movement but if you find that it's more comfortable doing a shorter movement to give you control then you just sort of stop it there and then in the next segment you overlap your grinds a little bit until they've blended through okay just a little bit about Spencer yep so we can just lift that a wee bit the other thing your I could see you were actually trying to find the wrist because I could see you doing a live with us yeah I do that too and once I found the rest I put a little bit of downward pressure yes and of course the trick is because of leverage as you're moving across you've actually got to reduce the pressure one side and increase it the other right because as you move it across here if you kept the same downward pressure on your left side you'll actually end up lifting the blade and pivoting it so so there's this whole feel of yeah yeah just a wee bit it's actually quite interesting describing everything to you because I'm telling you things that I don't even think about it's quite amazing it doesn't need much but you're off to a good start it's quite even okay we had it you're doing better than most people do on their first place it's euro your piquant level which is a lot harder than it might sound like a good spot what you get with the contact wheel is for a given width of taller the contact wheel determines how deep you cut my usual thing with swords is to try and get the full is quite deep because it looks good it also gives a much better transition at the ridge line because you get a steeper angle it cuts a little bit more weight out as well but it's rather tricky because if I'm aiming for on a steel blade a millimeter of thickness at the bottom of that full of it's not much difference between perfect and disaster so they with this you can make it as deeper as you like yep and then you bring it up higher yep yep one of the hard things too is speaking relax I don't know if you feel it but it's really easy to start getting 10 something wrong getting close you want to do something like 15 times you can start to overthink it and getting maybe an e put more pressure and I have a lot of experience with overriding my natural tendencies to overthink things yes well that's good you're doing really well of a way around another way to do this would be to put it on a mill mm-hmm right but with a roundover yeah well yeah with a with whatever bits appropriate and machine the whole thing and then just finish it but I didn't have access to any of that equipment 30 years ago so I learned it the hard way so when you're doing the feathering do you yep do you think this feels to me like a pretty good we're pretty close there what do you think yep depth wise that's good the edges are nice and quite straight so you're actually in good shape there do you turn it over and do the same here or do you then feather and go here and continue to the end either I tend to do one whole fuller and then do the other side cut but it's really up to you what feels easier for you I'm inclined to do that okay sounds good and yeah at the moment - this is 36 grit so this is quite coarse so so your next thing will be repeating all this with a with Ina help and to get a nice sheen at the end of it I use scotch brite belts that they are brilliant yeah they're also yeah gotta say they can sometimes be a good way of hiding mistakes yes called hiding crimes yep right mm-hmm they put a bit of bling on it they'll never notice [Music] I feel like you should be actually first for a fist first-timer you're doing really well yeah the difference is when I've been showing this to people in teaching people there they usually like younger guys that are also building their skills but you've done so much already you just you just forget it really wonderful yeah and then you see I saw it in one place I had a transition that was a little bit funky so I went to either side have you learned the thing too that you can vary the rate that you're moving it to change the rate that it's grinding yeah it's just it's sort of weird it's almost hypnotic well yes and I feel like I'd like to watch you do it I'd like to see I'd like to see you do it just as yeah you know it will help now I know what to I kind of know a little bit about what I need to know yep okay is that cool yeah that sounds good so I'll do the other side okay and then we can get on to the finer finishing [Music] [Music] yeah well there was little things like that I was changing that I was changing the race I moved there's a little thing that I do that I'll hold my hand there and I'll be sliding till I reach a certain point then I should rip the other [Music] you I'm free and pleased with this fuller yeah you're like it's time for the next step yeah you've done really well actually I'm normally when I'm teaching people about grinding swords they're younger people that are still developing this skill set but of course you've done this the first time but you've got so many skills already you just figured it out and yeah got it working I was on a really good job I've got to be honest I didn't know either I was hoping that whatever happened we could save it but you're doing really well I'm glad we're both surprised okay okay so wizardly surprised so the next thing is we cut the taper in the tip shape so market bandsaw that out use the flat plate on the lunar sure to just even it all out there's your taper okay and then after that we'll grind the four edges yep so I probably should use a thinner sharpie for marking away yeah if you want luckily we've got a little bit of flexibility with dimensions here right so whatever happens happens that sounds like a good way yep oh no those were the if those are actually part of the sword oh yeah so it was the whole thing that he's been around he's done a lot of stuff he's been in combat so was all part of the aging of course the swords got another 15 years of natural aging on it right right but it did start off with an aged finish anyhow yep now the tip on this one's really rounded so you could just run that point further out if you wanted it's just a matter of whether you want it blunt blunt or sharp wonderful and this blunt is great yep so [Music] before you cut the other side it might pay to flip it over and check whether that distance there is the same on the other side that's pretty close yeah because what happens is if