Forging a [Viking] Seax from Blister Steel - Feat Valkyrik Soundtrack

[Music] heartbeat don't sleep until you're dead when the moon and welcome back to science hour here on that works today we're going to be returning to one of our absolute favorite experiments that we started over a year ago when we made our viking spear and that is turning iron pure iron bars into high carbon blade worthy steel now we're going to do a few things different on today's episode that we did back on the spear to try to increase the contrast in our twisted bars but today we're not making a spear today we're gonna make a viking sex [Music] [Applause] the idea behind this experiment came from attending a presentation by rick fur in his presentation he describes the possible way carbon was introduced into scandinavian blades by merely forging them in charcoal [Music] that is he talks about that the blades were most likely or at least most of them made of iron but the presence of carbon under high temperatures introduces some modicum of steely bloom into what starts out as iron blue and that is not surprising because if you think of an iron bar as a dry sponge as soon as you place it next to a source of moisture the sponge will absorb it this leads me to a very important misconception in blacksmithing generally the misconception is if your bar is sparkling means it's losing carbon and you have burned it that is not always the case to the point that it's misleading you see what happens when you're using hard fuels like coal or charcoal is that on the high temperatures burning the carbon is released in a form of gas and then it interacts with the oxygen in the air but it is gas first without any additives so hot iron absorbs that gas and carburizes the top layer to the point where it might form cast iron and as you pull out that bar the surface level of cast iron is exposed to air and starts sparkling that is you're not burning your bar you're doing the exact opposite you're turning into more steel rather than iron this effect is not present in the modern gas forge the most common fuel for which is propane c3h8 so when you burn propane for every molecule of propane burn you're required to use up five molecules of oxygen o2 and it produces three molecules of co2 and four molecules of water chemically speaking there's simply not enough carbon gas under high temperatures to be absorbed into your material whether it is steel or iron and that is also why in a gas forge things scale up at a much higher rate than in charcoal or coal [Music] all right while our iron is in the forge cooking and carburizing to become steel i'm gonna go ahead and tell you about today's sponsor and that's rise of kingdoms and our alliance with rise of the kingdom couldn't have come at any better time right now they're in the very final round of their 12 civilization competition where the romans are facing up against the vikings to fit with our theme today i'm obviously siding with the vikings as we're making one of the most classic viking weapons today the sax knife rise of kingdoms is a real-time strategy game where you get to choose one of 12 civilizations to play from whether it be rome germany britain france spain china japan korea arabia the ottoman the byzantium or our topic of choice today the vikings you can create the history of your own civilization and build an invincible empire you can also experience the battle between different civilizations from different ages if you're like me you're probably tired of the same old boring battle reports from boring cell phone games but rise of kingdom the battle scenes are realistic and hearty and you can experience distinctive soldiers and generals from all 12 different civilizations thanks to different talents and characteristics they can counter each other which gives a stronger strategic experience join the battle and turn the tide of the battle with your superb commanders 12 civilizations and you get to decide the strongest so if you want to experience battle from different civilizations from different time periods that never actually fault each other and see how they stack up against each other try out rise of kingdoms today click the link in our description below help support us and play an awesome game at the same time alright now let's get back to the forging of our viking sax [Music] all right everything looks great looks like we made steel from iron but let's go ahead and test our results spark testing isn't a perfect test however it really gives you a great idea of how much carbon content you have in steel or iron all right let's take a look at this in slow motion here you can see the iron sparks they have very orange color to them and they don't have much action at all they just kind of come off and fall here you can see the steel that we have created with very flamboyant sparks that come off almost in a christmas tree like fashion which tells us that we've achieved our mark of hitting about one percent carbon content all right guys i want to take a quick second and explain the difference between the experiment we're doing this time and the one we did when we made the viking spear so when we carverized the iron for the viking spear we started with bars that were a little more than quarter inch thick and about an inch wide and we stuck them right in the tube packed it with carbon which was our charcoal and then heated it up and carburized it fully knowing that we wouldn't