dancho

This is one of my last visions of the free forging hammers which goes together with a cross peen and flat ones

In many ways it resembles the geometry of ancient battle axes which is no wonder – they serve quite similar functions.

Weight is around 800 g. The body is made of mild steel, the faces are forge welded with 0.8 % C steel.   I would like to stress that welding the faces of the hammer is not only valuable from the point of view of historical reconstruction.  It is defintely gives a very special feeling of the metal forged.  Maybe it is vibrations being damped in the very soft middle maybe something else. 

The handle is self wedged.  No grinding as usual.

1. Bogdan Popov
   2) Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine
   3) Axes, hammers, knives,  tradtional forged tools, all kinds of traditional items a village blacksmith did, making blacksmiths (teaching blacksmithing)
   
   4)  I started in 1988 when came to work as a blacksmith apprentice in Kiev

5)   It was actully quite good German old anvil but it was stolen the next day I started  and I had to carry on with ugly Soviet one
6) Terrible huge uneconomic plate 50 to 50 cm with many holes, burning sacks of antracite every day nobody cared for as it was almost free in Soviet times. 
7)  First was a good artist and sculptor Oleg Stasyuk (died in 2000).  The next and real teacher was famous russian bladesmith Vyacheslav Basov (died in 2003)
8)   No changes really for all these years.  Always magic and mysterious
9)  Char coal actully.  When I started to use it after antracite I felt like I learned to fly.  Of course designing my own hammers helped a lot  but it was gradual evolutionary change

10) Do not try to get many tools  at the beginning especially power ones.  Work in simple ways first with just the anvil and hammer.  Get the spirit of blacksmithing.  The spirit is the most important. It will guide you.
11)   Do not forget about magic.   We are magic blacksmiths, not just industrial workers.  We change the world by our hammers and hands.  Hopefully for good
12) . Well,  I always felt I am kind of attracting women when working  at forge.  That’s how I met and merried my sweet heart. 

Dancho,

I am a fan of your work. A few months ago, I made a small axe so I could try to make the eye with the two elongated spurs on top. I dont know if that is a good description but you probably get the idea. To do this,I slit and punched the eye so that there was about a half inch or so of material above the slit. This gave me enough material to pull the spurs out as you have done.I opened the hole and inserted a cold bar . This gave me an "internal anvil" on which I could easily pound the heated top and move the metal to form the spurs. Is that the techniques you use? I believe you said you dont weld other than the steel for the bit.

Good work!

Yes, you can work on a drift inserted in the hole.   But I prefer working on the anvil horne since it gives more control and things work faster.    Leave more material for the butt -- at least a ful inch above the slit

Beautiful as always.  May I ask what the symbol represents? 

For me this is sun rolling across the sky above the earth.  Nothing else.   No mystics. No religion.  No  ideology. Just life on the earth as it is.

very impressive, dancho!   especially for forge only.  beyond my skills currently.   did they use the back side for hammering also?  or is that a handle reinforcement?  Does that type of socket use a wedge in the handle or is there some other method?

Thank you! Yes you can use the back as a hammer substitute .  At least I do it for drivng wood pegs or such when camping with this type.  No wedge in the handle.   It's is a self-wedged handle type.   Bigger on the top and you put it throught the upper part of the eye

The
battle   Slavic axe   “Svarog”.

Weight 700 g.     Edge width 130 mm.

 

The body is

mild steel.   The edge is wrap welded
with 0.9 carbon steel. Pure forging.  No
grinding involved

 

The eye is egg saheped and intended for self-wedged handle.

 

The hole in the middle of the blade is for sheath fixation with a small wooden pin

 

 

hand made beauty !! hope all good with you dancho :)

Not too bad  actually... :)  Thank you!

Another idea I tried to get  here (now purely artistic) is the play between the butt and the edge lines so it looks quite much like the double edge axe.  

I like it Dancho, it has the look of a tool someone who was more interested in it's function would own.

 

Who and what time period would this be from?

 

Frosty The Lucky.

Thank you!

 

The period is around 9-10-11 centuries AD.   Area -- Eastern Europe (Slavic and Baltic tribes).

 

This one I made has no specific prototype  -   I made It for my friend who is into bushcraft axe carving.    He was with me while I made it and he guided the the process very much. That's why the long sharp nose appeared and curved pretty wide edge (for it's modest weight).   So this is purely functional thing. The closest original is here.

 

Another addtion to the ancient prototype is the oval eye  since the majority of them had pure round or thick egg.   My friend wanted it since he feels more comfortable with oval cross section rather then round one.

 

Basicly what still makes this axe belonging to this specific family is the charactestic long butt (mustaches) and quite wide neck from the top and narrow from the side. 

 

The mustaches I made here are the longest I ever made -- 120 mm.   I drawn them to even 140 mm fist but had to upsett for the butt to be no wider then the blade.   Still good experiment...