you're fuller is a little bit off one side to the other suddenly their edge can get really narrow and that becomes really obvious but that's looking good so I have left a little more material on the outside edge yep yep you've got latitude to to alter things [Music] okay but we can I see but at least it's symmetrically non-scented right yes it's as an it's a little bit wider that side and it's a little bit wider there rather than that being wide and that being white which were obviously would be so what's it what happened is that you're fuller is centered but your age isn't yes so that's easy but they can just be ground okay until it looks right and yep okay the next step will be use this flat plate okay so it's another reason why the arms on these machines is long right because then you can have a really long flat plate for doing straight edges on swords and yeah just work on that [Music] okay great then I think we'll switch to a finer belt okay just getting rid of those CourseSmart see yep knock off those sharp edges and after that we can mark out for your each crime you're doing the tip you're doing that pretty much exactly the way I do it clearly you're in viewing me mentally but then again you've got a lot of experience doing other stuff so translates very exciting watching this yearly come in - hmm all right okay well we might as well go go to the disc and mark out to your edge grinds maybe something a bit broader yeah yeah that's a little engineers trick that most people don't seem to know yeah yeah I've used it up to six inches all right so what's next so you've met the st. line on there so that means when you're grinding you'll have a reference to to know how close you're getting right then the next thing will be to mark the how far you want to grind an each edge so obviously up here you want to grind pretty much a polar right right up to the ridge of the fuller down here you actually need to grind across the ridge of the flock oh and then in the final bit as you as this grind comes through here that will actually turn that into a nice point oh and then you continue the grind around here so actually what happens is say you're so you're going to use that as your grinding mark here's where you're full of finishes you'll get something like this happening and then continue your grind maybe not like that maybe more like that when you do it on this other side and you grind that you'll get the following you get the point and then as you're grinding across there you're bringing this ridge line of the grind bet to a center because you're doing it as long as you're doing it symmetrically you end up with a nice straight tip would you would you do the mark for me and so since we know that we want I team to make just a little bit outside the fuller it's easy to once you've got your grind you can start checking it by eye but this just means that you're not actually going accidentally going to t be grinding in and growing a little bit too far here and then have to figure out how to fix it and what and you'll see that this is where the tapered Fuller comes from it's this the second grind that you do what this also does is because you're cutting in across the ridge line it's getting thinner from the 8th of the year and it's and then it comes back to full thickness here right and this is a thing called distal taper and a sword and what that does is it means that your sword is has less metal up here which means the tip of the sword is lighter which means your pommel doesn't need to be so heavy to give you the balance you want and it's one of those key things for sword making that if you don't get it right say for example some people would grind this to keep the ridge full thickness yeah and what that will result in as this blade that's pretty heavy and then you need to have a really heavy pommel to try and counterbalance that so for every bit of weight that's left in the blade that's not helping you you need at least twice that much in the pommel and it all adds up really really quickly and this is only a reference so that as you're grinding if you just keep kicking occasionally you'll find and then you reach a point where you're judging it by eye not by the line if you take it too far the line can actually become deceptive it can give you a bit of a false sense of security about what you're grinding right yep so the next thing will be get a bigger contact wheel than you did the full of worth now in the case of the Strider sword that was done with a four inch contact wheel okay and what it does it just gives you a shallower groove and I'm still using the bench grade yep yep you'll be doing that using the rest so and what happens if I skips this out yeah so here was your say here was your original block of aluminium so you've cut the fullest here's your centerline and if we imagine that say this is up near the the shoulder of the blade what this grinder does here is it brings you out to an edge here which might be 1/16 of an inch thick okay and then when we and then the final thing for say a film prop we'd put a little bevel on the edge and just form a sort of a bull nose profile and that's that gives you your secondary bevel okay and the profile of this circle here is you see that the blade is still gradually thickening as you go across yeah yeah at no point do you want it to start doing this because sudden you've got a built-in weak point oh right yes yes and and so that's all done by judging the size of wheel that you use and in this case what that's describing is that's a part of a curve on yep orange yeah exactly with a smaller contact wheel that curve might have been more like that yeah so so you could actually remove more metal you'd have a more flexible blade because a lot of your strength is coming from the metal that cell on the outer part of the blade so if you were say to cut that in a little bit deeper you'd have a lighter blade but it would lose a lot of stiffness right this doesn't matter on aluminium but on a steel blade it's really it's really really critical about that balance between stiffness the flexibility you might want cutting the weight down but not making it so light that you've removed the strength that you need you know back in the days when people's lives depended on these these little design details made all the difference sometimes people lived and died