Forging A Damascus Guard For My Big Sword

I don't think this is enough Damascus it's gonna be flamy a small Miss small that's what I always say it is Day 36 of working on the Griffin sword I just spent the last couple days finishing up the hand sanding on this blade I've got it sanded up to 600 grit and the Fuller has a 1,000 grit finish on it the blade at this point is pretty much finished right when everything's pretty much finished up we'll finish the hand sanding on the blade and do the final etching to reveal the Damascus pattern I don't want to do that right now though because I might scratch the blade or something while I'm working on the rest of it so that's why I'm going to stop working on the blade for now since I'm done working on the blade we need to focus on the handle and fittings but currently we don't have Damascus for the fittings the Damascus I made for the blade is a mosaic pattern and then we're going to use this big old giant chunk for the Pummel but I'm going to do a different pattern for the guard this Mosaic wouldn't work out very well for the guard and the little spacer we need to make Damascus for the throat and tip of the Scabbard for the ginormous guard on this thing and the spacer and the Pummel nut so I've already prepared some metal here I've got a big old stack of 1084 and 15 and 20 my goal for this pattern is for it to be nice and elegant but not super flashy I want it to be something that you subtly look at when you're up close to the sword you're like oh that's a really pretty Damascus but from a distance it'll just have a kind of shimmery gray look I don't want it to take away from the gold inl L too much just have this kind of nice Elegance to it so I've got a whole bunch of 1084 I already ground all the Pickled finish off got all the pieces nice and smooth and I've got a stack of 15 and 20 here the 15 and 20 is also ground clean this stuff has that little bit of nickel in it this will be the bright steel that we see in the finished Damascus and the 1084 will be the dark steel that we see it's time to shuffle these up right now they're just two separate Stacks we need to Interchange them we're not doing anything crazy or complicated here this stack is going to be really clean really simple for our w w pattern we're just going to take a piece of 1084 152 1084 154 154 154 154 15 20 and 1084 to finish it out oh oh outo pinch myself pinch to grow your bill at an inch next we get this thing all clamped up tight I'm going to mig weld up the ends of the Billet TIG weld up all the seams so everything's all sealed off nicely no atmosphere oxygen getting in the Billet so I get nice clean Forge welds and I'll probably put a couple Mig welds going across the sides of the Billet just for H structural support that will grind off after the B's Forge welded as well to the welder well would you look at that would you look at it look at that I haven't seen pieces that were so equally sized in a long time they're all the same width for the most part that's beautiful the last couple billets I made were just uh the 15 and 20 was a little skinnier than the 1084 and they really had some inconsistencies and width these are much closer this looks nice that means there'll be less grinding and stuff to do to get everything all flush would you look at that would you just look at it that is not something that happens every day I just want to sit here and look at it would you look at that now lengthwise they're a little mismatched but uh have to blame the bandaw guy for that this is how I do a thumbs up just leave your thumb in the normal position and then bend all your fingers back welder check gas check wire check cord check helmet check shade 11 check Damascus Billet check clamp check access to the end of Billet check welder is a go I'm blinded hello helmet why you no turn on they run out of battery been using this helmet for year and a half 2 years now it may have just ran out of its first battery that was that was literally blinding literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally literally blinding you know if the welding helmet's not working right away uh maybe I should just try it again and hope that it works this time I don't know the test button no lights are turning on when I hit the test button nope Houston we have a dead battery hopefully it's just a bad battery oh you look at that oh would you look at this why is that wired up there I don't think we even use that do we there's a button what does that button do there's a button here that controls stuff and I I've never used it or know what it does oo that looks clean on the inside there there should be CR 24503 volt Panasonic made in Indonesia hey Dad got any of these yes sir hey there it is H that's what I was looking for that used to that used to be in the other box okay now we put it in here it down lock it up plug that thing back in even though I'm not never used it need to look into what that does okay let's see if it works hey welding helmet works all right it's lunchtime [Laughter] how that stuff [Laughter] goes 346 minutes later I'm back from lunch and Josh had 29 Instagram videos for me to voice over so it's actually almost the end of the day I spent all morning prepping this steel and we're going to get this ready for the forge cuz I want to get this thing forged in first thing tomorrow [Music] I got the ends welded up solid I wanted to cover the entire ends to not let any Oxygen or atmosphere get inside the Billet remember we're trying to seal it up next I need to get a handle on the situation got a handle here little weld go tack tack need more power I'm going to wire wheel the edges so we'll have clean material for the TIG welder it does not like dirty material it doesn't even like this residue on the very ends from the MIG welder who that's shiny when you wire wheel it next I'm going to seal up the edges of the Billet