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I Forge Iron

7 Day sword class at Bushfire forge June 2014


basher

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I am currently 5 days into a 7 Day sword smithing class . I have been photographing the progress for Facebook and thought it ,may well be interesting for here as well.

 The class has 7 students and we will be making a single handed double edged sword,  we forge , normalise , grind, normalise, straighten, normalise , harden and temper ..... Then straighten, grind , re-temper and polish the blade before punching out the guard and forging it and then fitting the guard to blade.....we then insett the blade in the guard , burn in handles .

     I have pre punched the pommels as I have found that punching a very thin hole through 60mm steel is not something that can be taught to beginners..... all the fittings are polished before the blade is sharpened and the sword finally assembled, glued up and peened over...........

 

 The students will end up with a finished and " Real" sword over the 7 days , This is my 15th sword class and I have taken nearly 100 students now ( I think I am at 98 at end of this class) through the process of making a sword....Most of the students are complete beginners.

 

 I have a very well equipped workshop with one grinder per student and numerous forges and anvils as well as my own tooling to speed things along if necessary.

         Sword making is a specialist field of smithing and it has its specific challenges....and frustrations.....and its hard work.....But................

 It is possible to make a good sword on a one week class  if you are willing to put the work in .............

 

I have not managed to capture all of what has been going on....of course as I am mostly busy trying to teach the class, but I hope that this gives a good idea.

 

Day 1:-

 We start the class by forging a dagger blade, this is our test piece and gives the students a good chance to try out forging and grinding on a sacrificial piece before committing to forging out their sword blade.

     unfortunately I was too busy to capture this ...

The sword blades are forged from EN45 a silicone spring steel that I am very familiar with, It is tough as old boots and its closest US equivalent is  5160. I use it for mono steel swords and crossbow prods (up to 1400 lb so far).....

  I pre form the sword tang and a little distal taper on the power hammer, this saves students around a days hard bashing.....

 students forge the sword point:-

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and then move on to forging the bevels...I was lucky enough to be taught sword smithing  by Don Fogg and whilst my own smithing is a little more free style  than Don's exacting forging, his method of Bevel forging is something that I am grateful to be passing on to students. Don was a great influence on me and understood meticulous forging techniques..... I am careful to make sure that I mention that the bevel forging is HIS method of forging...I see no loss of face in giving credit to some of the great Makers who have taught me so much, keeps the ball rolling so to speak...I have been lucky with the people I have managed to learn from.

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Its a hard days work  but at the end of it everybody is pretty pumped.

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 one day down 6 to go .....more later........

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I've enjoyed seeing the updates on FB.  The swords are turning out very nice!  I like how everyone has gotten to forge different styles.  Golden opportunity for someone wanting to forge their own sword.

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I to am envious of these students.  Why can't we have this in South California?  

 

 

Too dangerous. Probably need to have background checks on everyone as well as a 5 day waiting period before you can get your steel... LOL :P

 

 

The Brits may not be easily able to own guns any more, but they have a long history of being able to tote around over sized cutlery. After all you never know when this might come in handy. The British were thinking about arming the Home Gaurd in WWII with pikes. I'm still not sure who thought a guy with a 12 to 18 foot pointy stick was going to do anything against a guy armed with a sub machine gun, but I guess you had to make do with what you had. LOL :D

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Well..... sword Smiths are few and far between and you have to be very well set up to run a class like this.....

 I am very lucky in that I worked on scrap heap challenge as an engineer for 3 years , the UK pre-curser to the American Junk yard wars...My Job there was to guide people through doing an impossible  engineering build in a day.....It taught me a lot about what people are capable of if given the chance.....

 

 Day 2:-

 Another long day of Bashing steel, most of the blades are forged out, 2 days in and we are nearly done with the forging... such is the reality of sword smithing. Swords are born in the forge but they come to age on the grinder.....

 

 Gabriel forging some fine bevels...

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Jet and Ian contemplating where to hit next

 

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Me doing a little tweaking...

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the blades at the end of Day 2

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The class  at the end of the day buoyant but a little more tired than after day 1....

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fantastic.  So many people want to be able to make swords, but can not really do it unless they have the skills.   Very good of you to allow them a chance to gain those skills.  You must be a good teacher, because they seem to be doing quite well.

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Thanks for the comments, I will update later today.

 The green machine may well need a motor asap ( I have one for it) as my sahinla stopped working 2 days ago.......buzzing motor so either blown or lose phase Ill see tomorow.

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Day 3

 the students are introduced to the grinders, Like I mentioned the swords are born in the fire but they grow up on the grinder.

 We do one normalising after forging and before the sword goes to the grinder, I do 3 in total and save the other two for straightening, sword making is a job of straightening, forge it straighten it , normalise it straighten it , grind it straighten it ad infinitum....

 the forged blanks are scraped clean with an angle grinder.

 

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and then the grinding begins....... Before I started teaching swordmaking I thought that it would be the forging people would find hard......but its not. freehand grinding is an incredibly subtle thing....luckily the human body is pretty clever.

 

so to the grinders we go.......

 

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   The En45 steel I use is deep hardening so the grinding pre hardening is about getting the sword blank even, even bevels , even edges, even thickness.

 the blades are then normalised to a total of 3 times, some were renormalised to straighten during grinding.

 

into the Fogg furnace at 900C (En45 has a high austenising temp). I have an electronic furnace but prefer the Fogg furnace as I can allow the blades to straighten up under gravity if needed.

 

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Day 3 continued.

 

As the blades normalise we take a break, in this case an axe break, well apparently a hair down Axe break.....

 

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er no not that kind of axe.......

 

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anyhow, back the the serious job of quenching.

 

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by the end of the day we have 3 blades quenched and in temper, so 3 students are holding the heptiseaqx in the end of day photo

 

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Day 4

 

We started day 4 by getting the remaining  blades through the quench, no other miraculous straight blades so after a little post temper straightening it was back to the grinder.I like people to leave a little meat on the blade pre HT so most of the blades needed a little post HT diet .....More  grinding it is.

 

 Jet running some fine bevels

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Karl loosing a little tank weight

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an thinning his blade out

 

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end of the day... "is this thin enough"

 

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the blades at the end of the day, looking a lot better and one pommel on the way.

 

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End of the day, I have promised more forging tomorow so people are happy....

 

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Day 5.

 Today we worked on guards, the biggest job  when making a sword ,apart from the blade of course is the fitting of the guard to the blade. I like the blades to be insett into the guard, so we first make a punch similar to the tang shape but slightly smaller and then fettle the hole with a dremmel and have the blade sitting in a blade shaped recess.....

 once the blade is recessed we then shape the guard so that it is square to the blade.....most of the sword guard were simple a couple not so much so.

 

I get people to punch in pairs, I normally do it solo.

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more punching

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Here is the basic form we are looking for neatly Done by Gabriel.

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Jeremy giving it some welly, kind of have to with punching.

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Elliots guard was a little trickier more distance to punch through and more shape integrity so we used a slitter....

 

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continued....

 

this guard had the hole drift sideways a little so I re configured the slitter to a one sided profile and re aligned the hole...

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then Elliot forged the guard roughly to shape.

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Gabriel working on his different version of a guard.

 

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a little more work on a pommel.

 

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 The job of fitting blade to sword takes a while and is a job of little by little and often but not going too far and then blade insetting is done with dremmel and chisel. I want the guards to be a tight fit , needing bashing on with a hammer.14284716308_f4ddb401ed_c.jpg.

 

 

By the end of the day we have gotten a lot further along the path to making a sword and things are coming together.....

 

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