here another thing that distal taper will do and I'll show it to you on this one so this is a Boromir so this is the Boromir sword of course this is awesome yeah it's heavy it weighs about four pounds which is quite heavy for a one-handed sword but the balance point is right about here yeah so it's not trying to bend your wrist too much yeah but this is a good example of distal taper because it's about five millimeters or 3/16 of an inch there it gets about 2/3 the thickness here and then comes back up to full thickness and if I can have it back right I've done this a few times but what this shows is you notice how it's curving fairly evenly yeah now if it wasn't for that distal taper all it wouldn't curve evenly which would mean that you would have points that are built more strongly than they need to be and aren't doing anything they're just adding weight so say if if we built that with a grind just following the edge of that ridge line yeah it would be a lot stiffer than it needs to be up here it would be stuff here and sometimes blades tend to curve a bit more in the middle because as you put stress on them it's this is why these treatments that happen yeah and this is this is what I mean about the evolution of the blade as you're grinding it and so like with a steel blade I'd be grinding it and then I'll be doing things like tweaking it so once I've heat treated it from the rough grind I can start tweaking it to get the the sort of the Bend radius I want get the what get the weight feeling right and remove excess weight where I can without suddenly get in getting a blade that will just go it and want a spot because obviously that's thin become too weak no this is always a problem that you'll get you know without naming any particular company a lot of them do it it's dictated because they've got a price point they're trying to meet so they're making their blades out of something like 420 stainless carbon steel which is a reasonably good steel the way they machine the blades often the blades have a fair bit of weight in them and then the where I would be using a steel cross guard and pommel to get the balance and help the balance when you use zinc alloys quite often depending on what makes you some of them are a lot lighter so you'll have a relatively heavy blade because they don't have the time to machine it to within an inch of its life right in a relatively light help so the weight may be the same as the original sword but the balance is all wrong and I mean that's the difference between a something that's made to look at and something that these swords if I put an edge on them they're already they're really for fighting yeah yes yeah if the if you were to use it like that what will happen is that it'll Jam underneath right and next thing you know you've ground right you know a huge chunk out of your plate so it's important that you have your blade sort of upright maybe a little bit that way maybe a little bit that way but it means that any force that the grinding is doing is it's just pushing it onto a plate these are lessons the hard way [Music] all right I it's not perfect but I think it's as close as I'm gonna get think for a first time it's bloody good good yes good yep look it is nerve-wracking work yes yep and you know you were always thinking I'm as good as my next slip it's like oh wow and here I got I got ya Bulls tune in here mm-hm i-it's just it's gonna happen yeah you were concentrating on one thing and forgot about the other thing was yep but I'm so easy not all right that's it's one of those things with making a blade by grinding or any blade has to be finished by grinding anyway even if it's forged is that there's no going back it's not like model making where you can slap another bit of bog on and reshape the surface if you go too far with a blade that's it you either figure out how to save it make it into something else or start again you know I am noticing an interesting thing is now that it's there's much less you know it's cooling down much faster yeah it's also getting hot faster it is getting yeah both of those things you but it's super light quite Billy hmm all right finer finer yep I'm saying the same as the full finer finish and then we'll scotch-brite it and then we'll put a fake hedge on it excellent yeah don't go cool epi I am ecstatically happy I feel like it looks great yeah that's coming up really well you're doing pretty well for your first day on the job I am I can I move here and work here yeah I'm sure Richard would be happy to okay well I suppose at the moment you've got a very cutoff edge so next thing would probably be just finish it with a little bit of each side and then a little bit of rounding so it's what we call a bull nose so that you have something that looks like it's sharp but isn't okay and the trick with that is if I can grab that for a sec is that you're matching your belts running like that yeah just get work out the angle so you're not going to knock that Ridgeline but just get a little angling angle do that a few times do it on all four edges until this edge is a maybe about half the width and then I think we could scotch-brite it and then then just change the angle and repeated passes to just wear it off using the scotch-brite rather than actual grinding okay because you know very closest one days it's one of those moments where it's so so close to being excellent and so close to being a disaster feeling that all day yeah that's what it is a lot of the time of sword making is is that final bit as is what either makes it or ruins at this sweet yep too late yep okay a little bit more and you could because of the belt angles you could almost hold that flat and you probably get the right sort of angle it's a little bit steeper than you want so most if you mention that dead level you'll miss the red slight but get that bevel happening [Music] you [Music] you [Music] so you're happy yeah yep there with those thin spots just yep nothing there that's gonna actually snag or cut you it's annoying if you have any of those little Bursley you know don't always get under your skin okay well it looks like you've done with that you're done on the blade really apart from now putting the hilt oh my gosh alright so we're going alright so you got to narrow this down but I reckon probably a good way is to figure out how wide it needs