Making a Pirate Cutlass from a Machete

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the art of craftsmanship my name is dustin and in today's video we're going to be making a pirate cutlass out of an old surplus colombian military machete now recently devon got me a whole box of machetes for christmas and we just thought it'd be fun to kind of use some of them for different projects on the channel we've also been in conversation with alex from outdoors55 on youtube about doing some type of collaboration so he thought this is a great opportunity we went up to his place we dropped off the machete we chat a little about a little bit about like the idea behind what we wanted to do and really the idea was to be able to take something fairly basic like a cheap machete and make a cool short sword out of it we're both going to build our sword separately and then we would do an exchange at the end so why a pirate cutlass i live in maryland i live on the chesapeake bay and i'm a sailor and i thought what a fun way to kind of do all the things that i love and i love pirates so why not do a pirate cut list it's a great short sword design for you know using on board a ship on raiding parties and then also be able to kind of cut through close quarters when you're in the jungle working your way through so really works well as a machete and a short sword in both things would be a perfect idea so again like i said you know this started back before the pandemic it's been a while it's been about six and a half or seven months so it ended up being quite a long video with all the steps and quite a long process to get it done so it took a while we hope you enjoy it let's get started so i have these three rivets here they're held on with washers and they're peened over so i'm going to grind down past the riveted head once i get down to the actual washer then i should be able to just pop these right back out and take off the handle i'm just cutting laying out a big piece of paper and cutting it so that way we have something to work with and i might do a few different sketches we kind of have a general idea of what we want to do but we also going to try a few different designs and kind of figure out what it's going to look like as we're working on the design [Music] okay [Music] so [Music] okay [Music] do [Music] all right so here are four designs and i like all four of them but i'm kind of leaning toward the second and third design so i like a combination of these two i like kind of this guard and this handle here with the pommel on the end and the decorative stuff the spaces in between but i like the blade for the third one i think this is a little bit nicer with this kind of long even taper um and then a point at the end i like this kind of a little bit thinner blade uh devin behind the camera he's leaning more toward the kind of the fourth one which has a little bit more of that typical kind of pirates of the caribbean um you know jolly roger type look to it i like the dramatic look of it but you know for me i like a little bit more simple design and since i'm making it i get to make the decision so i think we're going to go with a combination between two and three but we'd love to hear what you guys think and you know let us know in the comments down below you know with your these four initial designs which one do you think would be the best one two three or four i have my machete laid out on the design number three because i like that blade so i'm going to start laying out some of those key points where the point of the blade was and where the guard is going to go just kind of laying out some things i'm going to draw on i don't really want to cut this drawing up because it looks nice and it's also mostly just for inspiration so to transfer this over i'm going to like again lay out some of those key points and try to match it up somewhat but a lot of the design work and a lot of the you know final shaping will be done while i'm grinding it all right that looks nice i like that it kind of has this long nice gentle taper out and then swoops up the end stays relatively narrow not as wide as some of the other ones i like it i think that'll work i've clamped this up in the vice and i'm going to just use my angle grinder to cut away the majority of the the excess i am going to leave a lot of extra on there because i want to grind down to my final shape but i'm going to try to keep this cool as i'm going because i don't want to ruin the temper that's already in it i don't know exactly what type of steel this is it was a cheap machete so it's got a little bit of a hardness and temper already in it but i don't want to ruin what's there because my goal is to not have to heat treat this you know this is mostly going to be a decorative wall hanger type piece it's not really going to be used you're not going to take it out on a boat and use it to cut something or someone up so because of that i'm again i'm going to try to just keep it cool as i go to keep the temper that's already in it i also don't really know what type of steel it is so i don't have to worry about trying to heat treat it and then going through a bunch of different processes so we'll keep it cool and then once we get it nicely cut out then we'll move over to the grinder and do the final shaping [Music] [Music] so [Music] just finished doing the majority of the grinding on this so now i'm going to switch over to my grinder and i'm going to use a 36 grit shredder belt to do that work now again this is a really aggressive belt so i have to be careful i'll keep the blade cool as i'm going and keep that temper in it [Music] so [Music] now we're talking that actually lines up perfectly if i line up with the handle here you can see that blade is just about exactly what we had in the drawing i'm really happy with but then also we move it over here to the handle