Geoff Phelps

Looks great Matt!

Decided to take a crack at making a seax after seeing so many great examples. Got some really good quality high carbon steel lawnmower blades from the local power equipment dealer who was cleaning out his old inventory. Great guy gave me more blades than I can use in a year... lots of material. My 13-year-old son got excited about it so I got him involved in the initial shaping. Great to have a second set of arms swinging the hammer when trying to take a 4-inch wide piece of steel down by about half. Took a while to get the blade right and then a lot of file work to get the fuller in right. Had to switch to a vertical quench tube because by normal knife trough was not long enough... also this seax stretched the limits of my little forge. Guess its time to build a bigger one. Anyway, used reclaimed copper from an old broken extension cord to make the disks for the guard and pommel and used black walnut trimmed from two logs my friend at the power equipment shop donated to my cause. Peening went much better this time... although I'm going to go out and get a peening hammer now. A while back I decided to try making sheaths for my knives and had made two so far, so I figured the Seax needed one also. After scrounging around and finding that I did in fact have a piece of leather large enough, I boiled, shaped and stitched away... and here it is: Sewing is still not my thing and I really need to plan out better where I'm using my clamps so I don't get all those extra marks, but... it's only #3. Still have to put grommets in the two tabs and forge some rings to connect with a belt. Still have to do the final sharpening and I'm considering carving a pattern into the handle as it feel like it could twist a bit in the hand.

First time forge welding at the home forge 100% by hand. Mixed 5 layers of mild steel with 4 layers of saw blade. Cut in half and twisted each bar with opposite twists. Forge welded the two together and then forge welded a high carbon out layer. Was trying to get the "v" pattern down the middle but realized I had to remove too much material to get the desired shape so came out with this: Blued the mild steel D guard... which darkened the brass and I'll likely go back in and clean it up. My peening of the tang left something to be desired, but this was also the first time I tried that and I managed to run out of patience before doing it right. Handle is cherry.

Great work as always! Also, love the new maker's mark Matt! Proud to have one of your blades with the rune version... but now I guess I can aspire to owning something with all three versions!

Outstanding! All around tremendous work. I aspire to one day do work somewhere near what you've produced. Thanks for the inspiration.