to be there put the cross guard on and then work out the tape it into the pommel and then just mark and cut almost like we planned [Laughter] yeah yeah one of the things that impresses me about this health is the way they've made it that all the pieces just clipped together yeah so there's perfect registration same with same with this this comes apart you can't even put this color the wrong way around because if you do it doesn't actually fit on the lower section because it's just that fraction difference that's quite a very clever manufacturing but that's yeah and that's what you've got to do with the mass market yeah hmm [Music] [Music] Oh looks good nice all right down you actually just just the tiniest bit not and I kind of did that on purpose I sort of left it just a little bit why there yep that sounds like it snugged into place really dude okay oh cool it good [Laughter] were you wanting to shine these up a bit more later yeah I think we're late time what's that I think we'll have good time to do that okay I'd love to shine them up hmm and the question is Oh yep I think if we fit all the bits on let's see what's left remember you need to get it off you more aggressive ah it goes to a round section so yeah so those square shoulders might need it but of work up there yes just too tight yes yes yes foot yeah foot take it apart tweet foot tweak foot tweak and so on yep so it's all good up to that point [Applause] yeah it goes to a round section as well [Applause] [Music] Oh lovely so final thing is this guy he goes up in so it's almost like it could cut right about there yep and then thread back from there yeah because it's mm-hmm easy because that sits into there yeah so the pommel ends up sitting in fact you can see the Mac via where the olivia hasn't darkened the leather darken was me by the way I could see that should be a little right so my question is I don't know whether that's metric or English or not I don't know either I suspect it will be Imperial and in country I'll see what of what I should do is put a bolt in there if I can let's and see what sort of thread it is so there's something yep well it would be easy enough for me to draw it out tap it slightly bigger oh yeah and and we could make that somehow I don't think so I'll see if I've got an 8 by 1.5 it doesn't worry me a little bit that if I was to drill this out you won't have a nice round Tang because your Tang will be arounds of a flat well no that's more that more I'm worried about whether the tack lets you go around the end of the Tang without skidding off because because this is already about seven millimeters inside with eight millimeter or 5/16 tap oh and and we're already and we're already doing like aluminium that's less than a quarter of an inch thick so instead of having a nice round piece for your tap to go around we'll have a round flat round and it could get up here at the UC blade had that did it yeah oh so they had exactly that same thing exactly oh that's interesting but they would probably have special tooling to do that hmm I'll grab a bit of aluminium and put a test thread on it to see whether I can get away with boring that out okay and if I can't then and maybe our engineering department would have Imperial taps and dies that's probably - fine but we've got lots of these really nice beer the nice foam back ones they can form really well but we have coarser ones - that might work a bit better what are the odds [Music] unbelievable that that nobody uses in nine there's always a mate or in ten who uses m9 do your experimental metric tap who died turned out to be exact right threading okay it's been one of those cases okay hmm well that's definitely one for the books okay so do you want me to tape it yes so how far do we go okay it's that second one so I'll just take a little bit below that and leave I'll start with a good link and then we can cut it short okay what are the weeks [Music] [Music] [Music] I have to run over the way Oh shiny yeah I just wanted to make Darville sure I just couldn't believe my luck that it could be that thread it's tight but maybe it's not it doesn't quite feel right it doesn't look like it's stripping it though maybe it's just quite time I think it's just to tell us that there's no damage to the thread there is there no okay well I'll keep going yeah I've threaded it a lot further than it needs to be alright because I always know the first bit of the thread is always a bit mucky I have gotten a nice polish on mmm very pretty so wonder they don't actually do that themselves because that's that's come up beautifully it really has drum roll please I would probably be a little bears bears lift from the threading it is should I clean that a couple of swipes what the fire would probably remove what it was doing there your steady hey-oh now we need to work out oh now I hate to tell you something yeah the threads don't go far enough oh okay I can do that easily yeah yeah we wanted to cut it there right hold and go down - yeah though it's not actually that far off because it oh I see that goes in yeah so that fits all that that fits - there and then that goes a bit further it's not a big deal I can just just do a bit of grinding we just really want to see it right about there yeah didn't know it's still moving ya know just a wee bit more [Music] tight okay it's a bit pummel heavy ooh there's a little o light thing so awesome you have just made my month thank thank you for your generous teaching and mentoring and guidance it's just I'm going to make more of these now yep great thank you yeah that looks good is that ready for a scene for a stunt for a stunt men to start whacking at each other probably excellent good all right

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 516,909

Rating: 4.9340243 out of 5

Keywords: tested, testedcom, adam savage, king arthur, armor, build, terry english, premium preview, excalibur, how to, one day build, adam incognito, weta workshop, tested one day builds, tested adam savage one day build, adam savage one day build, adam savage edc, adam savage cosplay, terry english armor, peter lyon, one day builds

Id: vCi5usulDIo

Length: 80min 48sec (4848 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Palin_Sees_Russia]

Why the fuck is it taking Lindeybeige literally years to make a sword, but Adam can in a single day....lol