I competed against 70 knife makers in a build-off…

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the workshop it is fantastic to have you here because all around the world right now there are over 70 knife makers gearing up for a challenge like no other in just a few moments a worldwide 48 48-hour dagger build-off is commencing and it's organized by my good friend and fantastically crazy incredibly inspiring south african beast of a man that is niels vandenberg the rules are simple one author one dagger 48 hours this is gonna be quite the challenge because i'm a notoriously slow worker this video is sponsored by nordvpn get your internet experience protected by going to nordvpn.com forward slash forge so we're going to start on the design and hopefully by the time i've got something acceptable the time will be upon us and the 48 hours will begin [Music] i'm kind of feeling something a little bit geometrical you know something a little modern looking let's infuse old shapes and and old proportions with some funky angles [Music] [Applause] all right our 48 hours starts now it's 12 in the afternoon here's the design we're going to light the forge while the forge is heating up we're then going to start working on the handle so i don't quite know what i want to use for handle material we've got this gidgee this which is like a g10 type of composite so see what happens when we grind this it actually looks quite nice with some oil on it juma it is so [Music] we are almost one hour in we've done some lathe work we've done some forging we're gonna twist up this damascus and if it wasn't for the fact that i will need to sleep and i will need to poop i would have 47 hours remaining [Music] [Applause] [Music] so there we go we've forged out some of the scrap damascus we had laying down it was within the rules you could do that we twisted it we forged ourselves a blade here is uh what our joomla is looking like and part of this challenge part of the competition is that we update the facebook group with the progress we make so there's a photo ta-da i've already done a few normalizing cycles on it but i really want to see if i can get the tang as soft as possible so do another one of those and now this is going to go to the milling machine if you have a look at my beautiful drawer if you have a look at my acceptable drawing here you'll see that we have some holes now something i want to do is i want to have these holes go the whole way through and i want to see the tang in the inside and i think part of the theme of this project is it's going to be very holy i think it's kind of cool ultimately life is about doing little bits and bobs that you think is a little cooler than the other bits and bobs you could have done so this needs a number of different size holes and before we turn down the tapers that we need i'm going to put them in so that it's all parallel and easy to do with some v-blocks [Music] i got the hole for the tang board down the center of the handle can i just say having a battery-powered fan this is one of the best tools i have bought this entire year anyway so with that board we've now got to work out what are the diameters that we're turning i'm going to turn this into a round bar that's a little bit proud and then we're going to grind it octagonal if i want to grind this into an octagon i need to work out what circle do we have to make for an inscribed octagon to fit within i definitely do not have time for this so i've now calculated the angles that we need to use to cut these tapers and we just leave it all a little bit proud that should account for octagonalizing it down the road give it a twist 6.9 oh something i have not considered yet in the design of this project is that putting holes in a round tapered uh thing made of dark wood or synthetic materials might make it look like a recorder it's maybe it's a musical themed dagger lu handle has been turned we do need to make our octagonalizations that'll be simple enough on the belt grinder [Music] it's the morning the next day 20 some odd hours of our 48 hours have passed i'm getting a little bit concerned especially because of what i've been seeing on social media and the other participants of this challenge so look at this 700 posts already 48 hour dagger build some people have blades fully ground guards carved with incredible detail utterly wild blade geometry beautiful fit ups to the handle and of course the real horror is the amount of progress that the main man himself niels has made because he's been running a milling machine while running a wood lathe he's got his handle roughed in and it's looking beautiful and he's already turned a bronze pommel and the beginning of his bronze guard so we've bloody well gotta make some headway run into the grinding room we're gonna start attacking the blade [Music] so [Music] all right so now what i'm doing is i'm laying out our blade for the holes [Music] [Music] okay we are almost a full 24 hours into this and the holes have been done my next step is rounding out the tang threading it then going straight into the heat treat after a little bit of bevel roughing in jamie it does not feel like we're halfway there in terms of progress [Music] let's get this octagonal [Music] into the quench hopefully it doesn't crack those holes might make it crack look at that that is pretty success almost 26 hours has gone the blade is in the tempering oven we've began roughing in our handle octagons we will now head to the lathe to begin roughing in our pommel [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] so this part has two tapers we've cut our first taper and that's all good and of course we're doing these tapers by tilting this compound and the reason we know the angles we're hitting is it has angles on it that's all well and good we spin this in and out and it cuts the taper but when we have this all tilted we end up with a little bit of an access problem because if i want to cut the taper now no matter what i'm going to be running our tool holder into our chuck so what i think i've got to do is instead of using a right hand cutter use a left hand cutter and actually plop it into this side of the tool holding setup [Applause] [Music] our