Bloomery langseax collab ....

[Scott A. Roush]

Zeb Deming smelted some steel from ore and then processed the bloomery product through a smaller Evenstad furnace to clean up slag and add carbon. He then consolidated, combined with raw bloom and forged a beautiful seax which he then sent to me. I did some more forging to lengthen and narrow the blade and now I've started fitting it. The is a non-commissioned work and will be available upon completion. If an interested party wants aboard now.. and wants a say in the finished product.. then you better hurry! :-) Here are some pictures of the process.

[Scott A. Roush]

And here are some images that I'm using for inspiration. It will be a 'narrow langseax'.. Frankish. The grip was going to be wrap welded iron bolster, Ceylon ebony divided by fossilized walrus bone rings, and iron pommel....

 

But now I'm considering organic alone.. perhaps with thin copper spacers??

 

Here is the blade after heat treat (hardened up well!)... and organic components:

 

I got the heat treat done and it hardened up nicely. That is always a relief when dealing with traditional steel. AND.. my inlays didn't melt or pop out. Another relief. There are a couple of warps that will be worked out during temper.

Here is a picture showing the organic components coming together. Doing this has put me into a quandary. All of a sudden it is very compelling to use only the ebony and bone rather than iron.. perhaps some thin bronze spacers. But the purity of the black and white seems good to me... must think on it. Any opinions? The altnerative was to do iron bolster and pommel...

[Phil Ullrich]

I like where this is going. Plain ebony and bone would look really nice. metal spacers...maybe be too much.

[Alan Longmire]

I like the ebony and bone, but I also like the idea of iron bolster and pommel (blackened), or even just pommel. If you feel you must use metal spacers, shim stock thickness would be my preference.

 

You're a brave man to do the HT after the wire inlay! On the plus side, that does insure it's never coming loose.

[Mark Green]

Sweet!!!!

[Scott A. Roush]

Thanks guys...

 

I'm leaning towards mostly bone and ebony with some dimed copper shim stock at the bolster.. maybe at pommel.

 

Alan.. I was a bit nervous about the inlays. But I had already normalized so I wasn't worried about melting. Mostly I was worried about hardening stress.. but I believe I solved that by applying clay over the inlays up the spine a bit. I also wanted those areas softer as I intend to do a bit more work.. and I have one more inlay to do. That little 'godhead' plaque you see in the above pictures...

[John F. Ellis]

Really nice! I'm loving it.

[Jim P]

Very cool, love the inlays.

[N. Runals]

I've always loved that langseax you're basing it off of. I trust you won't be done with it in the next week and a half so I can see it haha?

[Luke Shearer]

I love collaborations this is a good one. If you dont mind my input, I think the wrapped wrought iron bolster would suit this rather well, as long as you go somewhat simpler for the rest of the grip.

[Scott A. Roush]

Thanks again folks.

 

Nate.. it might be further along than you think.. or not. This won't be the easiest grip I've ever done. I've had an interest in an ebony/bone combination grip like this ever since seeing one of Patrick Barta's Migration swords:

 

[Geoff Hardy]

I used Barta's piece on the seax I made for inspiration as well, I used ebonized oak and I had to remake some of the wood components about five times! Daves epoxy putty trick was very helpful.

Look forward to seeing this Scott.

[Scott A. Roush]

Geoff... Yeah. The wood is the part that seems tricky to me. I guess I'm not familiar with Dave's trick? Is this a way of temporarily putting together for shaping and then disassembling? I was recently given the idea to use the double sided carpet tape. But I haven't tried it yet. The hot glue you use for attaching points to arrows is possible too.. But somebody shoot me a link for Dave's trick!

[N. Runals]

It's just two part epoxy putty to fill the void in the handle, then you grease up the tang, put it in, and it will slide free and keep just the perfect shape of the tang. I bet you do something similar with JB or something.

