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I had mentioned this on the other thread already. I made a hearth steel knife that has pretty bad welding flaws and I will not do anything with it. If anyone here would like to play with it, please read further. The knife has a blade length of 8in and spine thickness of ~3/16in. The tang is about that long as well - you should cut it off to whatever length you like. I am happy to ship it to the continental USA. If the shipping is not too expensive, I can ship for free but you should assume that I may ask you for $10-$20 for shipping. While the knife is free, to participate I would like you to do the following. Tweet this video: with @NielsProvos and #bladesmith and then reply with a link to your tweet here. The winner will be drawn randomly*. Here are photos of the knife but they are a little bit misleading as you cannot fully see all of the welding flaws. Deadline to participate is the end of this year in PST. Also, if you end up doing anything with it, share your photos. Thanks for humoring me. Included at 2019-12-31: - Zeb Camper - Joshua States - Ryan Hobbs - Gary LT - Garry Keown - Andrew W Included without social media - who likes social media anyway? - Will Wilcox - Adam Weller *: I will use a raffle ticket system where a post to social media leads to more raffle tickets than those participating without social media.

I finally finished the seax knife using the first puck of high carbon hearth steel I had made: It's a very simple shape using a brass bolster and curely maple handle. Here is a close up look of the blade to bolster transition: To be honest, I am not a really good knife maker as fit and finish is not something I pay a lot of attention to. There will be a video on my Youtube channel tomorrow that goes through all the steps with occasional quirk comments on my knife making philosophy. Let me know what you think Niels.

Hey Guys this is one of my first posts and my first show and tell on this website. I am not doing a reproduction of an archeological find but a sword of my own design following strict guidelines of style that the Romans used. I understand some of you will have different ideas of what "historical accuracy" is but this fulfills my own idea and here is my reasoning through the description. The blade is probably the most accurate part. It is made from bloomery and hearth steel me and my friend Jeff Pringle made from ore and recycled wrought iron exactly as the Romans did. I folded layers of the bloomery iron and hearth steel together and forge welded more steel around the edge. This "piling" is precisely how most roman swords were made. It also leave a beautiful and subtle pattern showing off the many layers of forged steel, in total about 800. I estimate the carbon in the steel to be around 0.5% which is historically correct. Right by the hilt I inlaid a star and moon which is my blacksmithing touchmark and a common Roman motif. The moon is silver and the star is bronze. The hilt is made entirely of antler and held together by a resin and the peening of the tang. The glue I used to hold this together was made with pine pitch and beeswax just as the Romans did. The bolster, pommel cap and ring are made of bronze. I made the scabbard out of wood and riveted a bronze jacket to the surface. It is chased and reposed with different scenes I created, however all the images themselves are taken from Roman mosaics or other artwork. The baldric is made of veg tanned leather. The buckle and rings on the scabbard are tinned brass and copper. The chape is carved antler with Mars under a crescent moon and star. All of the rivets are silver. This sword is for sale, and the current asking price is $3000. I am also available for similar custom work so feel free to PM me or check out my website. www.underhilledge.com jack.mcauliffe@comcast.net

Hello, I've been very interested in the posts regarding the Aristotle Furnace and the Evenstad Hearth. I have farm with many old buildings and an abundance of rusty metal, the idea of being able to recycle some of this into some useful homemade tools is very compelling. I've been unable to glean an exact design for an Evenstad Hearth, but with adobe costing nothing, I decided to try one based loosely off the pictures of Mark Green's new portable hearth. I had the base of an old chicken feeder lying around so I used that for the base for the adobe and sort of formed it around a stock pot. The mix was wet and it slumped a bit so the bottom of the bowl is about 8 inches with the top around a foot in diameter. The only peice of tubing I could find on the fly was a scrap of galvanized fence tubing, I figured I could use that as a placeholder while the adobe sets up and replace it with a better something tubular for the true tuyere. The floor is a bit over 4 inches from the bottom of this temporary "tuyere" I figured I could fiddle around with that. I am mainly interested in turning some of my scrap into forgeable iron, not necessarily high carbon blade steel at this time. Any thoughts on if I'm on the right track with this one? I have lots of clay and cowshit so I have room to experiment.