Hearth Steel Seaxes WIP

[Aiden CC]

Some more progress, and I may have started another one…

 

I don’t like fitting bolsters or guards, so I decided I would try punching the slot. I would say it worked fairly well! I will probably have to peen over a few bits and file them but I think it’s pretty close. The bar is wrought iron anchor chain forged thick for the lower bolster and thin for the upper bolster. This is for the narrow sax. 

Oops . I may have overheated the tip a little bit, but the rest seems to be pretty solid. No other cracks or defects that I could see while forging. I was going for something a bit longer, but this should be the right size for a Coppergate inspired knife/seax. This is a butt weld of 8 fold hearth steel and anchor chain, admittedly I was getting a bit tired of the difficulties coming from inlaying a steel edge, I had a prolonged struggle with a funayuki using this material, so I kept it simple. 

[Joshua States]

It’s been a while and I am wondering where you are at this point. This has been a good ride so far

[Aiden CC]

On 10/13/2022 at 8:01 PM, Joshua States said:

It’s been a while and I am wondering where you are at this point. This has been a good ride so far

Funny you should mention that…

 

I took a break from hearth steel for a bit after a lot of pretty high effort failures, and focused for a while on wrapping up old projects and making some of my “bread and butter” knives. After some planning and regrouping, however, I am finally back at it!

 

As always, a constant stream of consolidated material is necessary to make this work. As it stands, I’ve gotten roughly half of my last hearth batch up to a useable level of refinement. 
 

This is one of the things I reassessed. Instead of doing the warikomi or a bar or wrought welded onto sanmai, I just went for straight sanmai. Super simple, all the welding surfaces can be cleaned and fluxed easily. The outside of this billet started out as a chunk from a massive link of anchor chain and some 7 fold material drawn down very thin. 
 

I tried my very best to keep the core centered. I absolutely love a low weld line, but it’s not easy! This is about 3/4 of that bar. This ate up 2x more hearth steel than warikomi would but I have yet to successfully finish a narrow sax, so I’m trying to set myself up for success here. I also forged in convex rather than straight bevels and hope to have a thick, convex, blade after grinding. 
 

That’s all for now, thanks for looking!

[Joshua States]

Lovin' that blade profile!

[Aiden CC]

On 10/16/2022 at 9:48 AM, Joshua States said:

Lovin' that blade profile!

Thanks! I may do a closer replica of the Nijmegen seax at some point, but I decided to go for a gradual curve on the spine rather than the “clip” shape on that original. 
 

Here it is pre heat treat. Those are the forged shoulders, I’ cut the real ones after. 
 

Now I always make a point of checking the core alignment, here I did it quite early in the finish grinding. I want a heavy, convex blade, so I ground three facets and blended them. This shows the one closest to the edge. 
 

Here it is after grinding and polishing. The tip profile shows up nicely in the shadow!

 

A big stack of fittings for this one, all are wrought iron. The bolster is almost there, but it does need a bit more fitting; it’s got the 1% left that takes 50% of the time . 
 

The plan is a wood core wrapped in leather, which I’m pretty excited for. My understanding is that the handles on these were rather thin based on the fittings, right? 

[Joshua States]

On 10/22/2022 at 9:44 PM, Aiden CC said:

My understanding is that the handles on these were rather thin based on the fittings, right? 

I was actually really surprised at how narrow (from side to side) the fittings on the Nijmegen are. The shape is a teardrop with a bit of flat acoss the top. This is more prominent on the bolster (to match the wide spine of the blade) than on the pommel cap. As Peter Johnsson once told me, these are shaped like a narrow axe handle.

 

Did you hot-fit the bolster/guard?

[Alan Longmire]

GEzell always described the cross section as an appleseed with the pointy end down.  If you handled that ugly litte seax I had at the hammer-in, that's it, except the Nijmegen is even thinner and deeper.

[Aiden CC]

More progress! I may try to put some of these up for sale, so I'm making a push to get a handful done in late November as from then through mid December. Lots to do to say the least!

 

On 10/25/2022 at 9:52 AM, Joshua States said:

Did you hot-fit the bolster/guard?

I did, at least partially. To get a tight fit, I used a combination of hot fitting, filing, and peining the perimeter of the slots followed by grinding back to flat. Not a single set of flat or parallel surfaces in sight, so this was a tricky fit!

