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I got this in an estate sale years ago and I've never been able to figure out how old it might be and where it was made. There are no makers marks that I can find. It is similar in design to festoons painted in the 1750s in France, but of course that doesn't mean it is from there or then. You can see a higher resolution picture in the Wikipedia under Festoon. If you want me to take a detail picture of any part, let me know. The variety of plant and flowers is remarkable. This is some fine work, as far as I can tell. It's about 36" from side to side and the drops are about 18" long. Thanks for your help.

Hey everyone! I thought I would share my latest failure, because ... well because there's always something to learn from failure. Besides, I'm still somewhat pleased about this blade, and I wanted to share. This all started when I decided to slice a piece of Campo Del Cielo meteorite, a fairly common iron-nickel meteorite, with your typical widmanstatten and neumann bands, kamacite, taenite, plessite, and the odd troilite inclusion (Group I: 6.68% Ni, 0.43% Co, 0.25% P, 87 ppm Ga, 407 ppm Ge, 3.6 ppm Ir) Cutting that ended up ruining a bandsaw blade by the way, but ultimately I ended up with a couple of flat pieces that I could integrate into a larger billet. Here comes my first mistake in this project. From left/right to center: 15n20 (1/4"), meteorite (~1/4"), wrought iron (~1/2"), 15n20 (1/16th), 1095(1/4" x 2). Let's skip why I would use so many different materials in the first place (let's say i'm experimenting) and move on to forge welding. This billet will be drawn out and cut in two halves. Each half will be twisted (one clockwise and one counter clockwise) and then flattened to eventually serve as a san mai cladding layer. Did you catch the issue? Why on earth would I put the most valuable material, the meteorite, near the *outside* of a twist? Spoilers: by the end of this build, there will not be much meteorite left on this blade, and most of it will be invisible. We're getting ahead of ourselves tho, let's catch up... we're forge welding. ... and drawing ... and cutting the billet in halves ... and having a peak, because we can't resist. We never can. I wasn't sure exactly what of the meteorite's visible features would survive the forge welding heats. I knew that the widmanstatten bands wouldn't but I was hoping for ... something. I wasn't disappointed. What looks like little fractures here are actually taenite crystals, which are found at the meteorite's grain boundary. They survived! At that point I'm ecstatic, this is going to look awesome right?! (spoiler: these will basically disappear). But for now, we're twisting. And flattening the twisted bars... (yes, I had a peek at the pattern again) Ok, I'm about to make my second really dumb mistake. Here I have a 1/4" piece of 1095 to serve as the blade's core, and a couple of pieces of thin 15n20 (1/16") to serve as a contrasting layer (and maybe to limit carbon migration? who knows). Except these aren't 15n20, they're actually 1095, which I'm only going to find out once I etch the final blade. I'm literally about to forge weld 1095 to itself for no good reason. Whoohoo! This is the resulting san mai billet (ok, technically this is 5 layers, not 3... I'm sure there is a name for that... then again do those 3 x 1095 layers really count as 3? and what is the meaning of life?) We're ready to forge the blade proper. Cleaning up the forge scales... Shaping... More shaping... Heat treating... This is where I'm going to lose some of you I'm sure. No clay, no differential heat treatment, no water quench, just a simple Parks 50 quench. Once you see the blade I think you'll agree there would have been no point in attempting a hamon: no room for it, and a blade that's way too busy already. After cleanup, polishing and etching. This is as-etched out of the ferric chloride tank, before cleaning up any oxides. Notice the lack of a contrasting layer next to the 1095 core? Yep, those "contrasting layers" were not 15n20, they were 1095, and they're indistinguishable from the core (save for a very faint weld line). I can't believe I picked up the wrong steel... I really suck. And here you can see the consequences of my very first mistake in this project. After so much profiling and sanding, and because the meteorite was on the outside of the twisted billets, there are very few areas where the meteorite is still visible: The irony is there is plenty more meteorite left than in these spots, but most of it sits right between the cladding and the core... And... as you can see, the taenite has been thinned out to oblivion, too It is still visible under the microscope, tho: Now for the mistake that really sealed this blade's fate: Yep, these are two very visible delaminations between the core and the cladding (and more of them on the tang). What happened is that I ran out of propane pressure during this forge weld, and I lost temperature at the worst possible moment. I worked as fast as I could and I thought I got away with it, but I didn't. At this point I'm heartbroken I pick myself up, telling myself that I made other mistakes anyway and this is really good practice for the next blade, so I decide to finish it anyway. The original plan, because of the meteorite, had been to inlay "Star Iron" in gold on the tang. Instead, I go for "Shimatta" in copper ("damn it" in Japanese). This was a really fun project. I feel silly for making so many mistakes (including some I have not mentioned here) that should have been easy to avoid, but I learned my lessons: - In a twisted billet, put the interesting material near the center - make sure to use the steel you mean to (duh) - make sure there is enough propane for forge welding, when in doubt, assume there isn't. I will eventually do another one of these, hopefully without the above issues. In the meantime, this will hang on the mistake wall as a reminder that I should really think before I act. Cheers!