with the TIG welder an alternative to sealing up the sides of the Billet with a TIG welder that I've done a bunch in the past is to actually use some really thin sheet metal you can cut a piece of sheet metal that's just a little bit bigger than the sides of the Billet weld the sheet metal to the Billet and seal up all the edges that'll keep oxygen from getting inside the Billet and serve the same purpose as TIG welding up the [Music] sides that's it for today I got the Billet welded up it is ready to go into the forge I TIG welded the sides to seal it up when I do that I don't use any filler so there's no filler in there going uh lengthways that means I don't need to grind any of that TIG weld out the tig welds however aren't very strong because earlier in this series we did a test to see how hard that hardened steel gets when you just weld hardened steel together with the TIG welder and it full-blown hardens it as hard as a knife blade would be like 60 some rock well so those welds are very hard very brittle they're not very strong so I went ahead and went over it with the uh the MIG welder in a few places here just on the sides a little bit just to add some structural reinforcement when I put that in the Forge I don't want those outside layers heating up really fast and splitting open letting air get in there making uh making bad welds so we'll grind those off the sides once I get this Forge welded that should be enough to hold this thing closed get this thing in the Forge tomorrow and start forging out our fittings it's day 37 and working on the Griffin sword I just got the forge lit up let's go get this thing in the Forge and start crushing some W's [Music] the billets hot ready to forge weld it [Music] okay this should be one solid block now I'm going to go grind out the uh those Mig welds on the sides just so they don't get pressed into the Billet on the next process [Music] I want to turn this Billet into a w layer Billet it's not going to be a mosaic but it's going to be a really fine W layer W layers are basically a deformed straight layer so we're going to take these straight layers like they are right now we're going to crush them until they start to curve into these kind of curvy uh W shapes at first they'll just look like little C's you'll have C's on one side the Billet going One Direction and C's on the other side going the other way and in the middle of the Billet the layers will still be kind of straight once we Stack Up multiple layers of that those C's will form what we call W's the question I have to decide is how do I want to form those W's there's a couple different ways I could go about doing it I could make some really aggressive ones that curve a lot like this or I could go for some uh some that are less aggressive and I'm thinking about for this particular project to actually do the less aggressive ones this time I'm actually considering it I almost never do the less aggressive ones but I think it might be the look I'm going for on this Billet billets hot again I'm going to form the W's using these squaring dyes scar I think I've decided to go somewhere between aggressive W's and not aggressive so I'm going to I'm GNA shoot for that middle ground not as aggressive as I normally do but also not super uh not super passive either this squaring die is kind of forcing those W's to happen and normally I would I would use the uh Billet in this squaring D until the squaring dieses touch each other but this time since I'm trying to make them a little bit more passive I think I'll stop right there and go back to the regular dies since this Billet is going to be full of really fine W's I don't want to start out by making the W's too aggressive and notice that if you start out too aggressive as you forge that Billet and layer it over and over again those W's get more and more aggressive and then in your final Billet they're so aggressive to where they actually lose some of their aggressiveness and start to look like straight layers running through your Billet again so I'm trying to hit a nice balance here hopefully I'll get just the right amount of w happening in my Billet so we'll have a nice aggressive fiery pattern in the end and we won't go past the Tipping Point to where the W's actually start to turn back into kind of straight layer looking [Music] things sometimes it's faster to straighten billets out on the Anvil instead of changing my dieses out on the press to my big flattening dieses and as an added benefit instead of the press doing 100% of the work it is fun to actually swing a hammer and whack on some hot steel every once in a while [Music] [Applause] this see the Billet I'm distracted by the Flames both to the Flames I did not like the smell of those burning oily paper towels so we're going to try some ancient mariner pipe tobacco and see how that smells there's enough for about three pipes on [Laughter] there get that Lit oh yeah I can already smell it oh that smells good I haven't smoked my pipe in years but that kind of uh makes me want to smoke it once or twice okay straighten that wow that is quite the banana better already well would you look at that just look at it well would you look at that there you are I was like would you look at it would you just look at it where are you where where did you go would you look at that time for grinding oh that grinding wheel's getting small aim small Miss small that's what I always say I don't think this is enough Damascus this doesn't seem like enough Damascus for that throat tip giant guard spacer pmel nut got the pieces cut up into uh got the Billet cut up into five pieces cleaned off the uh ends of the Damascus a little bit now I'm just doing a quick little etch so we can see how the pattern looks remember these aren't supposed to be super aggressive W's they're supposed to be somewhere between aggressive and passive passive aggressive these