if i line up this top line with where my guard is looks like we still have enough material to be able to do our full tang with the rat tail at the end and the pommel and have enough just enough on the end to be able to peen that over to lock it all together we do the handle and the pommel together [Music] here we go so as i was cutting through with the band saw i cut through down here and as soon as i hit this paint line i realized that's where i've hidden hard hardened steel so everything down here was a lot harder to cut through so i trimmed off this just to get this kind of started and we're going to go ahead and grind off the rest of this with the grinder i ground and shape the tang to pretty much what i want but it's a little shorter than i wanted to i want to kind of have a little longer because i want to make sure i have enough room for the guard to wrap around there'd be a pommel in the end and then have enough tang to be able to peen that over the pommel to get that hole really nice in the end so i'm going to heat that up with the torch i want to make sure that i keep the blade nice and cool so i'm going to wrap a wet rag around the blade and then i'll just heat it up with a torch and then draw it out once i get this nice and hot i'm just going to hang on to it here i want to make sure that it's not warming up if i feel like getting warm in my hand i'll just keep that blade nice the rag nice and wet we can draw that out to get about another inch inch and a half or so that definitely got us the inch that we were looking for so it should be good i'm just straighten things up make sure it's nice and straight before we start grinding down and trimming it up a little bit on the grinder [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] i have my bevel distances kind of marked off it's about three quarters of an inch i have my edge marked off so i have a guideline down the center so i'm going to start working on these bevels on both sides and i'm going to do a bevel grind to my mark my three quarter and then i'm going to convex it all the way back so it'll be a smooth transition from the edge back to the spine [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] down [Music] so i worked my way up through the 240 grip belt and the 240 because it's so fine sometimes you get this glue bind which will give a little bit of jump in it so kind of gave a little bit of a maybe a lined look to it but the the blade looks really good it's nice and even now all the way a nice convex grind up to the edge so i'm going to go ahead and use the scotch brite belt and that'll clean up all the lines make everything nice and smooth looking so i'm going to be working on the guard next for the sword and i'm going to use a symbol this is kind of a bronze alloy and i thought it would just look really cool to have that kind of golden bronze color so first thing i want to do though is actually cut out a template of that so i can test fit it around my hand and see what measurements i like for it two inches okay let's say let's go two and a quarter here and we'll go seven eighths for our slot that's there i'm cutting this bottom slot a little bit longer so that way i can make a fine adjustment once i have it on the handle but i'm just cutting both slots so we can put over the tang test it out this will come up a little bit like that oh yeah i like it paper guard yeah yeah i'm going to trace the template now onto the symbol and then i'll use a few different tools to cut this out and trim it down to its final shape [Music] [Music] i want to remove the the logo that's on this now before i do any my hammering because it's going to add more texture into it but i want to thank our buddy matt who had generously kind of donated these symbols he is the drummer that you hear on some of the music in the background as a buddy of ours he's also been the support of the channel for a long time so matt thank you so much really appreciate the symbols and the and the support so uh yeah i'm just gonna go ahead and sand these logos off and then we'll start adding in our texture [Music] so i was hitting a little bit too close to the edge i think and started to get a crack in the edge fortunately we have some extra material at the bottom so i'm gonna go ahead and trim this off and then we'll just shift our pattern down just a little bit [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] i'm really happy with the way this is turning out i love the surface look this texture build up i was kind of going for that you know the hand of the maker built into it so the hammer marks and all into it but also giving it some character and a little bit of age i think it's doing that really nicely [Music] [Music] i'm going to use my digital calipers now to measure and mark off the width of the tang as well as thickness i want to make sure that i drill and cut out the slot exactly the right size that way when i put everything together it fits really nice and tight i'm going to use the cut off disc on my dremel to open up the slots and i might use some of these other little tools to open up a little bit more before i switch over to hand filing to finish them off [Music] [Music] so uh one thing i need to make sure of is that my tang is not thicker at the bottom which i think it is right now so i might need to thin this up a little bit on the grinder first [Music] okay [Laughter] now i just have to work on the edges around those just a smidge on the slot so that way this will seat down all the way on to the guard a little bit closer a little bit better a little more my transition between my tang and my blade are just not exactly flat i think this one's up a little bit so i'm just gonna use the flat file come in here and bring these shoulders down just a little bit and that should work all right that is looking really nice really tight inside there remember