get full penetration so what we got was basically all of this outside of our bar was carverized and the inside was still left iron so then we layered those bars on top of each other to get our contrast so we have our black and then our white would have been the inside of the bars and we just layered those bars up what we did this time is we actually forged down these bars reduced the size gained a little width and then we're carburizing them where our goal this time is to get full penetration on the carburization on these bars and then we're going to stack them with the same bars that were not carburized to create our white so these bars that we're carburizing will be our dark and then we'll do some just straight iron bars that we also thinned down stacked every other to create the contrast in our pattern [Music] hey hey [Applause] till morning right tonight right on may the ground beneath the scramble for faith and valor we fight tonight right hey now we want to stick with the theme of homemade steel throughout this entire blade but we don't want any iron in that edge at all so for our edge bar we're going to be using a piece of homemade bloom steel that ilia uses in all of his traditional katanas he knows the material it has really good carbon content so we're going to go ahead and draw it out into a bar add it to our twisted bars and that will create the edge portion of our knife heartbeats don't sleep until you're dead when the moon is rising it calls me from my [Music] i got a bed desire to break them free [Music] i am a nice [Music] moving on i'm leaving is louder and louder and louder now run turn turn mountain turn toss your worry watch it burn ease your way into the ground and give into the mighty sound let the darkness wash away and leave it for another day feel the rhythm fill the night or young and normal shake your head and stop the field we're moving to a grander beat turn your mind off stop and feel the thing harmonies stomp your feet and terrifying we are but children of the beast in the woods tonight before the night time turns to day i let the melody take away i'm leaving reservations crushing the ice and crumbling stone and the melody of the night keeps calling me louder and louder and louder now [Music] run [Music] fly away with me and no one can stop us [Applause] [Music] soft outside make it worth my while share a laugh [Music] all right so we've gotten heat treated i've now ground off the scale and we're going to do a lot more tricky grinding on this blade but before we get to that let's go ahead and do a test etch see what our pattern is looking like why not we deserve it right so after heat treating the darker in your bleed the higher carbon should show up a lot more than the iron let's find out it's gonna be sweet so unlike a blade that has 15 and 20 our bright is pure iron so it's not going to have that chrome look to it but it certainly has the [Music] but you're contrast of weight of rage lies poison pride this is [Music] [Music] inside of me [Music] yet another mistake [Music] gladly [Music] now that the overall geometry of our blade is established i'm going to grind in by hand a series of fullers a medium-sized fuller and a narrow folder that runs along the spine now more often not we don't see saks knives of this size with complicated folders or fullers at all every once in a while you see one little fuller on a small blade but more often than not you only see the folders on the long version of the sax or the long sacks as you would call it or the lang sacks however i'm going to be adding these fullers to our sax blade because i think it adds a level of complexity and difficulty to the blade that said i like to show this method because i think you the viewers need to see what is possible to be done by hand free hand on a sander [Music] [Music] [Music] look at my face [Applause] [Music] believe it or not the furniture on most of these sax knives are rather simple either that or they're made out of silver or gold so we're going to make our handle fittings out of some silver sheet [Music] to create a look that is stylistically consistent with scandinavian and viking garnisher on swords and jewelry so on and so forth i'm using not work motifs as well as a raven motif on the butt cap of the knife the raven motif is very prominent in norse folk art and can be found on gravestones can be found on wood carvings that probably came from ships or some sort of housing and if you look at viking sword pommels once you see you cannot unsee it this shape is actually two raven heads looking that way that over time was so stylized they've been interpreted as something else [Music] while illya continues the silver work for our handle fittings i'm going to go ahead and move on to hand polishing our blade to prep it for the final etch in doing so i'm going to be using the belt grinder with high grits and then i'm going to move on to hand sanding as i really feel when you're making traditional blades the hand sanding and the hand polish is one of the most important parts it turns it into a machined looking object to a very handmade looking object as it would have been [Music] sticking with our traditional material theme for this build we're going to be using a piece of ball goat for the handle ball goat is exactly what the name sounds like it's a piece of oak that was found in a bog that fell thousands of years ago this specific piece is noted to be a thousand