MSchneider

Beautiful sword. Thanks for the pics and the tip about potassium permanganate. Now I have a new finish to try.

Beautiful work!

Very nice! It has a really clean and balanced look to it. I'd be sad to see it go too.

Wow that's just gorgeous! I love the explosion of the pattern.

Wow, that is just mesmerizing!

I love everything about this sword. It is clean and graceful in its lines and looks to be a brutally efficient cutter. I have a soft spot for the single edge sword types and it is nice to see somebody doing one.

I recently purchased one from Buckeye Engraving and was very pleased with the service and the quality of the stamp. http://www.buckeyeengraving.com/

Thanks for all the comments! Aldo- I'm really digging the 80CRV2. I found I have to go a little higher on the austenitizing temp vs 5160 but it heat treats easy and is super tough. I plan to keep using it, especially for swords. Thanks for providing it. Dave- I had originally thought about weathering the hilt components to make the silver really pop, but once it was polished it looked so cool in the hand shiny I decided to stop there. By the way, the silver panels are roller printed. I etch up press plates and roll then through the mill. It gives a different look than direct etching. (Plus it is quick and easy to reproduce) There is a patina on the background it's just little hard to see because of the lighting. I used liver of sulfur and then softened the highlights by burnishing. Thanks, Mark

It's been a while since I've completed anything worthy of sharing but I've managed to recently finish up this Type O sword. The blade is forged from 80CRV2 and is 29.5" in length. It is just over 2" wide at the hilt and has a CoG of 5". The hilt is mild steel inset with sterling silver panels and twisted copper and silver wire. It was a challenging piece but overall I'm really pleased with the finished sword. Let me know what you think. Thanks, Mark

I recently decided to try making some cast fuller sanding blocks and I thought I’d share how I went about it. I’m really pleased with how well they work. PVC pipe is measured in ID and lines up nicely with the wheel sizes I generally use for fullers. I made a 1.5”, 2” and 3” block using the corresponding PVC pipe sizes. For the casting material I used Smooth-Cast 300. It is a 1:1 casting resin with a finished Shore hardness of 70. It is inexpensive, mixes easily and sets up quickly. I purchased it from Amazon: https://goo.gl/Wha5ga. I prepped the PVC by cutting it into 4” sections and then splitting it in half lengthwise. Here are my 3 mold forms. In order to secure a wooden block to the top, I embedded 2 stainless screws. I created a reusable card stock template for placing the screws so that the spacing would be the same on all the blocks. To make the ends of the molds I first put on a layer of masking tape and then strengthened it with a little duct tape. I then sprayed the inside of the mold with some WD40 to act as a release agent. This is the mold ready to pour. It is filled thought the opening left in the middle of the template. The filled mold curing. …and after cured. I took the cured blocks and ground the sides flat, cleaned the ends up a bit, added a little texture to the sanding face and trimmed the mounting lugs. I then used some epoxy to mount the wooden top to the block and they were ready for use. Here are the well used 2” and 3” blocks. Thanks, Mark

That's a beauty, you really nailed it!

That looks great! Nice even lines, thanks for sharing. How may layers were your core bars?

Yeah the 450 BTU/cu in is bandied about all over the web. (ABANA, Iforge, Ron Reil etc) I'm not sure how that number was arrived at though. You make an excellent point. I had not considered the fact that a lot of forges run pretty open in the front and/or back whereas mine has pretty small openings. That plus 3" of insulation probably account for the performance. There may also be some variance in the BTUs actually being generated. I'll have to time the gas consumption and figure out what it is actually putting out. Thanks!

All of my previous forges have been powered by homemade blown burners. I’ve always sized them so that they adhere to the rule of thumb 450 BTU/Cubic Inch of chamber size. I’ve never had a problem welding or forging even large billets. On a whim I decided to give an atmospheric burner a try. I purchased a 1” T-Rex burner and built a new forge. The chamber size is about 450 Cubic inches and fits within the guidelines Rex gives for burner sizing. Here’s the question…even without ITC the forge easily goes to 2,200 F at only 10 psi. According to the BTU chart Rex provides that puts the burner outputting about 65K BTU. That is welding temp at only 144 BTU per cubic Inch and with no ITC. How does that work? Even using the BTU calculator a .045” orifice at 10 PSI is in the 70K BTU range at best. Granted I am using 3 “ K-23 brick for insulation but still that just seems to go against the standard logic of BTU requirements for a forge. Am I just figuring something wrong?

Thanks for the update and that is an awesome score on the anvil. Congrats!