I have not posted in a while I have been busy. Anyways I made this blade for son who wanted something Japanese so I decided to do an East meets West blade with some cheeky pop culture thrown in. My boy is 6 and loves Pokemon so I made some wrought iron menuki poke balls. 1095 differentially heat treated blade 6"ish Wrought iron tsuba and kashira Copper seppa and fuchi which I attempted to chase a little.

Good evening everyone! This is the latest knife I am making, and I´d like to share the process with you I decided to focus more on making knives as a whole, not only blades. That is not to say I am stopping blades, but I deffinitely want to finish more pieces It all started with me having a blade I really liked, and a piece of curly maple: I really wanted to do something in Urnes style which... I didn´t Somehow I am always drawn to the Ringerike style! In this case, the brooch below, particulary the beast portraited there, caught my eye... And so it began... I am still uncertain as to what the animal is, but for me, it resembles a wolf... I started drawing it, to get the details as close to the original as I am able. I changed one thing - I really didn´t like the legs of the beast in the brooch, so I looked at other ringerike animals and changed them a littlebit... Also, I tuned the tail a bit so that it fits the frame of the handle better: I decided to carve the beast first, it being the most difficult for me to carve, and therefore the most likely to be ruined. So, if there should be a ruinage, i wanted it to be as close to the beginning of the handle as possible... but, everything seems okay (well, there are always the little things that bug you, aren´t there ) and i finished the main carving just as the sun was setting... I found it rather poetical... and then I remebered a story from Northern Mythology, about a warg who chases after the sun, named Sköll. The dusk came, and the warg appeared in the handle... I ensnared it! No more chasing the sun, now it will serve the user of the knife! I apologize for the bad uality of the last shot... Well, I wanted to make sure that Sköll will not break out of his prison, so I added cage around him (also, there is a flattened and ground piece of wrought I intend to use for a buttcap): And this is where I finished today - now I am grinding micrometer after micrometer so that the buttcap fits as well as possible . Yeah, I could have done it before the carving, but I was never much of a planner : Goodnight!

(please read the following in Arnold Schwarzenegger voice:) I AM BACK !!! So, I have not posted for some time... I hope to change that, and to add more of my recent work, including some high medieval swords, avar belts etc... BUT, today I´d like to show this little bugger. As the title says, it is a simple folder dating to the 9th, possibly 10th century, modeled after originals from Great Moravia (central europe). I was very happy when I was approached and asked whether I could make such a knife. I find them charming in their simplicity... quite a lot of examples actually have a broken-backish blade, but for this one, a slight drop point was requested. It taught me a great deal. I have made a folder similar to this in the past, but the handle piece had a different crossection, and when I was forming this one in my mind, I wanted it to look rounded and to have a certain presence... and I really enjoyed the mental process leading to the physical creation as well as the creation itself Hope I am not getting too esotherical here... Also, I hope to make more of these in the future, possibly with inlaid handles, that would be cool... aaanyhow, here is the video about it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbus24WQurc&feature=youtu.be and here are the pics: The blade before final sanding and etch: The very roughly shaped handle being worked on: Cleaning the forgemarks on the handle at grinding it down to the desired uniform 3mms: Beginning to bevel the handle - additional bevels will be aded later, and then the whole thing will be rounded: Rounded, yay!: Sanding the handle... always fun...gah! I sanded even the edges of the handle so that it is nice to hold: And here we go, the finished thing:

I feel I've had quite a productive week! After a complete failure (serious delamination) where I had to discard the entire blade, I felt kinda out of it... However - I pulled myself together and finished an old knife I had forgotten all about, and also decided to finish a new knife design I've been working on... Hunter A: This one is kind of improvized actually. I started making this one - then my belt grinder broke down - and I put it aside. I only resumed work on it after I broke another knife I actually cared about finishing. Wood is Buckeye Burl, steel is my usual steel, san-mai lamination and differentially hardened. Hunter B: This is my interpetation of a Puukko knife. I though all those regular designs here in Norway were so boring - I decided to go with a full tang version... So, yeah.. Perhaps its not a puukko at all... haha! Wood is 2800 year old bog-oak from Russia. Blade is made from old wrought iron I found on my property. (probably more than a 100 years old...) and modern #20 steel. The unusual wrought iron made a tough time for me, and I got some delamination and stuff due to - I suppose - not using high enough heat while forge welding. I was not aware I needed super high temperature for wrought iron. But now I know better! Anyhow, threw this one away - then regretted doing so - and decided to instead actually finish it. I love how the acid reacted with the iron... Gave incredible contrast. I am going to drop these two babies off at a saddle-maker for sheaths. I still lack the neccesary equipment for leatherworking - but I suppose I will order a bunch of stuff off E-bay soon enough. Any critique is as always sincerely welcome! Sincerely, Alveprins.

So I have not had time to do much with the wrought iron I picked up a while ago pictured in the post below. Id like to move some of it out of the way. It varies from a little under 1" to 1.25". I can cut it to any length but obviously it would be way cheaper to ship in a flat rate box. Or pickup in southeast PA. Im asking $2.50 per pound. I also have a bunch of big lag bolts from the same source also wrought. Cant say much about how it works but I have flattened some pieces at a good hot red without delaminating. Anyone interested? www.bladesmithsforum.com/index.php?showtopic=26328&hl=%2Bwrought+%2Biron

My brother turned 50 in September. I figured I better make him something special since he's always been a fan of my knives. The blade is 1095/15N20 damascus, and I believe it's from the first billet of damascus I ever made. It's about 9" long (I forgot to measure it before i gave it to him). Our Mom lives in an 1815 farmhouse and there's a ton of old metal lying around where the barns and other buildings used to be. I cut the fittings out of a very rusty old strap hinge, soaked them in rust remover and the did a ferric etch for an hour, followed by a wire wheel. I'm really happy with the texture that I got from this. The handle is some spalted stabilized Japanese Red Maple from a tree in Mom's front yard that we used to play in when we were kids. It's dying now, and my brother had cut the dead parts off for fire wood, but then notices the spalting and gave me the logs for handles. I also ran vine pattern filework down the spine just because I could :-) And yes, my brother was very happy with this. Kinda stunned even, which is what I wanted.

Hi, everybody! I was never too active here, actually I guess I never posted anything on the forum, but I'm trying to change! =) This is a video I made sometime ago about a bloomery furnace I did on my workshop. I'm a complete newbie on this stuff, this was my fifth try on making a bloom, the first one that I got an actual bloom, after I decided to read some more material about it. Anything you can say about it will be very, very useful for a next try. I talked with some more experienced people on the web and they already told me to make improvements on the process, but other people, other minds and anything you can say about it will be great for me, so I can grow on this path. The main stuff I would like to ask is how to get a result with a lower carbon content. I tried to put as much ore as I could, with just a few charcoal between the charges, I tried to blow more air inside it, but even so it wasn't enough and I got a very high amount of carbon. It was useful for the project I had in mind, but for a next run, it would be nice to get a more "carbon free" result. Hope you like the video, thanks for watching!