years old which means this tree was alive during the viking era so sounds like the perfect piece of wood used for our handle [Music] [Music] [Music] all right now that our blade is in full polish it's time to address something that's very very important and that is whether or not the vikings actually etch their blades to show pattern now we have very little if any evidence at all that the vikings actually ever etch their blades to show the pattern that lies beneath the steel in fact we don't even know if they were fully aware of the pattern in the blade or if they twisted it to create pattern now in some later forms of viking swords there's interrupted twists that twist one way than the other and they match up very very well so it's safe to presume that they might have been very aware of the fact that the pattern did exist at some point but i have a theory that early on they actually purchased these or traded for these steel bars and they came pre-twisted now anybody who has any experience in working with homemade steel such as bloom steel knows that a great way to test your steel is to draw it out into a bar and twist it and if there's no shearing or cracking you have made very quality steel or iron so it's safe to presume that the tradesmen from the cultures that were making these steels would have marketed their steel pre-twisted the vikings acquired them and started making their blades that way and later on perhaps when they were making their own steel they adopted that twist went more elaborate with it and created beautiful patterns some people just say they took that construction method from the romans borrowed it started making their own swords just like the roman long migration swords of the period that that's where all the twisting comes from either way we don't really know if they etched it is actually more likely that they took their blades high polished them using stones just like the japanese culture does with their katanas and in that true polish in that very high polish you have a very clear look and glimpse into the blade and you can see the different types of material in this case iron and carburized iron will show the pattern just like it does right here now all of that said i have to say i think it's very likely that at least at some point the vikings did discover that their blades had beautiful pattern and then did do things to etch their blades to bring out that pattern one simple piece of evidence that i have that isn't historical evidence but is evidence in my own life you know i've made tons of damascus well let me tell you a quick story one time i made layer longsword after it was only at about 400 grit polish i left it in a vat of water overnight came back in the next morning and when i drew that sword from the water the pattern was striking you could see it as if i had put some chemical blue on it the oxidation from it being in the water oxidized the two materials very differently and i could see that pattern so if i just left a sword blade in water albeit it may have been slightly dirty water but water nonetheless and the water alone brought out its pattern it's safe to say at some point the vikings very likely could have done the same thing and discovered that it looks beautiful and done something to bring out the pattern so i think it's very important to show you guys this blade in both its polished form and then do some etching procedures to bring out the pattern even more so we can take a closer look at our experiment our historical experiment and get a true idea of what results we've achieved well this was a great project and i think it's safe to say that this experiment was extremely successful i think it's very important do experiments like this as a craftsman so we can further our knowledge of how exactly ancient blades like these were made [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] l.a [Music] i may store my human quake yet mary shall by fire break i have not left for you to burn and yet for more of me you yours shall mercy fall and your best shall chaos reign in every rest shall fire burn and march up for shall yet you [Music] well in conclusion we think our experiment was a success we're not saying that that is how pattern welded blades or anything was accomplished in the olden days but it certainly adds to the conversation and is a variation on the principle now furthermore if you follow the chemistry of your forage precisely you can use it to your advantage to create steel out of iron without needing to melt anything and if you want to purchase this knife you will be available on the website as soon as this video ends want to give a major shout out to valkyric for providing the soundtrack for today's video be sure to see the links in the description for more of their awesome music if you liked today's experiment and want to see more videos like this be sure to give this video a like and tell us in the comments below what build you'd like to see this team build next and don't forget you should be subscribed to this channel so you don't miss out on any future videos all you gotta do is click the logo right above the red arrow thank you

Channel: That Works

Views: 425,081

Keywords: viking seax, forging, viking music, sheer steel, bloom steel, blacksmithing, valkyrik, traditional forging, how to make, diy, hand made, vikings

Id: JCVOMCCH0ao

Length: 31min 40sec (1900 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021