Welcome to another video in which I will forge
a Viking Broad Seax. A seax was a single edged sword primarily
used in Anglo-Saxon times. However, it also was still common in the early
Viking era. While many seaxes were of basic quality easily
produced by many blacksmiths, I am aiming for a high-quality pattern welded seax that
would have been quite expensive. This sword was a long time in the making and
there were many failures and painful set backs. This video is the culmination of over a year
of work and has been edited for brevity. You can
find much more detail in the broad seax video series. So far I have cut a lot of 6 inch pieces of
1075 and 15n20 tool steel. I will put alternating pieces of steel into
9 layers total. That is 5 layers of 1075 and 4 layers of 15n20. If this is all alien to you, let me explain
more. 1075 is a reasonably plain carbon steel that
will etch dark when put into ferric chloride. 15n20 on the other hand contains a lot of
nickel will stay quite bright in comparison to the 1075. As a result, when forging out stuch a billet,
you would see 9 alternating lines of different color in the steel. While this sometimes makes for an interesting
pattern, in this case I will also twist the steel to create a chevron pattern as you will
discover if you keep watching this series. Interestingly, as you watch me assemble this
billets, the different layers of steel look about the same. This will continue to be the case until the
very end. However, the pattern will get revealed immediately
when etching the seax; leading to an almost magical moment. The mig welds I added to keep the billet togeter
will not be part of the finished sword and so I do not have to worry about them contaminating
the pattern. The steel here will be used for the middle
of the seax. For the cutting edge, I will be doing something
different and the very back of the sword, I usally construct with wrought iron or a
mild steel. The three billets of 9 layer steel that I
created need to be welded in the forge fire. This
requires high temperatures, clearn material and the right atmosphere in the propane forge. To prevent scale from interferring with the
welds, I use anhydrous borax as flux. The borax is liquid at these temperatures
and coats all surfaces keeping oxygen away from them. All the work on the power hammer is to draw
the billets out until they are roughly 3/8 of an inch square; that's about 9 mms. There is a lot of forging work that needs
to happen before the final dimension is reached. I usually first forge the bars to 3/4 of an
inch and then to 1/2 inch before going for the final dimension. Since these bars will get stacked on top of
each other to form the seax blade, it's important that the surfaces are square. The bar is now at 3/4 of an inch square and
occasional normalizing of the steel helps with
obtaining a more fine-grained homogeneous structure and may also help with creating
stronger welds. A thousand years ago, this process would have
required several helpers who would constantly work the bar with heavy hammers. This may also give you a sense for why swords
were highly priced and only affordable by a small part of the populace. So far, I created 2 long square bars with
9 layers of 1075 and 15n20. My bars for constructing swords or seaxes
are always 3/8 of an inch wide; that's about 9 mm. To create a herring bone pattern in the middle
of the blade, I will twist one of the bars to the left and the other to the right. My twisting jig makes the quite easy but before
I can use it, I need to weld the bars to little steel squares that fit the jig. I often wonder how blacksmiths a thousand
years ago would have gone about twisting these bars. I have not seen any finds of specialized tools
for twisting but find it hard to believe they would just have used tongs. The other tool that really helps with twising
is the oxy-actelyn torch which provides a mobile and high temparture heat source. I am using a rose bud and need to dial in
the actelyn and oxygen until I get the right flame. Even twists of these layered bars are important
to me since I want an even pattern on the finished blade. To achieve even twists, I heat up a couple
of inches of the bar and apply two complete rotations and then move on to the next couple
of inches by making sure there is a slight overlap to the previous section. Since the twisted bars need to be forged welded
back to square, I also make sure to remove any obvious scale with the wire brush. As you can see I am twisting the first bar
to the right. While not entirely intuitive, these directional
twists are orientation invariant. That means no matter which way you flip the
bar the direction of twists will always look the same. That also means to get a herring bone pattern,
we need different twist directions. For that reason, I will twist the next bar
to the left. Alright, the first bar is completely twisted. If you take a close look, you will see how