are supposed to be passive aggressive W's oh getting a little sneak peek now shouldn't look yet need to get them all rinsed off and stack up the billets so we can see them all together it's hard not to look though okay I'm going to rinse that feric chloride off woo cold water get them all lined up oh yeah that looks really good we've got some nice W's forming on the edges and then in the middle the billets still a little bit uh a little bit straight As I Forge this out more and we keep cutting it up and restacking it these should get more aggressive uh than they are now but they won't be the extreme aggressive type next thing I'm going to do is get these surfaces cleaned up a little bit on the 2 x72 and then we're going to stack them back up weld every single seam shut so we can do zero atmosphere uh Forge welding get a handle on it and uh get it back in the Forge by flipping over every other piece when the Billet is in order like this it'll make the pattern mirror itself throughout and it'll make the uh all the layers match up just that wee little bit better I'm going to hold them in place with some CA and then we can weld them in place uh more permanently for the forge got the Billet welded up it's time to get a handle on the situation after getting the handle welded on I seal up the sides of the Billet with the MIG welder I'll grind those welds out later after we Forge weld the Billet Heat this thing up pipeing hot and smash all the layers together we're multiplying the layers in the Billet times five right now because I cut this piece up into five separate [Music] chunks that popsicle stick shot out all over the place that kind of scared me you can see we've got Mig welds sealing up the sides of the Billet soon as I set these welds grind those out right now I'm using my massive DeWalt 5 horsepower 6000 RPM 9in angle grinder it makes quick work of the Mig welds on the sides of the Billet something else that's cool is because the metal is about, 1500° right now it actually grinds away more quickly than it would if it were room temperature so the combination of the hot metal plus the big grinder makes these Mig welds disappear Josh did you see after the first uh first forging session there were like zero cold shuts remember how on the last bullet it was just cold shut City yeah every step it seemed like I was grinding out cold shuts Josh a bird pooped on there while we ate lunch there was fresh bird poop right there you know what but while it's kind of a square I should use the squaring die to at least get it a little bit Square before I continue forging out you know what this press needs it needs the power of the Griffin now we're cooking woo we just gained at least 35% power people right there this went to from being a 40 ton press to a 40 ton plus 35% power press I was really scared of that one I really came down on it even did you see how I holding the Billet up against the top Dy yeah all right it's Grind Time I think it's had a little too much rain water on the on the screw this is a big grinder but you know what I need more power power of the Griffin yeah woo that ought to do it at least a 35% boost there [Music] [Applause] hey oh we just getting into the edge of it a little bit that I thought that was going to fly right off there but uh that's actually pretty good advertisement for the sticker that's turning at 6,000 RPM I think if you put me on a marago round I don't think I could stay on at 6,000 RPM so it's better at sticking to things than I am for now we're just going to cut the ends off and see how the pattern looks cuz I don't even know how many pieces I want to cut it up into yet I got to start thinking about the orientation of the pattern to the guard too cuz it will probably be at that spot on the next Forge weld session time to do a quick test at on both the ends make sure I cut off enough of the bad stuff from the ends and we're also going to evaluate the pattern see how many pieces I want to cut up this bar into cuz we're getting to a stage where I need to decide on the how many pieces do I want more layers less layers whoa oh that's awesome look at that yes the pattern's doing what I wanted it to do those W's are all crushing down further and further they're getting sharper and sharper the more we layer this this and smash it down this way the more all those W's those little points will get smashed down and they'll become more aggressive that's why I didn't want to start off with a super aggressive W this time uh because sometimes if you start off super aggressive these these get crazy aggressive by time you're done that looks awesome I'm very happy with how this pattern's coming out I did just the right amount of w just the right amount I was actually a little nervous last time we looked at the pattern after the first forging because they were pretty pass W's and I haven't done them that passive in a long time I was like I don't know did I make the right call did I do the right amount but after seeing it like this I'm pretty confident that that was just about perfect introducing the you're an amazing man coffee cup it doesn't have any of our specific logos or anything on it but my sister got it for me years ago and gosh darn it I'm using this thing from now till the end of time that's why I'm keeping 15 backups so buy this one and 15 backups of your own so you can use this coffee cup for the rest of your life The Coffee Cup that'll give you kisses back just look at the rim on that thing keep [Laughter] going yeah it's going to look so good hope I made the right call I decided to cut this build up into six pieces so the pattern is going to be six times as fine as what it is now total layer count should be about 510 layers oh man I don't know is this the right call or is that going to be too many layers it's going to be flamy I think I made the right call I want it pretty fine I want the pattern