West Heslerton Grave 74 Sword: Attempt #1

[Andrew W]

I've just finished a reproduction of one of my favorite early medieval swords, the sixth-century serpent-bladed spatha from the cemetery at West Heslerton (UK).

 

West Heslerton is a weird and wonderful cemetery. It was discovered by a gravel mining company, and was subsequently excavated, analyzed, and published to a delightfully thorough extent. The cemetery is in the north of England, between York and Scarborough. Many of the burial practices are unusual compared to the rest of England. There are graves with unique types of amulets, at least one female-sexed person buried with weapons (next to a Bronze Age barrow), and a lot of other cool things. Most importantly for us, the iron artifacts were all analyzed in a lab and we have metallographic studies of many of the spearheads and, happily, the sword.

 

The sword was made with a central serpentine twist, achieved by welding a low-phosphorus bar between two high-phosphorus strips. It had steel edges, which were slack quenched and had a bainite microstructure. The whole metallographic analysis, conducted by Brian Gilmour, is published in this wonderful book:

 

 

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For my reproduction, I used bloomery iron and steel from 6 different smelts. Five of the smelts were mine, and the sixth was high-P iron I bought from Lee Sauder.

 

One of the blooms:

 

 

I welded up two edge bars from 16-layer high-carbon bloom sandwiched between bloomery iron.

 

 

For the central core, I welded a single bar of 16-layer medium-carbon steel between two 4-layer bars of high-phosphorus iron. I then sandwiched that between two bars of folded low- and medium-carbon iron/steel. (In hindsight, I shouldn't have used medium-carbon steel; it kept wanting to burn at the high welding heats. Lesson learned for next time.)

 

I twisted a zig-zag pattern into the bar...

 

 

...and forged it back to square, creating the central serpent twist. This is how the original was done (rather than the method of cutting out wedges with a chisel or bandsaw).

 

Then I welded up the bars...

 

 

 

 

...and marked out the distal taper, in 1/5ths increments (6-5mm thick for the first 1/5, 5-4,mm for the next 2/5ths, and 4-2mm for the final 2/5ths)...

 

 

...and forged the profile.

 

 

Some careful grinding to clean up the surface:

 

 

The pattern is pretty shallow, so I tried not to take off too much--always a challenge with these surface-level patterns.

 

 

It barely warped in the quench!

 

 

I tempered in hot oil, bending out a few little warps between heats.

 

 

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The sword's hilt was made from cattle horn, none of which survived. We have a good idea what these hilts looked like, however, thanks to some lucky soil chemistry at a different cemetery (Snape, UK) which preserved many of the horn and wood artifacts.

 

Here's the Snape hilt:

And here's mine:

 

 

Capping off its horn hilt, the West Heslerton sword had a small copper-alloy pommel. This would have been cast, and was hollow. I'm not up for that, so I ground mine from solid brass. Most early medieval British copper alloy was made from recycled Roman metal; mine was a recycled door pull.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this, I spent most of a day sanding the blade, wrapping up with a ferric chloride etch (5:1 water : FeCl, 4x15-min etches).

 

I assembled the sword (with help from a bit of epoxy--cheating!), then carefully peened the tang. This part always makes me nervous!

And: done!

 

I like it. The serpent twist is, imo, too narrow. I'll spread the central bar more on my second attempt. But for a first try (and the third sword I've ever made), I'm happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Brian Dougherty]

Day-um dude!  Well done.

 

Some posts around here amaze me.  Some yank my ego out and body slam it.

 

14 minutes ago, Andrew W said:

... But for a first try (and the third sword I've ever made), I'm happy.

 

Then there are the ones that do both...

[Alan Longmire]

What Brian said.    I love it!  And well done indeed, sir.  

[Jaro Petrina]

That is shockingly good.

[Bjorn Gylfason]

Absolutely brilliant work 

[Joshua States]

Freaking awesome work. I love that bloomey steel.

[Doug Lester]

Nothing wrong with the serpent layer.  The horn guard is fantastic.

 

Doug

[Andrew W]

Here’s the scabbard!

 

 

Scabbards are, of course, tricky things for archaeologists to study. They quickly decompose in archaeological sites; no sixth-century scabbard has survived complete.

 

But tiny traces survive: the sheepskin lining and wooden core sometimes rust onto the sword blade, and occasionally that rust contains traces of the leather exterior and its decoration. Archaeologist Esther Cameron, in her wonderful book, Sheaths and Scabbards in England, has brought all this evidence together. I couldn’t have made this scabbard without her work.

 

My scabbard is lined with sheepskin and has a wood core (poplar). It’s wrapped in leather and bound with a linen tablet-woven tape, and has a baldric to wear over the shoulder.

[Charles dP]

Most excellent work Andrew. I love it.

 

Trying to get me head around how you did the serpent. If I understand it: you held the piece in a vice then, using 2 wrenches at a time, twisted in opposite directions along the length. After this you forged it down on the twisted edge to set the patterns before squaring up the sides. This last step would make the waves ‘shallower’ again but, with enough initial twist, leave the serpent. Is this right or do I need to find another tree to bark up at?

[Andrew W]

What I did was clamp it in the vise and twist it 90*, grasping the bar directly next to the vise jaws. Then I moved the part I just twisted into the vise (rotating the bar) and twisted the next segment the opposite direction, 90*.

 

I think you could also use two wrenches the way you suggested, but I found it easier to move the bar in the vise each time instead.

 

To forge it square without untwisting it, you have to forge the extra material (the humps that stick out on each curve) down into the valleys. If you focus on moving the metal rather than smashing it flat, the twists will survive.

[Joshua States]

I am having considerable difficulty visualizing that process, but bravo! It worked really well.

[Brian Dougherty]

10 hours ago, Joshua States said:

I am having considerable difficulty visualizing that process, but bravo! It worked really well.

 

Yeah, I have to admit I haven't grasped it yet either.  I think this means you have to do it again to teach us all