the twists have a slant to the right. Keep that in mind when you look at the slant
for the next bar which I will be twisting left. Perhaps, counter-clockwise would be the more
appropriate term here. I have gotten quite lucky here that none of
the bars sheared. The next step is to clean off any scale so
that they can be forged welded back to square. Here is a close look at one of the bars. Observe the chamfer on the edges which reduces
the stress on the bar when twisting. Before I can put the bars back into the forge,
I need to remove the little metal squares I used to fit the bars into my twisting jig. As the bars are round now, I need to re-establish
a square profile and I am using a spacer in the power hammer to maintain the same dimension
across the whole length of the bar. Again, it is important to get the bars hot
enough to weld and to keep oxygen away from them for which I am using borax as a flux
again. Here is a quick look at the bars after they
have been forged welded back to square. As it is difficult to visualize the pattern,
here is a sneak peak at a computer generated visualization. It shows one of these twisted bars at different
levels of material removal and you can see how the pattern develops as the bars get thinner. To create these patterns in a sword, I will
assemble the bars into a sword by forge-welding them together. As you saw earlier, during forge-welding multiple
separate steel pieces are fused together with strong hammer blows at high temperatures. This process requires that the steel is very
clean and not oxidized. Forge welding a long sword is particularly
difficult because the surface area is narrow but also very long. As a result, this step is difficult to complete
successfully. I am now working on the edge billet. This is very similar to the material I forge
welded before. At this point in the video, I have a 100 layer
billet for the cutting edge that needs to be forged out. I am doing this on the power hammer with drawing
dies which allow me to quickly elongate the billet. As I am making a broad seax I need to create
a fairly wide edge billet. It consists of W2, a high carbon tool steel,
and some wrought iron for a total carbon content of roughly 0.7%. Even with the power hammer, the drawing operation
takes time. My technique with the power hammer is to mount
spacers that allow me to reduce the stock to the thickness of the spacer. To reduce scaling from oxygen exposure, I
remove the scale with a wire brush and apply some additional borax as flux. I forge the billet to square and reduce the
size of the spacer. Eventually, I will have worked the steel down
to 1/2 or about 12.7mms. Just imagine doing all of this by hand. After having spend hours at the hot forge
fire and the power hammer, the work enters a certain rythm and becomes almost mediative. It is a good break from every day life and
completely disconnected from our busy schedules and frequent interruptions. After a lot of work, I sometimes give the
steel a rest and let it cool down. That gives me a little rest as well. I am now at the final dimension of the billet
and will forge it flat on one side to widen it. To help with that, I put a 3/8in (9mm) spacer
under the power hammer. If you did not watch the detailed episodes
on this sword, you are probably unaware that what
you are seeing here is my fifth attempt at creating the broad seax. After a lot of trial and error, I ended up
fixing my forge and also switched from using wrought iron to mild steel for the back of
the sword. If you want to see me fail, take some time
and watch the individual videos. The cutting edge and this core bars need to
have squared up sides to ensure successful welding. To help with that, I verified that my tool
rest and platten have a 90 degree angle. If the bars are not square to each other,
for example, because the are slanted, hitting them with a hammer will cause them to slide
apart rather than welding together. Clamping the bars is a good way to check if
they are square enough. If the bars are already trying to slide away
from each other now, it is very likely that forge welding will fail. I someimes, need to go back to the grinder
to make more adjustments until I am happy with how the bars hold together under clamp
pressure. Once the bars are at forge-welding temperatures,
I set the weld with light taps from the power hammer. The liquid flux sprays away when the bars
meet and helps preserve a clean surface for the weld. So far it looks pretty good. On a side note, I have color graded this video
in high dynamic range and if you have a display that supports HDR10 the hot steel should really
pop out on your screen. I think it all came together successfully. I will now heat up the welded bars to critical
temperature and then let them cool down in the air to normalize them. If you watch carefully you can see some recalecence