 

21 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

GEzell always described the cross section as an appleseed with the pointy end down.  If you handled that ugly litte seax I had at the hammer-in, that's it, except the Nijmegen is even thinner and deeper.

That makes sense, based on the fittings. I did make it pretty thin, I think if I went any further it would start to feel a bit undersized, given how heavy this blade is.

 

The core will be completely covered, so I went ahead and fit it with a chisel. On some other blades, I want to try this with a leather wrap and no metal fittings (I believe there was a broadsax somewhere I saw a picture of which was like that?).

 

Here is how I thinned down the core; bevels on both ends until the leather fit well, the sides taken down to that bevel on the grinder, and then some slight curves cut in with a file. The fittings are also etched and glued on in the second photo.

 

Some leatherwork, the first of quite a bit! In the future, I have plans of lining sheaths with sheepskin, but this one will just be leather and brass. I also skived down the edges of a piece of leather for the handle wrap. I swear one of these days I'll finish the handle on that puukko all the way. It has a few flaws that caused me to keep it, so it has a bit of "cobbler's children" syndrome going on.

 

A quick short sax made from a billet I welded up from the scraps of the narrow sax and some additional wrought iron. I will probably try cutting in some grooves to dress it up a bit. The clipped point is also something I want to experiment with, as it does seem to show up on a number of saxes, especially the earlier ones. 

 

Finally, a little experiment with welding. There are a number of blades where the steel terminates and there are flow lines in the iron going around it, suggesting something like this. I want to work up to making some langsaxes with this material, after the narrow sax, I want to try a broadsax or perhaps a Scandinavian inspired sax to see how it goes to make something longer and wider, before moving up to something in the 50 cm + range.

[Alan Longmire]

Rock on!

 

I use 1oz (~0.7 - 0.9 mm) calfskin for my handle wraps, it works really well.  

[Aiden CC]

8 hours ago, Alan Longmire said:

Rock on!

 

I use 1oz (~0.7 - 0.9 mm) calfskin for my handle wraps, it works really well.  

Thanks! I used goat skin, in a similar thickness, but it was fairly soft (the skiving was tricky), so I ordered some calfskin. It did work alright though, I like the color it took with the dye. These pictures aren’t the best, but I won’t have time to take any while the sun is out for a while: 

 

 

[Joshua States]

Nice work. The trick to getting that leather seam to disappear is to skive it so thin the edge gets ragged rather than staying straight.

Then wet it and tie it with string.

Edited October 27, 2022 by Joshua States

[Alan Longmire]

I like it!  And what Joshua said.  

[Aiden CC]

7 hours ago, Joshua States said:

Nice work. The trick to getting that leather seam to disappear is to skive it so thin the edge gets ragged rather than staying straight.

Then wet it and tie it with string.

Thank you! Also, this is one of the reasons I wanted to get some stiffer leather. The goat skin skived in a weird way as the flesh side was rather soft and the skin side very thin and elastic. The seam is thinned down to zero, but it got fairly "pilly" and was very tricky to get a good ragged edge that was also thin/didn't have a bunch of pills hanging off of it as trimming the pills affected the edge. I did actually wrap this with a large diameter cord, but burnished it afterwards. Next time I think I will try wrapping with smaller cord and maybe adding some risers.

 

23 minutes ago, Alan Longmire said:

I like it!  And what Joshua said.  

Thank you! It just needs the sheath furniture done and it will be all wrapped up.

 

I had some trouble with a billet for a broadsax, I think some of my feed stock has compositional issues (S/Cu maybe?) because the hearth steel works fine until it gets drawn out in a san may bar, and then it starts cracking. I separated the material by source and it only happens to some of it. For my next few runs, I have a 20 lb link of anchor chain, so if it's good, I should be able to get a consistent material. Regardless, the little guy did survive heat treatment, this time with only a little bit of sori:

 

[Gary LT]

“I swear one of these days I'll finish the handle on that puukko all the way. It has a few flaws that caused me to keep it, so it has a bit of "cobbler's children" syndrome going on.”