blade should be done baking isn't that just glorious look at the color of it too beautiful little purple timber colors on it the pattern that we are going to see on this bad mamajammer will be how they say something else that is outrageous just so that we don't pick up any uh unnecessary warps while it cools out of its tempering temperature we'll shove it in the vise so next up i'm going to try and octagonalize this bit it's going to be really difficult because we have that little step and that lip so i don't know how we're going to do it other than very gingerly very carefully at the grinder and presumably at the files [Music] let's make some progress on this and grind in the tip [Music] all right hot off the grinder at an a65 trisack finish we've ground our bevels so we're about 30 hours into this whole thing it's 6 p.m we obviously haven't been working for 30 straight hours it just took a few minutes to sit down rest and recuperate i've also been able to have a look on instagram and see the progress others are making niels is just cruising on a head and now i haven't even started on our final component and that's the guard everything else is roughed in you know meaning that if we had to have a sudden quick dash to the finish line everything else would be able to sort it out pretty quick but without a card that's not going to happen so i'm going to take this bit of bronze we're going to put it in the middle we're going to be making this guard from the side it's just going to be rectangular but on the other elevation it will have tapers like this and we'll continue our whole motif in both axes of the guard it'll have a facet hopefully following on from the facets of the octagon at the end of the handle so to the middle i go again [Music] quick stop for dinner time thank you mrs steele i think we gotta go take the dogs to the field come on puppet [Music] 100 miles an hour [Music] back to work so instead of continuing to crack on with the guard i'm gonna take a little break on that and the first thing we're gonna do now we're back from our adventure is a little hand sanding on the blade and since it's past 9 p.m it's evening casuals [Music] [Music] all right it's almost 1am i've just rigged up a little tube of ferric chloride and the plan is that we get this thing in the acid it's going to be there about 20 minutes or so i'm going to have this thing etched before the end of the night and then because the challenge is 12 p.m monday to 12 p.m wednesday a total of 48 hours by the time i wake up i should have a few more hours to wrap the whole thing up i'm very worried about how i'm going to get the guard done in time because guard fit-ups are not my forte that'll be a problem for tomorrow let's drop it in the acid i cannot believe how nice niels dagger is looking that handle the pommel the bloody god it looks beautiful and there's tons more of you guys also building along with us late into the night it's been about 20 or 30 minutes i'm gonna pull this out and i go get a little bit of sleep and see you in a few hours where we hopefully finish it good morning we're 45 hours and 20 minutes in that means two and a half hours left to go i've had breakfast i've fed the dogs i slept like crap but it's back to work for you [Music] i'm just trying to set up the mill to start milling this guard and i have now spent five minutes trying to look for the guard because i have lost the guard and have zero idea where it is it's a little bit of shiny bronze how can how can something so shiny just disappear i have an hour and a half left or so where did i leave the guard it's just silly it's in the drawer that i've checked about four or five times this needs a tang hole it needs holes it needs more holes and i need about four days more time [Applause] let's see what time's looking like 56 minutes left so i've got less than an hour to fit up the guard finish the handle and fit up the pommel with it all lining up square [Music] okay a matter of urgency is i need to get this handle fitting on that tang and there's still a good bit to go i got 20 minutes left [Music] come on why won't it go in ah yes come on it's freaking stuck now there we go no it still needs to go further oh it's gonna bloody happen the handle is on nine and a half minutes left okey-doke cut this off come on come on come on where'd the pommel go if i get lucky it's gonna line up perfectly that's a shock that's what i wanted i want these holes lining up with these holes sometimes you just get lucky get this tape off and we're gonna sharpen the blade as fast as we can seven minutes left [Music] not good enough it's not good enough i need a sharper belt we've got four minutes onto buffing [Music] final coat of oil and that is my 48 hour dagger [Music] overall i'm thrilled with this and so appreciative of neil's putting on this event you gotta check out the gorgeous blade that he made utterly unreal he made that in just 48 hours and there are tons of finished pieces rolling in from all over the world that was a good time nordvpn has sponsored this video now while you're browsing the internet you're vulnerable to data compromise from hackers ready to steal your identity it's terrifying but never fear because nordvpn is here with the layer of protection and encryption that you need to keep you safe even under sustained attack you can browse the web with no fear knowing your data is safe it works like this you download an app on ios android mac and pc and then all of your internet data is routed through it encrypting it sending it through to one of 5400 servers in over 59 countries encrypted and safe and secure meaning that your internet service provider or your country can't spy on what it is that you're browsing hackers will find encrypted mumbo jumbo they 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Channel: Alec Steele

Views: 1,183,966

Keywords: alec, alec steele, alex steele steel, anvil, art, axe, blacksmith, blacksmithing, blade, bladesmithing, craft, damascus, diy, engineering, fabrication, forge, forged in fire, handmade, knife, knifemaking, lathe, make, mig, mill, sword, tig, weld, woodworking

Id: DkIbniC_Em8

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021