which is an increase in energy when the crystal structure in the steel changes. If you did not notice it, I will show it again
later. At the moment, this looks quite ugly. Before I do any further forging, I will grind
down the surface until it is completely flat and all gaps have disappeared. With a fresh belt on the belt sender, this
happens quite quickly. So far so good. Since this is a single edged blade, I need
to establish a tip. My preferred method for that is to cut a reverse
tip that needs to be forged back. The reason for doing that is to ensure that
the pattern in the blade smoothly follows the blade edge. Creating a reverse tip is the method to do
that. This is mostly an aesthetically considerations
since I find patterns just running off the blade edge to be somewhat ugly. The reverse tip method has its own challenges. As you will see forging back the tip is very
hard on the welds. So, this is also a good test to validate that
the welds are solid. The reverse tip method has its own challenges. As you will see forging back the tip is very
hard on the welds. So, this is also a good test to validate that
the welds are solid. In this case, I will also test the cut off
piece to verify the welds. The shiny parts were welded and the dark parts
were not. This is not a cause of concern though because
I already knew that there was a gap close to the tag weld that would not close up. It's time to forge the sword tip. I am forging the tip over very lightly. This creates a lot of stress on the welds
and I really don't want to open them back up. After forging in the tip at a somewhat steep
angle, I slowly adjust the profile of the blade so that it smoothly tapers to the tip. At this point in the process, I am still trying
to maintain a fairly even thickness of the material. Further tapering will happen as I forge in
the bevels. The bevels create a thin cutting edge while
maintaining a thick profile on the back of the sword. You may have noticed that the bars I assembled
were not all of the same lengths. In particular, the material for the high-carbon
cutting edge was shorter. The bars that are sticking out will provide
sufficient material for the tang. The blacksmith helper makes it easy to isolate
the steel that I plan on drawing out to become the tang of the sword. As the dies are not completely even it helps
to rotate the steel and work from both sides. Under the power hammer, I can quickly draw
out the isolated material and create a long tang. As I will be giving this sword away, I am
leaving the tang longer than I would normally make it but it is easy to cut it shorter. While the power hammer allows me to work much
faster and in some sense make it possible to be a single person sword maker, some adjustments
by hand on the anvil are often needed. Sword smithing is in many ways a very iterative
process. I am now slowly forging out the bevels to
establish the cutting edge of this single edge pattern-welded sword. As you see me hitting the sword edge with
the hammer, the sword develops a bend where its curves awary from the cutting edge. This is due to the steel in the cutting edge
expanding more than the steel at the back of the sword. It is an iterative process to straighten the
sword back out first and then going back to forging the bevels which in turn will cause
the sword blade to acquire a bend again. Single edged seaxes have the broadest part
of the blade at the base of the tang and gently taper towards the tip. When drawing out the bevels I am trying to
make the blade as broad as possible. I repeat this process several times until
I am happy with the overall shape of the blade. As you can see, the tang is also getting bent
which is due me excerting too much pressure with my left hand. With a pattern welded blade, I need to be
careful to not distort the lines and work the blade as evenly as possible. By hitting the blade on the edge with the
back against the anvil, I can straighten out the bend that was introduced by drawing out
the bevel. Another way to straighten the back would be
to forge the back of the blade but I want to keep that as thick as possible. When forging a sword, the actual time spent
forging is much shorter than any other part of the process. However, time spent here can significantly
reduce the time I have to be in front of the grinder. However, even then what you see here on video
is only a short window into the overall forging time. Once I am done with forging, I normalize the
blade by bringing it up to critical temperature and letting it cool in the air. This relieves some of the stresses that were
introduced by forging the blade. Watch again, so you can observe the recalescence. For the beveled blade, you should see a hotter
line moving through the blade as the change in crystal structure releases energy. After normalizing, it's time to take the blade
to the grinder. First, I even out the lines and then I will