[ZebDeming]

Awesome work Scott! This blade had iron from most of my smelts last year, most of it was remelted in my small hearth, but a good portion of it was some very nice steel I got in the smelt I used crushed taconite pellets, straight from the bloom. There's some from the smelt that I used Mark Green's magnetite, and some from his easy brown ore. Three different ore sources, some remelted and some not. What I do to process these is to press small pucks flat and then stack them, forge weld em up, and then start folding, all the hearth processed bloom steel was folded a few times seperate from the straight bloom steel, which was folded a few times, to give me two billets, these were stacked and then folded, I lost count of how many folds I used, as once I get into a rhythm of welding and folding I kinda zone out

Scott is gonna do this steel some justice, something I can't do, I can't wait to see what he does with it

 

Zeb

[Scott A. Roush]

Zeb.. you used just regular taconite pellets?! I thought that stuff was pretty low in FE and high in slag? I have a bag of them and they barely stick to the magnet.

 

Well.. it is very nice steel. Some of the best hardness I've seen in traditional steel. Sparks nicely and very nice hada. I'm going to give this blade a pretty high polish and go for minimal etching.

 

Nate: ahh... Yes. I do that with bondo. But the look I'm going for will require that all pieces are shaped together and then taken apart for individual finishing. So I need a way to temporarily keep the pieces together. I'm excited to try the carpet tape.

[ZebDeming]

Scott, crush up the pellets and run em, crushing them is a pain, but they work well.

 

Zeb

[GEzell]

That is gonna be an awesome blade...

Geoff... Yeah. The wood is the part that seems tricky to me. I guess I'm not familiar with Dave's trick? Is this a way of temporarily putting together for shaping and then disassembling? I was recently given the idea to use the double sided carpet tape. But I haven't tried it yet. The hot glue you use for attaching points to arrows is possible too.. But somebody shoot me a link for Dave's trick!

You may be too far along for this to help, but when I make handles with multiple parts (yes I do occasionally make multi-part handles) I first make copper spacers to go between each piece (either utilized in the design or discarded afterwards). These copper spacers get the tang hole drilled and filed, then two 1/16" holes either side of the tang. Then the spacers serve as a template to dill the holes in the actual handle material, and the 1/16" holes are drilled about 1/4 to 1/2" deep... once all the holes are drilled, 1/16" pins are inserted into the holes and used to keep everything in perfect alignment as the handle is shaped, allowing the handle to be taken apart or reassembled accurately, in perfect alignment, as needed. They also are glued in when the handle is finished, giving a strong mechanical bond that completely prevents the glue bond breaking and the pieces rotating no matter what you do to the handle short of complete destruction.

 

Extra parts and overbuilding, yes, but its cool when the handle snaps together like lego blocks....

[Scott A. Roush]

Thanks George. I agree.. I LOVE when things go together with a 'SNAP'! I've been thinking about using pins.. but want to try the tape or hot glue first. But all it takes is a little shift.. and then crap.

 

Anyway.. just got back from a weekend away with the family and noticed that this got pinned! Nice... my first pin. :-) Thanks for that...

[Kevin Colwell]

Great start. this one is really interesting to me. watching for sure.

kc

[Scott A. Roush]

A little more work...

 

Blade sanded to 1000 grit. No etching... beautiful steel...

 

[Mark Green]

Zeb, is the man!!!!

 

Very pretty!!!

[Jesus Hernandez]

Nice work, guys.

[Scott A. Roush]

Well things have changed a little bit since this project has now been taken up as a commission. I will now be using more of the native Upper Peninsula raw copper as an ongoing theme. i.e. spacer/bolster, 'ellefen head' inlay and a small tri-lobed pommel. The customer also wants a light etch to see the bloomery steel hada and to contrast with the copper.

Here is the native copper. This stuff comes directly from the mines and still has rock and other minerals attached to it. For this project I'm just cutting off bits and cold forging them to shape:





Flattening the bone spacers on my disk grinder:



The 'ellefen head' inlay and a bind rune that I'm using as a mark.



The blade with a light etch and the first part of the grip coming together. The 'engraving' in the wood is taken from some Frankish casting and is back filled with bone char made from the bone itself.

[John Page]

I love the look of the copper and the contrast with the steel. Can't wait to see more!

 

John