to be pretty subtle in fact I don't know we might get it there and might decide to go even more don't know I got all the mating surfaces of each piece cleaned up on the grinder use a 36 grp belt and then like a worn out 180 now I'm wiping the pieces down because I don't want any little pieces of grit from the belt to be on the steel the reason I don't want any grit on there is because we're about to put all these pieces together and if there's a piece in between one of these pieces it's going to be in the knife permanently so that means when I go to make the guard out of this if you ground into it and there was like a chunk of grit stuck in there when you got to that grit there would be like a little pit cuz the grit would probably fall out and then you'd be left with this little tiny pit like to wipe things down get rid of all the big stuff this is really the the stage where I start rubbing and wiping on all the pieces just to really get everything off let's get this Billet all laid back out I transferred my numbers over to the ends because I want to make all the pieces miror each other to make the pieces mirror each other all we have to do is get them lined up that the the way they were before the Bild it was uh cut up that's why I keep track of the numbers so I can get them all lined up the same as they were before they were cut and then just leave this first piece alone the second piece you're going to flip it over and now what it's doing is it's mirroring the pattern of the first piece you've got the pattern going this way and then it mirrors perfectly on the second one now we want to focus on mirroring the next piece so we're not concerned about this first one anymore it's already mirrored we're now concerned about mirroring this one so to make it mirror with the next piece we just lay that one on top of there so every other one gets flipped over and uh every other other one just gets laid on top so flat flip flat flip flat flip and something that we can do to confirm that is since I wrote the numbers on the ends of the bar Every Other Bar should have a number on it if we saw two numbers side by side that would be a red flag like may have made a mistake somewhere okay now we CA them all together coffee break oh tastes like a delicious chocy cup of goodness [Laughter] just got the ends welded up and now it is time to get a handle on the [Music] situation oh this handle's looking kind of [Music] gangly uh that's kind of a big gap can you see that ah it'll be fine let me just crank the Heat and the temperature up uh let me just crank the Heat and the temperature up are those different I met let me crank the Heat and the wire speed up to Melting speed Gap filled kind of I don't think there's enough Damascus here for the throat and tip and the guard it's kind of looking like we might have to make the same pattern for the throat and tip of the sheath Scabbard Scabbard we might have to make more I mean this was a pretty big Bill at starting out but the the throat and tip is going to use a lot yep that looks straight to me straight in both directions straight in all four directions straight in three dimensions even straight in the fourth whoa whoa who That's Heavy going hurt my wrist this thing is good to go it's pretty much the end of the day though I'm going to go uh make a pattern for the guard because we're going to be forging the guard out of this Billet right here on the next forging session I'm also going to like come up with some kind of a game plan idea for a pattern on the throat and tip of the Scabbard because I need to I need to really figure out if we're going to have enough steel for that um or if I'm going to have to make another Billet or not this thing is looking really good though I'm very happy with the W's on it I'm very happy with the progress I made on this thing today too the footage from day 38 of working on the Griffin sword got lost it is no more so unfortunately we're going to have to skip straight forward to day 39 of working on the Griffin sword all I did on day 38 was pretty much just got the guard forged out and spent a lot of time with my height gauge checking to make sure that the ends were symmetrical and that they weren't out of whack with the central line of it and stuff here's our Guard we're going to pick right up with checking out how the pattern came out on the sides of the guard on day 39 and working on the Griffin sword there's the pattern I think it looks really good I was super worried about how it would look out here where I forged on the uh the ends of the Guard a lot more than I was planning I thought it might distort the pattern and stretch it and make it look uh not good enough to use and maybe have to throw out the whole guard but that actually looks beautiful I couldn't be much more happy with that I'm so glad that I don't have to start over on this guard at least at least not from forging it too much if we look at the other end it also looks very good very consistent nice even lines going throughout both ends I'm so glad the pattern came out I was very certain yesterday when I was forging this that I was going to have to scrap it because I thought for sure it was going to stretch that pattern too much and distort it all and make it make it too wobbly or open it up or something weird but it looks beautiful The Next Step this guard needs to go through is actually a normalization cycle so I'm at my Paragon Kiln here we're going to heat this up to, 1600° let it cool down heat it up to, 1500 let it cool 1,400 let it cool all in Fahrenheit by the way what that's going to do is it's going to hit the reset button on the steel right now the steel is actually really under a lot of stress cuz I heated up different portions of this and the heat was being sucked out of it quicker by parts of it touching the Anvil and parts of it in the air I'm just going to get this bad boy in here