Einar

Its a flat grind. It does look like a hollow grind in the pics, but thats a trick of the light. Thanks, we'll see on monday

14 cm blade, 27 cm overall. 4.3 mm thick Silver steel (115CrV3) blade 60HRC Beech burl handle scales with stainless steel pins A present for my workmate Simon. No hand sanding on this blade. Just 120 grit belt finish straight off the belt grinder.

Hi, sorry I missed this reply, I havent been checking in on the forums much lately. I dont know the excact steel I used for the edge. Its a spring steel, probably something along the lines of 1060. I did not do any forge welding. I arc welded the spring steel edge to the mild steel blade. If you attempt that, you should preheat the pieces first. 200-250 degress Celsius should be enough. If you try to weld without preheat, you might get cracks along the welds. On my bardiche there are very fine cracks along the welds on one side of the blade. They were completely invisible to the naked eye until after the etching, when they started to stand out as fine lines of rust.

Thanks, I'll remember to do this the next time I weld hardenable steel.

That turned out really nice, Daniel!

Thats really cool looking. I might have to try something like that myself.

Reverse the direction of the drill and spin it back for a little while. But its hard to judge if you have spun it back enough, so I always pinch the wire TIGHTLY between thumb and forefinger when I release it from the drill. Then I gradually ease off the pressure and let it spin until it has sprung back as much as it needs to.

The way I've been told is that it should already be hot when you start welding to keep the rest of the piece from acting like a heat sink. So, put the whole thing in the forge, get it up to temp, then weld, and let the whole piece air cool. I should give it a go myuself on some scrap spring steel and see how it goes.

I've never tried it myself, but I have always heard that before arc welding on hardenable steel, you should pre heat to avoid cracks. IIRC, if you dont preheat, you can get cracks because the material hardens and shrinks and then cracks. I welded the edge on a bardiche I made, (no pre heat) and the cracks along the edge were completely invisible until I etched the blade to antique it. Not sure how hot it should be when you weld it, but probably above termpering heat.

I just make sure that the wires are equal length, twist one until I am happy with the rate of twist, note how much shorter it got during the twisting, and when twisting the other strand the oposite way, I make sure they shortened by the same amount.

Twisting the wire is pretty easy. I use a little hook in a cordless drill, like he does in the video. I will add a bit of advice though: When you've twisted it as tightly as you want it, run the drill back in the oposite direction for a bit to ease off the tension in the wire. If you just slip the wire off the hook without doing that, the wire will spin quite violently and the whole strand might corkscrew. So spin it back for quite a few revolutions, and keep a firm grip on it when you take it off the hook, so you can ease the tension off it.

In the second video I linked, they use a similar jig but with a tang shaped flat bar welded onto the rod. Not sure what he does in the first video. I think he just really cranked the nuts that hold the handle in place until it doesnt move just from the friction. Thats what I tried to do, but I was afraid of splitting, with too much torque, so I experienced some slippage of the grip on the rod. By the way, his tang hole is only round at the back end of the grip. On the front end, the hole is rectangular. On the handle that I made, its just a drilled hole, because I just wanted to try out the jig, its not a handle for a specific project, just a test piece.

Wow, that is awesome.

Yeah, good point about the compression strength of the wood. And it was hickory after all. Wood doesnt come much stronger than that, so it would probably easily take the strain.

You may be right, but the way I am imagining it, i would put the flat bar roughly in the middle of the rod, and since the tang hole in the handle tapers, just slide the handle up until the flat bar wedges firmly inside the handle. I'll try it out and update the thead and tell you if it worked or not.

Thank you! I have one of those lists too. Keeps getting longer...

I will be modifying the jig slightly, because just having a the threaded rod through the grip, I had trouble with it slipping under tension. I was a bit afraid of tightening the nuts too much and cracking the wood. I'll weld a false tang in the middle of the rod, like in this video, at 25 minutes and 30 seconds in. I dont even think it needs to be tang sized, just a small flat bar would be enough to stop it slipping.

Thanks! Yeah, you really should make one, I am loving it.

Yup, I believe he had a thread on this forum, which is where I learned how to do it. Fell in love with that kind of grip when I bought an Albion sword.

I wouldnt really mind a synthetic core as long as I dont see the plastic. I used hickory for my attempt though. I'll try to use this jig next time I do a leather wrapped handle too. I like to do the kind of grips where you tightly wrap the leather with string to make a texture in the leather, and I bet this jig will work nicely for that too.

I watched this video on wire wrapped handles on "That Works" youtube channel, and the jig he uses is so brilliantly simple, I just had to make one myself. I've done wire wrapped handles before, but this jig, and the toothpick trick he uses makes it SO much easier.The brilliant thing with this jig is the little ratchet wrench you mount on it which only lets the handle turn one way, so you can keep tension on the wires easily. Here is my first attempt at using the jig. I used 0.5 mm steel wire, and 0.6 mm copper wire.

Beautiful work! It really does look like a museum piece. Inspiering!

Thanks, guys! I appreciate it!

I love seeing tips like this, that make me go "why the hell didnt I think of that?"

Thanks! Yeah, I just prefer a wrapped handle instead of bare wood, unless it's a really nice burl or something. Thank you, I was hoping that it wasnt too far out of the realm of realism.