start working on thinning down the cutting edge. I am also using the grinder to refine my tang
shape and even out the transition to the blade part of the sword. Once I am happy with the profile, a few more
adjustments are necessary to make the sword completely straight. Afterwards, I spent a lot of time to remove
scale and hammer marks and to further thin down the blade. A push stick allows me to apply more pressure
and to easily control where steel is being removed. As the sword has not been hardened yet, I
don't have to worry about controlling the temperature. However, it gets quite hot after prolonged
grinding and needs to be cooled in water occasionally. My final step before heat treating is to remove
vertical grinder marks which could become stress risers. I do this by grinding along the length of
the sword rather than perpendicular against it as you saw me doing before. I draw file as the final pass to get rid of
grinder marks and then I am ready to heat treat the sword. My heat treating oven makes it much easier
to get the sword to an even temperature although if need be this could be achieved by stroking
the blade through the forge as well. Before quenching the sword, I will normalize
it one more time and give you another chance to observe recalescence. Once I am done with normalizing, I place the
sword into the heat treating oven again and bring it back up to critical temperature. This is also a good time to get ready mentally
for quenching the sword. I will have to draw the sword quickly out
of the oven and then plunge straight into my high speed quenching oil. To avoid a sharp transition in hardness at
the tang, I move the sword up and done in the hope of creating a more gradual transition
in hardness. It looks like the sword came out successful
and did not break. A potential problem could be a crack in the
blade but bending and warping are quite common as well. So, let's take a look. In terms of cracking, it looks rock solid. Starting in the middle, unfortunately, the
blade developed quite a severe warp both on the back and on the cutting edge. Despair not. I will show you my secret trick of fixing
this the easy way. The trick requires a straight solid bar of
steel and a bunch of little c clamps. The idea is to straighten the whole blade
against the completely straight bar and run another round of tempering. This is something I usually do after having
already tempered the blade which I am not showing in the video here. If my memory serves right I probably did an
initial temper at 400F or so. My final temper which I am showing here will
be at 550F - much higher than I would temper knives at but this seems reasonable for a
sword that needs to withstand a bunch of abuse. I usually temper for about an hour and then
remove the blade. Because of the heavy steel bar this requires
some heavy gloves. In this case, the gloves were not thick enough
so I am rushing to my bucket of water. Once I remove the clamps, I should be looking
at a blade that is magically completely straight. Unfortunately, although such magic would be
great, don't expect perfection. It should look much better though. This does indeed look much much better. However, it's not perfect and I will try to
remove some of the remaining bends over the anvil. Once that is out of the way, it's time for
my favorite activity. Standing in front of the belt sander for many
many hours. Since these many hours come with exposure
to a lot of grinding dust, I am wearing my powered respirator which provides me with
clean air. My goal in grinding here is to establish a
flat surface from the black of the blade to the cutting edge while also slowly thinning
down the edge as well. As I am now working with a hardened blade,
I need to watch the overall temperature and cool the blade down occasionally. A bucket of water is strategically placed
next to the belt sander. My goal in grinding here is to establish a
flat surface from the black of the blade to the cutting edge while also slowly thinning
down the edge as well. As I am now working with a hardened blade,
I need to watch the overall temperature and cool the blade down occasionally. A bucket of water is strategically placed
next to the belt sander. As I am now working with a hardened blade,
I need to watch the overall temperature and cool the blade down occasionally. A bucket of water is strategically placed
next to the belt sander. Another aspect of sword making is the overall
weight of the blade. I am measuring it occasionally to see how
much more material I want to remove. My overall goal is to produce a sword that
weighs less than one kilogram including guard and pommel. To get a sense of how much metal dust accumulates,
let me show you my occasional clean up of the floor. After a couple more hours in front of the
belt sander, the blade needs to be cooled down again. This is also a good opportunity to check in