Aiden, PUUKKO caught my eye also (besides this hearth steel work I follow)

I would not do anything with the PUUKKO. The shape is same as what I like and put in my knives. If you’d like me to examine it closer, I’ll send my address and postage!!!
Keep up this good work!!

Gary LT

 

[Aiden CC]

On 10/27/2022 at 11:43 AM, Gary LT said:

“I swear one of these days I'll finish the handle on that puukko all the way. It has a few flaws that caused me to keep it, so it has a bit of "cobbler's children" syndrome going on.”

Aiden, PUUKKO caught my eye also (besides this hearth steel work I follow)

I would not do anything with the PUUKKO. The shape is same as what I like and put in my knives. If you’d like me to examine it closer, I’ll send my address and postage!!!
Keep up this good work!!

Gary LT

 

Thank you! I think to look right the handle needs to very subtly go from straight, to concave, to convex, to transition from the ferrule to the bark. I have some flexible belts I will probably try slack grinding it with. 
 

Now for saxes. First, some better photos of the narrow sax:

 

Definitely a beast, this one. With the handle and blade dimensions, you can really feel the forward weight. Any narrower on the handle and I think it would start to feel hard to control with this blade weight. 
 

Finally, a broad sax blade all forged out. This is a two bar billet with a warikomi edge and wrought iron spine.  This is the biggest blade I have ever made, and with the challenges that came along with it, I’m glad I didn’t just jump into making a langsax! I’ve already made some mistakes I hope to avoid on the next big blade. Just looking at it in the photo, I may need to either cut or forge the tip; it’s too close to the spine, while it should be a bit closer to the edge. In fact, the profile is an exact mirror of how it should be! Could be a good way to make the blade a whole number of Osco-Umbrian inches .

[Joshua States]

16 hours ago, Aiden CC said:

Osco-Umbrian inches

Now I'm laughing....

 

16 hours ago, Aiden CC said:

In fact, the profile is an exact mirror of how it should be!

 

There are some examples of this in the historical record. Alan and I have had a chuckle over some of the examples in books where we swear the smith forgot which side of the bar was what.

 

[Aiden CC]

A bit of leather and brass work and the narrow sax is all wrapped up!

 

These are all of the fittings, two suspension bars and round washers. I have a plan for how to make these differently in the future to be more like the bosses seen on a lot of sheath fines. The rivets are made from round headed nails peened on one side. 
 

Based on the positions of things like buckles etc in some grave finds, presumably sliders like this had belts wrapped through them to create a 3+ point suspension depending on how it was attached around the waist. These little rivets are tricky since they can buckle inside the leather, but I like how they look. 

[Gary LT]

I really like the over symmetry and shape on this. It looks like it will handle well.

Good job Aiden!

Gary LT

[Alan Longmire]

That came out nice!

[Doug Lester]

Spot on!

 

Doug

[Aiden CC]

Thanks, all! Now onto wrapping up a few more. 
 

I tried out a lined sheath for this Iron Age style knife. My dog was not excited when he heard the trimmers! I think the liner needed to be shorn down closer, the stitching could use some work, and I got hide glue everywhere, so this one will be chalked up to practice. The incised decorations came out better than I thought they might though!

[Aiden CC]

Still plugging along on these when I have time. I’m pretty behind on sheaths so that will be next!

 

I originally wasn’t a big fan of an edge bar as opposed to sanmai, but this one may have changed my mind. I have plans for a larger broken back seax, I may prepare the material as a square edge bar. 
 

I decided to try out a leather wrap with no fittings, this seems like something that could have existed, as there are tons of grips with no fittings metal fittings and a few with signs of leather. It was a challenge, but I like the look and feel. I was able to skive the edges of this leather much thinner than the goat skin and get a real ragged edge. I also decided to add some risers, as the handle is on the smaller side.
 

Pretty pleased with how it turned out, I have a lot of ideas about making more handles like this! Lines carved on the “back” like you see on a lot of examples. 

Edited November 13, 2022 by Aiden CC

[Charles dP]

Ooh! I like that. Nice one Aiden

[Alan Longmire]

Those both came out great.  I like edge bars, myself.  

[Gary LT]

Aiden, I really like both and especially the handle with risers, gotta keep the idea in mind for in the future.

are you planning any sort of pommel? 
Gary LT