i'm going to be bringing the end of the guard up on this end some and then out here it's going to come out and down so i'll have to really make sure i keep this nice and straight so it fits nice and tight and i'll make those few adjustments to that once i start shaping the guard all right right on perfect you can see i switched back over to peening from the inside now i want it to curve a little bit this way as well and also just wrapping it around the pipe it was working but it's so slow and putting that stress on it i just feel like i'd rather squeeze and move the metal than just try to bend the metal at this point we'll see i think this is going to work better [Music] this should be just about right oh yeah that looks really good and just with just a little bit of pressure we get a really nice fit up at the top and i just made a few adjustments i rounded the top here a little more and i rounded the bottom a little more which actually flattened out the front and brought this down some i think i'm really happy with that looks really nice i'm looking for some wood now to make the handle i think i'm going to use a piece of black walnut spaced out with some brass pieces which i think will look really nice i just have to find the right piece of black walnut that's ebay sword handle i have black walnut up here there is a piece of black walnut there we go a couple pieces of black walnut here this one has a really nice figure to where there was a tree limb or something in it so we'll go ahead and use this piece right here now my handle is going to be four and a quarter inches long i'm going to be adding three pieces of 16th inch brass into it so it'll go a little bit further but i'm going to go ahead and cut it now at four and a quarter so that way i have plenty of material on both sides to trim down to fit really nicely into the handle oh that's that is that this is tracking okay let's see adjust this back this one so using that bandsaw with the smaller blade kerf it only took off about a total of a sixteenth of an inch that's pretty nice i'll go ahead and take them over to the belt sander and clean them up and get them nice and flat now before i glue all this up i want to cut out the slots for the tang and the brass i'm not going to do it in the wood i'm going to drill those later but i don't want to have to be drilling through the brass as well as the wood and trying to cut out that slot inside so i'm going to cut these out beforehand make sure they're a little bit wider than i'll need so that way later i can drill them out and everything will work really well [Music] i have all the pieces ready to go so i'm going to clean everything first and then i'm going to mix up the epoxy and glue everything together go ahead and clean this up now i'm actually going to use a clamp on both sides make sure i have good pressure and i'm going to leave it on this scrap piece of paper if i need to i can grind it off later alright this is nice and straight now i'm going to go ahead and set this aside to dry i don't need to wait for this to dry to work on the next step because we have the next thing we can work on which is cutting out and starting to shape the pommel i had this bolt that i threw into the forge and hammered a while back just messing around but it's already in the basic shape that i want so i'm going to trim it off to where it's about 7 8 of an inch here and then i'll trim it off here right below this ridge should give me plenty of material to taper up and then round over the top to be able to make a pommel that looks like this design [Music] [Music] um [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] how cool is that i am super super pleased with this it's amazing what you can do with just a chunk of steel and a grinder it's just a funny little shape but it's super satisfying to grind this down and get it the way i want it so i'm excited now i need to anneal this because the next thing is drilling holes through it and i'm pretty sure it's really hard and it's going to kill some of my drill bits so we're going to get in the forge get it nice and hot and we'll let it cool down really slow i'm letting this get nice and bright right in the forge i'm going to turn down my heat really low just so it's a little bit of a flame on it and i'll let that on there for maybe five or 10 minutes and then i'll just turn it off completely shut the doors and let that whole piece cool down as slow as possible in the forge to anneal [Music] all right guys we're back in the shop it's been a couple days and the glue is dried up on the handle so this is ready to be shaped and also the pommel has been annealed and softened so i'm ready to drill out the slot for that so i'm going to go ahead and set this up in my drill press spice and drill out our holes and see if i can get that slot to go through here to fit on the end of the tank perfect all right that's looking really nice nice and close there and here on the back that looks like it's pretty centered as well maybe just a smidge off to one side but i'll go ahead and clean out that middle area between the two with a dremel and i'm actually going to taper either side as well here so it sits really nice and tight down onto the tang [Music] [Applause] i transferring my lines from the bottom of the tang and the top of the tang and then tapering on this so this shows you where exactly my tang will be through the handle so i know how to drill and i'm going to clamp this in my drill press vice at an angle so i can drill straight down through and i'll drill a whole bunch of holes and hopefully we'll get that nice clean channel all the way through that piece of wood [Music] all right well i'm almost through it's drilling along and as you can see the glue bond came apart now i'm not actually up to that upset about it because i want to actually go back and add in some holes on