on its weight one more time. After frequent cooling and hours and hours
of grinding, the sword is getting closer to its
final weight. It's getting better but still needs a little
more work. Here is close up to see where more grinding
is needed. Some spots on the back still need to be removed. Another technique I like to employ is grinding
with a push stick which forces the blade against the grinder much more aggressively. It also makes for a more even grind. Using c-clamps to stand in for pommel and
guard, I can measure the point of balance. It's going to be a few inches in front of
the guard. Balancing can be tricky. The seax is almost done and just needs a little
bit more polish. For giving the steel a matte finish that etches
nicely I prefer to use scotchbrite belts. As the grinder marks are mostly across the
belt, grinding on the diagonal let's mee see if there are any deep scratches left that
need to be fixed. Fixing in this case means going to a different
belt as the scotchbrite belt does not really remove a lot of material. I just noticed an imperfection on the back
of the blade and decide to go to a fine grit trizac belt to fix the problem. With the new belt, fixing the small imperfection
on the back of the blade is quick and quite easy. The video does not quite show it but it was
there. Once I am happy with the fix, it's back to
the scotchbrite belt. Now, it is just a few more passes and then
I am done. Before etching I prefer to run the grinder
with the length of the blade. This is also another good check that no vertical
sander marks from the more aggresive belts are left
in the steel. Before etching, I want to make sure that the
blade is free of any oils from handling it with my hands. I am applying a general purpose natural cleaner
and then do another pass just with plain water. This is usually sufficient to ensure an even
etch across the whole blade. To suspend the blade in my ferric chloride
solution, I am taking a strip of leather and some vise grips to hold the sword firmly at
the tang. This allows me to submerge the blade and just
leave it hanging in the ferric chloride for about 20 minutes. In this case, I forgot slightly about time
and left it in there for 25 minutes which made for a pretty deep etch. You cannot really see anything on the video
because the blade turned so black. First, I let the ferric chloride drip off
the blade back into my container and then I am using my general pupose cleaner and wipe
everything off. For pattern-welded blades, I have developed
a very simple procedures for bringing out the pattern. After etching, I am applying mother's metal
polish to remove any remaining oxides. It first needs to be wiped on and then it
needs to be completely wiped off. After the metal polish, I am using fine steel
wool as the final polishing pass. While steel wool by itself works well also,
in addition to the steel wool I am using a mixture of oil and red iron oxide that I have
mixed into a slurry. Here is the whole blade after polishing. The close up of the blade shows you some of
the pretty activity in the steel. The darker spots in the blade come from differential
hardening where the shallow hardening steel did not quite react the same. To test the blade, I decided to put a temporary
handle on it. I will not keep the sword myself since it's
a present to friend who will create and put on the fittings. To sharpen the blade I grind in the a secondary
bevel on the slack belt. I was not quit sure how to test the blade
and was also a little worried that the friction fit of the handle might come off. The garden and some water bottles seemed like
a reasonable option. It's important to align the blade with your
cutting angle. Let's see how I do. Let's try one more time. This seemed to work slightly better. In any case, the bottles are destroyed now
and perhaps not be best cutting exercise object. Overall, the sword felt fine and the impact
on hitting seemed okay as well. Looks pretty good to me. Cut alright as well. One of the things you saw in this video was
me shwoing some visualization of pattern welding that I have worked on over the last couple
of years with a computer. And I liked the pictures quite a bit and so
i ended up putting them on a t-shirt that you see me wearing here. if you like those, you are welcome to follow
the links in the description and order yourself a t-shirt. otherwise be on a look out for a video that
explains pattern welding with a lot of graphical detail for those of you who may struggle to
see how these patterns come together just by watching my videos. so, i hope you enjoyed this video. i hope you liked the graphis and if you liked
them a lot go get yourself one of these t-shirts
and i will see you on one of these videos very soon. Thanks to everyone on Patreon. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please give it a thumbs up and
subscribe to my channel. See you next time.
