Forging a Battle Axe from a pick axe

[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to another episode of outdoor boys YouTube channel and it's finally cooled down enough where I can stand to be outside forging and I'm excited that all summer to think about what I want to do it we've got some great projects planned this winter and for those of you who follow my channel pretty religiously you might have noticed that I got a new forge stand so let me show you the new forged stand I've got upside-down aluminum diamond plate on the surface aluminum won't rust obviously and it'll prevent it from burning when hot coals fall out and then I've got the joints notched and so you can see here where I inserted the pieces together made a lot stronger used exterior deck screws instead of nails which is you know another real basic thing and then I've got lots of these cross members here the old design I had a shelf on the bottom which I thought I'd use for storage I never used it and the lack of cross support just made it really wobbly especially over time the more I used it this one is really rock-solid hopefully this will work a lot better I'm really excited to give it a go so right here you can see I've got the shop vac blowing air into a perforated tube with a bunch of pea gravel in it and this is the basic Forge that I've been using for the last number of years if you want to see a video on how to build this up in a link in the description but for my first forging project of the year I've got something special planned for you guys I am going to turn this old pickaxe into a double bitted battle-ax [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] just get me a long project [Music] well I was hoping to make more progress before it was time to quit for the day but it is what it is I'm a little bit slower a little bit more out of shape than I was at the beginning of the summer but we'll go ahead and put this up right now and pick it up just a little bit what we really need to do is start working on this edge pounding the metal here along this side to gradually draw it out so that its beginnings of an edge and then I need to shape this profile but we'll kind of see how it goes [Music] you having fun with Daddy [Music] [Music] [Music] well that turned out pretty darn well I'm happy with what I got so far but the real challenge is about to begin because I've got to stick this part in the Forge and hold it by this part and then if I bend it down it's gonna be awfully close I I may not be able to do this without burning my hands I may need to invest in a pair of welders gloves my sweet children gave me they're cold and I'm gonna try to do some foraging today and finish up the second half of this pickaxe but we'll see how it goes I'm kind of tired and starting [Music] [Music] well guys they got the rough shape done and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out but there's definitely some things I would do differently let me show you remember how I used that angle grinder to groove the the pickaxe I did that to encourage it to fold in a specific location but it didn't really work and in the end it caused this ugly little aisle defect in there but it's not structural it's you know just superficial I thought it would close up when bending and the other side did but this one didn't and it just it just wasn't worth it well I was really worried about getting everything symmetrical and it actually turned out pretty well the one problem I had is when I first folded the second part of the pickaxe I bent half an inch further from the I then the other side did and so I had to correct for that and that was a lot of work and in the end it caused this point to be about a little less than a half of an inch shorter but I fixed it all except for this part and I'll just use the angle grinder to even that up alright guys now it's time to bust out the angle grinder put an edge on this thing clean it up a little bit and even the two tines out alright got to save that little piece for later that'll be important [Music] I don't know what type of steel this is unless you know what type of steel you're working with you don't know how to properly heat treat it what you should quench it in whether or not you need to anneal it what temperature you need to get it at each steel and each Holloway is different so you know it's just kind of hitting in the dark so that's where this little extra piece of steel comes in I think I need a water quench this this project if I'm wrong it'll make it too brittle so I'm gonna test it out on this little tiny piece here and if this little piece shatters after I water quench it then I know I probably need to oil quench well we got the fire roaring hot but a little too hot it was like burning my forehead just even mess with stuff with the Tong so I spread it out turn off the fan let it cool down a bit because I want a nice gentle fire for the heat treating process don't want to burn the edges melt anything and I am going to start by taking this a little bit of steel in there we're gonna heat it up we're going to water quench it and see what happens then shat or after I hit it about six times with the four pound sledge so pretty tough not too brittle but I think I'm gonna want to anneal it so this is probably somewhere around 1060 1070 ish steel and I'm gonna win a water quench it and then bake it in the oven for a while to soften about up a bit well getting the whole axe had consistently heated was a real challenge I had to make a horseshoe-shaped bed of coals and really tend it and tweak it to get it cherry red as evenly as possible to anneal the axe head I'm gonna put it in the oven at 450 degrees for about an hour so we'll see how that goes and it looks like my lovely wife has made pasta for dinner thank you babe all right well you ended up baking this thing in the oven for about an hour and a half and I don't see any cracks or warps and so we're just gonna go ahead and knock the slag off it polish it up a little bit put an edge on it [Applause] not quite shave with it sharp but pretty darn good the way these pickaxe eyes are made they're designed so that you feed the handle from the bottom down instead of from the bottom up like you would an axe handle so what it means is the handle has to be smaller than the bottom of the eye which is approximately two inches by three inches and then what you make is at the top of the handle you make it flare out so that it jams in here and doesn't feed all the way through the eye [Music] so far so good but we'll pick this up again tomorrow it's a crisp fall morning we're gonna keep working on this axe handle I'm gonna grind out the head and just kind of clean up the head a little bit yeah keep going [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] let's witnessing a lot of curious how much this thing weighs that is eight pounds oh that is beastly look at that look yeah oh you can absolutely do some damage with it it's kind of a goofy design and just kind of a fun fun thing so I have no idea how effective of an actual axis is so we better go find out let's go chop some crap all right guys let me give you a little bit of a close-up here good-looking little axe well I have some serious questions about the functionality of this axe but you gotta admit it looks awesome [Music] okay maybe it's not so bad oh well that is a lot of work so I think this is a very utilitarian battle-ax no was it a lot of fun to make it swing yes well guys I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope to take away from this is that this is easy to do you don't need a lot of equipment you don't need years of practice just try something you know going out there dry blacksmithing try making axes and restoring stuff it's fun and you don't have to impress anyone other than yourself so enjoy yourself enjoy these videos and remember we put out new videos every Saturday morning and we have a whole playlist dedicated to forging and tool restoration videos I'll put a link in the description so thanks for watching don't forget to click Subscribe have a great day Oh

Channel: Outdoor Boys

Views: 704,456

Keywords: Forging, black smithing, forging an axe, forging a battle axe, making a battle axe, how to make a battle axe, battle axe, pick axe, forging a battle axe from a pick axe, DIY axe, DIY battle axe, Making a double bit axe, Forging a double bit axe

Id: LCuMS83wTz4

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Machiavelli1480]

Cool, but looks like a express ride to the ER.