and get it heating up while the guard is a kneeling in the oven I have a couple things I want to work on next we've got our massive massive chunk of mos Mosaic Damascus the same Mosaic that the blade was made out of this was cut early on in the project to be the pommel of the sword what I need to do this is a little bit of grinding on it I think I've got some weld in it and then we need to forge this into a more of a round hockey puck shape to be the Pummel I also need to forge out the middle spacer we're going to forge that from the same W that we just forged our guard out of need to just forge that bar down until it's a little thinner like quar inch and then I also need to cut off a chunk of that same W pattern to make the pmel out of everybody getting cold coffee is getting cold I'm getting hot probably need to take this sweater off oh mik about to rip it off and it's hanging below my knee does that sound different depending on where the mic is at hello [Music] YouTube oh got to run that up my shirt while I'm doing that check out this awesome Griffin shirt huh huh this is the Griffin holding the Griffin sword and I'm going to be engraving a griffin on the pommel this big giant chunk right here the color is Ox blood red I love how it's really unique because it's not like a bright red and it's not like a black it's kind of in between we have these shirts available and stickers of the Griffin these shirts are awesome get you one if you want to look cool like me so right away as I started grinding on this Pummel piece I noticed that these Mig welds went a lot deeper into the edges than I thought they did back when we made this Damascus for the blade and the pommel I actually thought I ground all that mig weld out so I was kind of surprised to see it there and then on top of that it was another surprise to find that these Mig welds actually go pretty deep and I have to grind some pretty deep grooves in the Billet hopefully I can forge this Square chunk into a nice clean hockey puck shape and these grooves don't affect me too much this is what's going to become the middle spacer I once again maybe undershot things though and cut off a smaller piece than I should have I just sto being more liberal with the uh scrap on this stuff but we'll see if we can get it forged out big enough for that middle spacer right now it needs to be probably a/ inch longer okay there we go this will be the front spacer I'll have to check the pattern make sure it's not too squished if the pattern is too squished we'll uh just cut a chunk off of the big bar here and not really Forge it out just grind it down to a thickness instead of forging it like this that would leave it a little bit coarser on the edges if you think about it this right here should be almost twice as fine as this parent bar that it came off of because you see it's about half the thickness so every time you reduce it down by half thickness you're going to make theoretically the pattern about twice as fine that's a big reason why I have to make different layer counts of billets based on what kind of knife I'm making a folder needs a Billet that's doesn't have as many layers in it as compared to something like a sword you need a lot more layers to cover up that whole all that square footage I cut a little piece off here for the pommel too I want to lightly Forge it I'm going to go ahead and Forge it into kind of a round shape it's a little bit short right now this way so by forging it down a little bit we can get that to lengthen out and it'll give me a little more length to work with just going to lightly tack it on I don't want these welds to go deep like this piece here was just barely tacked on well it's actually a little better than it looks weld that ugly little thing on there nasty [Music] handle that's looking good that looks good for the pommel nut that'll give me a little bit more length to work with I can have it go down inside the uh the pommel a little bit more if I want to now that it's stretched out longer I think it's heated up enough Josh I sure hope I got enough metal here because I do not have any more of this Mosaic drop that on it's just a glowing hockey puck I think it's a little uh heavier than regulation weight AR probably but I probably have I have I don't want that hard Edge on there cuz it won't like it will never close up and blend very well if the edge is too nasty looks a little better a little more smooth out I finished forging out my hockey puck Pummel it's looking really good there is a little tiny divot on both sides but for the most part it's just about an inch thick I think it's going to be uh thick enough the diameter came out very nice the diameter of it is slightly bigger than my sketch so that's perfect and it actually looks really good I'm very happy with it we've got the middle spacer forged out got to check the pattern on that make sure it's going to be good and got the uh Pummel nut forged out I'm also in the process of keeping an eye on my uh my guard as it normalizes I need to take it in and out of the oven each time it reaches temperature but I'm calling it there for the day very happy with all these fittings soon we're going to be processing these fittings down and actually start fitting them to the sword that's going to be awesome I will see you in the next video May the forge be with you bye-bye

Channel: Kyle Royer

Views: 60,792

Keywords: knife making, how to make a knife, how to heat treat a knife, how to make a bowie knife, how to make a bowie, knives, kyle royer, kyle royer knives, making a knife, sharp, how to make knives, bladesmith, master smith, blades, damascus, knifemaker, diy knife, anvil, forging, custom, knife, great content, steel, bowie build, bowie knife, 10 inche bowie knife, blade, knifemaking, knife maker

Id: NtDaNF7pF7k

Length: 39min 48sec (2388 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 13 2024