Ragnar's Axe - Vikings - MAN AT ARMS: REFORGED

I'm Matt I'm Kerri we are the stag my brother is a Baltimore knife and sword we're going to be building some of your favorite weapons in some weapons that you've never seen before this is man-at-arms reforged this week we're gonna be forging Ragnar's x from the hit show Vikings now on that show we've seen a lot of different warriors reeling for very similar acts but Ragnar he's the main character that's the one we see using it the most he throws it uses in battle he almost always has it on him and that's pretty appropriate Vikings carried axes very similar to this not only his weapons they also use them as tools on a daily basis we wanted to make this for a long time I'm a big fan of the show so is my girlfriend we've seen every episode so I've asked her to make a shield made in costume but she's working on right now you'll see her later on when we do the demos but Ilya is gonna get things started by forging the axe it's got a lot of really cool steps to this one let's see what he's got for us the first step in forging is to take that round stock and square it up there are many historical ways that the Vikings and other cultures make axes like this the one that Ilya is chosen is kind of the most modern it's how really good forging hammers are made and that's the punch and drift method so once these materials nice and square you can move on to using the punch make that hole and then proceed on with the axe forging from there the first thing the Smith has to do is mark on his material where that hole is gonna be punched he's using the corner of his tool then he'll go back get more heat and begin the punching you'll notice the punch is using is quite tapered it's also not welded solidly to the handle it's let loose encaptured on the top so that it takes a lot of the shock out of it as he punches so you're gonna punch about quarter the way through you'll see him then turn the material on its side give it a good strike that allows that tool to loosen up you can remove it get more heat and repeat the process until he's all the way through [Music] [Music] fragonard's axe we've chosen a nice sturdy piece of white oak right here carries gone ahead and pronounced it here where I've thrown out my lines of where we're gonna cut along this piece of wood to make Ragnar's axe [Music] [Music] so I have the shape Ragnar's axe cutout it's using a little bit thinner blade than normal you can see that it put a little bit of kerf in the wood cut nothing to worry about though we're just gonna go ahead and we're gonna remove all this extra material on the sander and get it into shape once the preform for the axe is done and the hole is punched it's time to insert the bit now one might notice that the preform has quite a bit of excess material because before I was using it to grab it and navigate after I cut this off I'll turn the axe on this way and put a slice right here this cut and we'll open the body of the axe out and allow to receive this bit this is a piece of high carbon steel in our case it's a piece of Damascus I had laying around it is tapered it's fantastic after the bit is in I'm going to cover it with flux and insert it back into the Forge that will bring it up to temperature so that the materials can fuse together and form a higher carbon edge [Music] after inserting the bit and sprinkling borax over the surface to ensure a good weld Ilias returned to the forge to bring the whole thing up to forge welding temperature and moves to the ample to set the weld by hand he then goes to the power hammer to true everything up you'll see Illya from time to time while working on his ex using a top tool underneath the power hammer this tool is slightly domed just like the face of a hand hammer so each strike mimics that of a hand here at this point Illya is now using spring swage underneath the power hammer this really allows him to pinpoint that material and draw specific areas in this case the beard of the axe [Music] now if the axe is pretty much to shape it's time to go back to the hole that Ilya punched earlier and drifted to the proper shape I assist Ilya by holding the axe over the hardy hole as he drives the drift through we're gonna do this multiple times on each side making sure the drift goes through the same amount on each side creating a perfect hourglass shape on the inside of the hole taking a closer look at this axe hilly has now realized he's forged a little large no big deal she's gonna mark off the excess that we will move during the grinding all right Ilya has done a great job of forging the base of our axe now we were shooting for Ragnar's axe this is almost the size of rolos but no big deal I'm going to be able to trim a lot off the back here and then some off the front and around the entire perimeter and get our desired shape [Music] now that I've done as much work as I can on the 12 inch wheel I'm going to set up and move to a 2 inch wheel this will allow me to define the land jets and just trim up the excess around the inside of the beer [Music] so we have Ragnar's ax handle pretty much to shape and there's still some deep grooves left in the wood from the aggressive sandpaper I'm going to take this scraper I'm gonna go along to handle the axe very carefully just remove just the outside layer of wood and as you can see it's removing very fine girls of wood with a little effort it's gonna remove all the splinters and leave a nice smooth finish all right we now have our acts profile to shape you can see I removed a lot of material from this but we now are right where we need to be the next step is to do that hologram that I talked about has a very distinct edge very wide all the way down so I'm gonna move to the wheel here do an edge up along the wheel like this so I can see my edge thickness to make sure I don't go past my centerline you want a treat [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we're just gonna be using the flame to harden the wood on this handle it's both going to give it a look that we like and it's gonna harden the surface then it'll take linseed oil and soak the entire piece it's the same thing we do with our hammer handles to make them very strong [Music] with the perimeter of the axe now established in the edge ground then next step is to grind the face and the show this axe has a very aged look to the surface so normally we may just leave it as forged but since we use the power hammer there's