ZebDeming

A little over a week and I'll be heading out that way. Should be a good year, I'm planning something a bit different to demo this year, along with a regular out there this year. Will be working on it all weekend. See you all out there! Zeb

Looking forward to it Kerry!

Haven't been very active here on the forum lately, but I've still been making stuff here and there. These are a couple that I recently finished. The brokeback Seax is a wolf's tooth pattern, teeth are wrought, back bars are 15n20 and wrought, edge is W2. Handle material is Maple Root and Black Walnut. This one is a 1084 and 1075 edge, and 1084 and 15n20 twists, the handle wood is English Boxwood and Black walnut Thanks for looking, I'll have these with me at Ashokan this weekend Zeb

Really looking forward to this! I may bring along something, if I can remember where I burried it

While it is a really cool thing, I don't think that anything in human ashes would be chemically in the metal at all, it would just be in the slag. Zeb

I think that this may be part of the problem with this. Have only small fragments of these swords been tested to determine crucible steel? That sword, from what I can see in the pics, is "wroughty" indeed. Certain parts of bloom and these "hearth" remelted pucks would most certainly look crucible steel like, and if that's the part that was tested... Zeb

This is the almost exact process of the "Evenstad" steel. I think mostly people have misinterpreted it as forging it instead of actually melting it, I've heard many times that a normal charcoal forge can't attain the heat needed to melt iron, which is plain false, we've done it using bellows as well. I'm pretty decent at the process and using just a side blast forge could be done easily. I've taken iron to cast iron in one attempt, and there is quite a bit of control over it. Making a solid lump that has been liquid, big enough for a sword would be a challenge, but smaller pucks that could be welded up wouldn't be all that hard. Using a normal blacksmith's forge would not leave any archaeological evidence other than a forge, possibly slag bowls (clinker) that may be indicative of a remelting process instead of normal smithing. Like you said though, there isn't enough study in this area to be completely sure. I believe that what Ann is saying, is that if the swords were made from crucible steel, that said crucible steel was likely imported and then smithed in "norse" regions, It's always interesting to hear what others have found as well. Zeb

Ann gave a lecture in Ukraine this past May on the trade in crucible steel that Ulfbehrt swords may have been made from. It's worth the watch as with all things from Ann. https://youtu.be/7Hx_iYNuHIs Zeb

Just to show that I actually have been working on something lately. It's back two bars are opposing twists of 1095 and 15n20, the edge is W2, and the "Wolf's tooth" is some wrought iron that was "rescued" from the bottom of Saginaw Bay in Michigan by a friend. The handle wood is Maple tree root, and the bolster material is diver salvaged old growth oak, from Lake Superior. This was my first try at a wolf's tooth pattern, it was an experiment that seemed to work out ok, but I still need to work on getting the teeth a bit sharper. I haven't really been doing anything very productive lately, lost my job of 17 years this spring, and things are just starting to get back to "normal" as far as bladesmithing is concerned. I found a new job, that wound up being much better than my old one, so all is well there. All critique is welcome, wanted to post this, as I haven't really finished anything in quite a while. Thanks for looking Zeb

Grain structure when broken cold is usually very course with high phosphorus iron. It's a beautiful working iron when hot under the hammer, but when cold can be brittle. Twisting a square bar when cold and hot will give you much insight into the working properties of the metal, Lee Sauder could probably explain this better than I can. The twists in pattern welding were probably there for a good visual indicator of the quality of the iron, and not the popular held belief that there was some sort of strengthening of the iron by the twists. A very good indicator of well made bloomery iron is how tight of a twist you can do without it coming apart.

What I find interesting is that one thing that's almost never mentioned in the search for when it was first learned about quenching steel, is fire strikers. A fire striker needs to be high carbon and properly hardened in order to even work. IIRC there are documented finds of these in the early iron age, which would seem to suggest that they did know how to select steel that could be hardened and harden it

All the bloomery steels that I've worked with, are very shallow hardening. Like was said, they usually require higher temps, and a brine or water quench, to get hard enough. I've got a few pics of auto hamon's on bloom steel blades here somewhere, I'll try to locate them and post them. Working with Mark's ore, every time I've had the steel anaylized, there was nothing for manganese content. I've always wanted to add some manganese dioxide to a smelt to see if it would add manganese to the steel, this is an experiment for sometime in the future. Comparing chemistry between "old" steel and modern, IMHO, could be problematic though, as there is always a slag component in the "old" steels, which could be mistaken for being in the steel and actually be a component of the slag, depending on the method of measurement.

Should be a good time. Yea Doug, I'm happy when I get over a 20% yield from ore, some ore's are better and some people are better at getting good yields. I'm still betting with 200 pounds of ore in a full sized Catalan, we get a good 50 pound bloom. Alan, I look forward to seeing you there, was hoping you could make it. Zeb

Now that's how you get good high carbon steel from the hardware store! Great looking blade my friend. Zeb

https://youtu.be/CNuEDtnVdeM You may notice a couple other folk from the forum in this episode Other than Jesus, Mark, and myself, Chris Price was on one of the compacting hammers, Dennis McAdams was there helping with the smelt as well as Daniel Cauble. If you look closely you can catch JJ Simon in the background as well as probably others. The guys at BKS did a great job with build on this one, and I was humbled to be asked to help out, as well as work with the rest of the smelting crew that day.