Wrought iron has such a beautiful look. The life and lines of the wrought bring a special dimension to the body of work. This axe represents my first successful wrought iron axe body with a carbon cutting edge. The trick for success was to keep the cross section of the eye very thick. I started out with about 700 grams of weight and ended around 400 but I was able to keep that cross section quite thick. It was still tricky to shape the eye without the wrought crumbling but the wrought I used for this is very good quality. The blade shape is shark inspired, hammer head to be more precise. The cutting edge feels like a shark fin or head protruding out of a sea of wrought iron. It is shaped much like a fin and comes complete with a mouth full of teeth in the underside. It throws like a dream and cuts like sharpened shark teeth. It’s ready to be-head the toughest of fish. I forged this from some of the anchor chain I ordered from Craig Hashimoto. It's some lovely stuff. Holds together well and has some great patterns.

So I had some iron or mild steel my brother discovered. He gave it to me and I was processing a bunch of curved and round bars the other day to be squared and straight for various stuff not for blades, but when I got to this one, something went wrong. It completely crumbled between cherry and orange hot. The whole thing just flew apart after a few hammer blows. I quenched it, put some WD40 on it, cover it in borax and attempted to weld the big crack back together. This time more of it fell off so I quit while I still had bar left. I can't seem to get the picture of the end of it. Strangely it seems to have a difference between the structures of the very edge and most of the center, kind of like carburized steel. What is this? Is it wrought? If so, how do you forge this without it crumbling? Thanks!

Hi! I was lucky enought to create a really funny thing! It is a broken-back seax from central Europe (Great Moravia at the 9th century), and it´s interesting because of one thing - it has fake lines, that are trying to immitate PW rod and wolf´s teeth weld! So, here is how I went about it... and the last picture, well.... that´s my new love, Chewbacca.

Hello! This knife was ordered by a girlfriend who anted a gift for her loved one, for his birthday. Since the man in question reenacts 10th century, central Europe, I have searhed for somethin nicely decorated, yet not overly complicated because of the budget. I have found a piece of bone that had a carving of two birds, and I decided to use that on a knife. This is the result: Wrought iron body with tool steel edge, carved antler handle (peacock?), and a simple sheath decorated by wrought iron ftting (also from a find). aaand a litle shot of the wrought structure:

Sorry to annoy with this question. I have some of my granddad's old wine barrels. These are at least 80 years old and no longer good for wine but would anyone know if the strapping is wrought iron or steel? Thanks for your input

Hi! This is my latest thing - a birthday present for my better half . It is a more complicated version of a knife I posted here some time ago... and looking at it now, I already know what I would do differently. Since it´s supposed to be a knife for a rich woman (or a woman with a rich husband), I decided to reconstruct one copper inlaid chape... it was my third inlay so far, and I must say that I am not completely satisfied with the thickness of my lines, nor with their straightness... well, I will do better next time, hopefully. Oh yes, and the knife is with wrought iron body (forgewelded from 4 different wroughts to get a bigger piece ) and tool steel edge. Rest of the sheath is sewn with a hand-spun linen thread.

Hello! Honestly, I thought it would be much simpler to oven-weld the muffin-dough than to forge-weld the edge to the wrought iron body... boy was I wrong.... But, everything turned out good in the end and both my welding sessions were successful This knife is a woman´s knife from 9th century, somewhat specific to Great Moravia (as far as I know), with it´s riveted antler scales and fulltang construction. I´ve made a modest sheath for it, and impregnated it with hot lard. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the muffins

I recently came into a bunch of wrought iron bars. They came out of a factory built sometime in the 1800s, are about an inch in diameter and look to be some kind of structural tie rods. Iv attached a couple pictures. I have not worked with wrought iron much and with a quick search here did not find an overview of the subject. Specifically, I am wondering if its possible to tell before trying if this material could be used as is, or would it need to be drawn out and rewelded (multiple times?) before being used in a blade? Are there some types of objects which are a better source of wrought for including in blades? Im pretty excited about this find and any information would be welcome.

So Today I picked up a bit of wrought in the form of an old wagon wheel hoop. Roughly 5ft diameter, almost 2 inches wide and roughly half an inch thick. All for 60 bucks. Sorry for the large pictures and my very thick cut on the metal, i dont have a thin cutting wheel as of right now. Also, may pickup an anvil for around 200 bucks pending sale of a go-kart. Its very clear im going to have to fold this over itself several times before drawing into an axe body or knife spine.