MatthewBerry

I love this piece - it came out great! What catches my eye the most iare your junctions where the guttering, the band, and the ring all come together (the last picture). They are are a wonderful design executed so cleanly.

Wow! Beautiful. Are the panels on the scabbard done with reposse or pres blech? They’re great. I’d love to see a closer shot of the whole handle.

Beautiful sword. I really like the multiple woods on the handle.

Gorgeous! Totally gorgeous!

I have to give credit for the idea to Peter Johnson - Emilliano described the jig Peter was using to me, and this was my first attempt at something of the kind. Definitely stop down next time you are around and I can show you how the whole bronze-casting thing works.

Nice looking piece. Sounds like you got the handling right too.

Nice clean work!

Very nice looking. Your blades always have such excellent curves.

Awesome knife. Awesome WIP. Now I want to make bowies...

Thanks guys! Glad you like it. Yup. It's kinda the Peter Johnsson method - two thin slats on each side. The inside is lined with wool felt before gluing. Then i used a layer of hide glue between the slats and wrapped the whole thing up with a bicycle tire tube cut into a huge strip. The outer leather is sewn on wet over a coating of hide glue.

I finally finished my first viking sword that I made all-by-myself. The big challenge on this one is that wide shallow fuller - I've never done that before and it looks difficult to get right. Here's the sword blank (1075 steel) with the bevels forged in. I shaped the initial blank with the power hammer, and then hand forged the tip and the bevels. I didn't take a picture, but the bevels are forged in with a spring tool whose dies are radiused to 6". Here's the result: Slightly crooked, but it gets a lot of the steel to the right areas and significantly widened the blade. It also made it about an inch longer. I did run the fuller all the way back through the tang. One of the biggest challenges on any sword is getting it straight in all dimensions. Here's how I start to establish a straight edge - marking fluid and a scribed straight line down the edge. It will move during the hardening process, but it's much easier to get back to straight when that's where you started. Doing it this way also means that I don't have to rely on the sword sitting flat on a surface. The fuller being straight struck me as the biggest challenge of the blade, so I made this contraption to grind the fuller straight: It's essentially a really big work rest (with legs) and a sled to hold the blade level as I move it. It worked very well for the rough grinding of the fuller. It got it nice and straight. After that all the grinding was done by hand. Not ruining the nice straight fuller is much easier (but not easy) than trying to establish one by hand. The wooden sled is a prototype and I learned a couple important things from it. First, make it metal as I set it on fire during the grinding. Second, without some kind if repeatable indexing for holding the blade you can never get the blade back in the same position again, so make a better sled or do all the grinding you can the first time. And yes, that's a 6" wheel on the grinder. The finished blade was pretty much straight. The sides of the fuller are a bit wobbly because that line can't directly be made straight - it's created by the interplay of the fuller and the bevels and is affected by the thickness of both. All you can do is make both as straight in all dimensions as possible and then do some cheat grinding where you didn't get it quite right. The guards and pommel are carved from wax. I modeled them after an original that I think is in the Swedish National Museum (but I could be wrong). I get the overall shape completed and fit them to the blade before I start decorative carving. That way if I blow some fundamental dimension or the fit, I haven't ruined lots of hours of carving. Skipping over a whole lotta work, here's the final product: The blade is 28" (711mm) long and the sword is 34" (863mm) overall. It weigh 2lbs 13oz (1146g). The handle is stabilized cherry burl, and the fittings are all bronze (90% Cu, 10% Sn) I'm fairly happy with it. I'm going to make the next blade a touch thinner as this one has a little more forward weight than I personally like. But then again another smith who held it said it was the first sword he really like because of that slight forward weight. It does let you know exactly what it's for - cleaving.

Great piece! The blade pattern is very nice and the handle components and carving all work together very well. i do a bit of bronze casting and the burnout schedule can usually be found on the website of the investment plasters maker. Generally the process is melt the wax out and drive out some of the water by heating to about 300 degrees F for 3 hours. Then you slowly raise the temperature about 200 Degrees F per hour until you’re above 1000 F. The plaster I use has me take it up to 1350 F and hold it there for 3 hours, but i’ve Seen it done by holding at 1000 F overnight. Then you let the mold cool down to 900F and pour the bronze. The main 2 points are 1) heat up slowly to prevent cracking, and 2) get it hot enough long enough to completely vaporize the wax and burn up any ash.

It's a wonderful sword - I had a chance to play with it after it was finished. It's feels very light and alive in the hand. It knows what it's supposed to do...

I love it! I'm a big fan of could-have-been creations like this. You did a great job of evolving the anglo saxon style toward scottish dirks. I also really like the way you did the garnets - it's the original technique just with different materials - I don't think you can't get any closer to real for this side of a king's ransom.

Very nice! Makes me want to give one a try