some pretty nasty grooves in it so I'm gonna go ahead and clean the entire surface all the way through scotch-brite and then we'll go ahead and add that forged look again before a tree [Music] [Music] since Matt had made the decision to sand the entire surface of this piece and polish it out and we know that we want a rough hand-forged look we're gonna go back to the Forge bring it up to temperature and slight click through the heat several times one of the reasons for doing that is to create the scaled surface that we want Ilya takes his time and heat soaks the ax-head he'll put it in both directions bring the temperature up fairly even and then he's going to be quenching directly into whoa and give us a better cutting axe [Music] after question two accent oil a sit on the anvil and wait for the temperature to drop to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit at that point I take a wire brush and scrape off the scale so I can see the metal that is important the shiny metal indicates the temperature of the metal during tempering as in reaction with oxygen it forms a magnetic layer when the metal gets blue or yellow or green so on and so forth I cannot expose the edge of the ax directly to the flame because it will be already red by the time this is even beginning the tempering so I stick the ax socket first in the Forge avoiding exposure of the edge to the flame what I'm looking for is a bronze ash color along the edge so it's going to be a bronze ish right here blueish right here and here is going to be in the gray area the sound difference should be obvious when you skate a file so this is the socket it should be relatively soft and now the edge it feels glass iam that file skates over so that is the perfect temperature now in field conditions all without computerized kilns this is probably how Viking axes bore temper after key treating and then tempering the axe it's time to start putting the final finish on this plate we're gonna move to a special wheel that we had made for us it has a bunch of different scotch brite pads locked together on a spindle this will allow us to remove the scale but leaving the nice Ford Service [Music] [Music] all right at this point the surfaces on our axe are exactly where we wanted to be the next step is to get the color that we need so I'm gonna dip the entire axe into a vat of ferric chloride that's gonna turn the body of the axe kind of a dull gray give it a aged look but it's also going to show some of the pattern rolled an edge that Illya forged in earlier so I'm just gonna leave it in there for about 45 minutes but let's go ahead and get a quick sneak peek you can see the pattern welded steel on the edge there so that's our nice high carbon cutting edge and the rest will turn a nice dull gray put it in there and that's it so now that we've completed the haft for Ragnar's axe we're gonna attach the head to it that's what we're gonna do to get a nice fit so I'm just gonna press it on by hand first it looks good from here let's go down there - I'm gonna take a soft hammer so it's not tomorrow the top of the axe head and slowly drive it down onto it when I try to get these points you see these ears as flush as possible to the wooden portion and coming out of the top all right so you got a pretty good fit now the last step is to take our wedge to drive it in the reason we're driving a wedge in is it's gonna help expand the wood and prevent the axe head from coming loose now that we have our wood wedge in we're gonna take a steel one and place it in the opposite direction and across formation once we have the wedges in place our last step is to wrap the half with leather and it's ready alright guys so as I told you guys earlier we've invited Natasha to come out to be our shield maiden in the demo but what I haven't told her or you guys that I plan to ask her to marry me during that demo it's a pretty special moment I'm honored to share it with you guys now as we all know we've seen Ragnar in the Vikings pillage and plunder bunch of different monasteries in the show they steal the gold they steal the treasure they take it back they often melt it down reuse the gemstones so what Lauren and I have done is we found a beautiful white gold setting for the ring and then an even more beautiful diamonds one of the most beautiful diamonds I've ever seen Laurens gonna go ahead and set that in the ring and then when it comes to demo day I hope she says yes so I have the diamond here it's a 1 carat stone it's a beautiful vs 2 G color which is very high and bright and white and we're gonna set it in the 18 karat white gold vintage setting it has two square side stones and then eight small side stones below that it's all engraved [Music] now that the guys have our Ragnar's axe assembled it's time for me to start doing the leather lace work up the handle and then we'll do the grip later on we've cut some narrow strips of dark brown leather and I'm going to get Rick to come on in here and give me a hand hold it I'm going to use a little modern convenience here a little hot melt glue to help tack this thing into place make life a little easier so I think this is about close to where we need to be for the first section and I'm just going to tie this off for now once we get the other half laced through we'll go ahead and wrap the grip and do a big knot at the bottom and keep the action being pulled out of your hand then we'll be all ready to go I think this axe build turned out awesome I love the extra work that Ilya put into the Forge welding the Damascus on the edge now let's see if my shieldmaiden will accept my proposal and become my queen [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] Natacha we all know you are now a worthy shieldmaiden there's only one thing left to ask and that is will you be my queen [Music] [Music] [Laughter] click here to subscribe or click here to watch more episodes thanks for watching man-at-arms reforged we need to know what you want the guys to build so tell us in the comments below what weapons you want to see next [Music]

Channel: AWE me

Views: 3,548,204

Rating: 4.9377708 out of 5

Keywords: aweme, man at arms, man at arms reforged, maa, maa reforged, awe me, vikings, vikings netflix, axe, viking axe, baltimore fire and sword, man at arms: reforged

Id: 34lI0CWqmwo

Length: 21min 6sec (1266 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/SpeculationMaster]

That is really cool. Thanks for sharing!