either side of the metal i'm not the handle is going to be about the full width of this i'm going to drill two holes on either side i'm going to drill them all the way down through so that way i'll create a stronger bond with glue going all the way through the metal but i'm going to take advantage of the situation now and actually have these separate and i'll keep drilling these out so we can test fit it onto the tank as you guys can see i'm using some toothpicks to just add a little bit more strength through those uh through those dowels that are going to be there through those epoxy dowels this goes to show you guys sometimes we all need a teaching moment i should have known from the beginning that i really need something stronger than just the glue bonding this metal together so you know necessity is the mother of invention it came apart so this gave me the opportunity to put in a stronger glue up should work much better it's the next day guys and i've let this cure overnight so it fits really nicely now i did go in and drill out some of the glue that was inside and it fits well on the tang so our next step is actually going back to the pommel drilling this out a little bit more and fitting it onto the tang so we need to shape the tang just a little bit and then we'll clean this up and get it all ready to go on fit up nicely all the way up against the guard so so that fits there a little step which should fit inside that slot well and i'll check the pommel all right that looks really nice i'll have to shape the handle next do all sorts of little finicky kind of touch-ups to get everything to fit really well then we'll be able to attach everything together [Music] [Music] [Music] now that is sweet that's so nice it looks like we have yeah our balance point is like just forward of the guard which is really nice a little bit heavy on the sword side for a chopping sword you know that's what you want that's really cool man i'm super excited that's going to be awesome i'll grind this all down so it all matches up really nicely so the the bottom of the guard lines up perfectly with the sides of the handles and the pommel should be really nice my next part is i'm going to cut off most of this tang so i just have about maybe an eighth of an inch or 316 sticking out that i can peen over and then i'm going to make a few notches in the tang so that way when i do epoxy everything together it'll give the epoxy some more surface area and some more notches to really glue up and bond to inside that handle so it's nice and tight on the whole sword i'm mixing up my two-part epoxy now so i can glue the guard and the handle and the pommel all together onto the tang now this is a two ton epoxy and it has a 30 minute work time so give me plenty of time to peeing the end of the tang over to lock everything together really [Music] nicely [Music] [Music] all right guys the globe went really well everything's nice and solid so now we're going to go ahead and start all the finishing work [Laughter] [Music] [Music] so [Music] all right i sanded up to 400 grit through the handle about 220 on the guard and then i went to 600 on the pommel now i need to just finish up the area around the front of the sword so go ahead and take the tape off and check it [Music] out [Music] do [Music] made it to our final part of this whole project which is oiling the handle always a really nice way to end it's the beauty of the wood come out let's go ahead and use some boiled linsoil and oil this up [Music] go [Music] [Music] so all right guys well it's finished i'm super happy with the way this turned out i love it i've taken that standard machete and turned it into something that still works just like a machete but now it's way cooler to look at and wiggle or to hold what i was really going for was to make sure this looked really clean a really nice shape as well as a really clean fit up throughout the guard the handle and the pommel which i think i got and i'm really pleased with if you want to see me use this you want to see me chop up some stuff and put it to the test we're going to be doing that we're going to be making a video with outdoors 55 when he's finished his sword build so go over to his channel check him out subscribe if you haven't already and encourage him to finish up his sword get back on the horse start making some more videos and give us some content that we love finish this collaboration that way we can get together and we can film using and exchanging it we're super excited i'm really happy to be able to make this and give this to alex and i'm really excited to see what he's done for our channel as well so thank you guys all so much for watching if you haven't already please subscribe we're really trying to get to that hundred thousand mark before the end of the year and we can get that get there with your guys help also like this video if you uh want to follow along behind the scenes definitely you can follow us on instagram at the other craftsmanship and if you're looking for a way to support the channel even more to be able to help us put out more content and really get you know kind of get back into this swing of things you can go over to patreon and check us out there thank you guys so much for watching it's been a fun one it's been a long time coming we'll see you in the next video [Music] so you

Channel: The Art of Craftsmanship

Views: 31,203

Rating: 4.9215684 out of 5

Keywords: making a short sword, diy short sword, pirate, pirate cutlass, cutlass, pirate sword, making a sword, swordsmith, knifemaking, how to make a sword, machete sword, machete cutlass, short word challenge, collaboration, youtube creator collaboration, collab, wood shop, metal shop, forging, blacksmith, bladesmith, handle making, sword guard

Id: EJRb2VGnA-0

Length: 53min 50sec (3230 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 13 2020