 The ancient russian axe with   carving blade.   Weight 800 g.   Blade width 140 mm.   Butt width 120 mm.   Body mild steel .   Edge is split weld with 0.9 % C steel.  Pure forging.   No grinding involved

 

Replaceble self-wedged handles (not shown) of different length

 

Gentlemen!
I suggest that we move discussion on the texture, grain, NMI or whatever of this kind into separate topic and continue there. I will put there information I have on the subject and ready to change my opinion and learn from others with low profile. I am defintely not an expert in metallurgy. I admit that my claims on this specific subject were too quick and not carefull. Excuse me.

Same for the heat treatment and decarbonisation though here I feel more confident. Separate topics.

However the main point of my initial message was to not about mettallurgy. The question was

but to help "Shape" the blade what are you folks using?? It will be awesome for the wood on the handles, but I need to find something to help my bad forging

My points are:

• We can do pretty well by SHAPING the blades by forging alone and do not need a grinder not to mention any space technologies. The grinder is not a replacement for forging skills though they are not quick to learn. Forging blades to final shape is quick and efficient at least with carbon steels. We do not need to make simple and energy efficient things that already work more complicated and energy consuming as well as to omitt the art of forging for the benefit of mythical “productivity” unless going to deprive Chinese folks of their jobs. :)
• After you have forged the blade you can refine the outline, get the surface plane and sharpen the blade by a FILE. Files are great qick, precise tool largely omitted now.

Apart from these advantages they do not consume the electricity (thus adding pollution to the environment), silent, safe and can be recycled after use into the next blades which corresponds to the modern principle of sustainable production called “from cradle to cradle”.

I am qiute sure that my smithing qualification, skills and experince are adequate to support these claims.
I put it it here since feel responsible to give the younger brothers who enter the world of smithing the complete picture. It is up to them whether they use the information.

I would like to take my time now to respond to Owen Bush meessage which contains very important points needed a discussion and this goes beyond the problem of grinding. It is about basic values of our art andor craft. Maybe a separate topic is needed again.

Thank you!

Bogdan Popov

 

The topics have been split as per request

Dancho I will stay on the other side of this fence,,glad it is working well for you.

I have always believed that in the heat treat process including normalizing and hardening,,and maybe a little bit in the trmpering side. All things done to the steel during forgingtime are changed. Whether you have forged and maybe align particles or have sheared them of them with a grinder, The heat puts them back to a standard structure. And this is why I brought up edge packing..it to me is the same thing.

And you mentioned bolts The good ones for sure are forged  and no doubt adds strength in the end...However they are not then put through the heat treat process to completion or any benefits from the forging would be lost.

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts,,,,

 

Thank you too! I enjoy the discussion.

It has worked not only for me but for the centuries of smiths before.  It is really amazing  how we came to forgett the things obvious for any illiterate smith in some ukrainian village a hundred years ago as well as to his illiterate customer  came for a knife.

 

As I said the texture is not about grains and nothing happens to it during heat treament.   It is only forging that changes the orientation of the particles.  All what I am talking about is found in any book on metallurgy.   The texture of the metall tested by X-raying and  I believe it is  done at  many factories.

Dancho, Maybe you can help me with a couple of things in your post:

In forging a blade to direct the metal texture, That seems like the fad that is still used by some called edge packing...And we know that goes away int eh heat treating steps...Is it the same or if nor how is it different?

You like to heat treat a blade that is already polished and sharpened, Woot do youi do about the layer of decarb that forms during that process. All of my Stainless blades can be done that way as the heat treater uses an atmospheric contolled furnace that leaves no scale on blades. I use a scale preventing product on my carbon steel blades I do in my shop and still have a little clean up to do after HT. I always leave about a pennies thickness along blade edge until HT is done the do final finish, To me it seems if I have sharpened and then have to repeat after heat treat it just adds to amount of work.

 

Thoughts?

 

Hello Rich! I am here to help!

 

1.  The metal texture is not a fad but   something known very well in physical metallurgy science at least here in former Soviet Union .  It is not about the edge packing ( which is probably a fad ) neither cold-hardening neither anything about grain.

Any metal (apart from very pure forms unavailable for most mere mortal smiths) has non metallic impurities  (NMI) as result of the process of making.   Some more some less it depends on the quality and variety of specific alloy. Initially they are formed between the dendritic crystalls then drawn into long texture  as ingots rolled into bars or whatever.  They are with us forever no matter we want or not.  When you forge  you  move and guide them.   When you grind, turn or mill you cut them.   The forging process has ability to redistribute the NMI in the volume of the work piece according to the direction of stresses applied to the piece or its function in general.  That’s why critical  details in mechanical engineering  (bolts for instance) are formed  by pressure not cutting.  That’s why forged to the minimum edge usually has better cutting properties  (given proper heat tretment )  . We turn the enemies (NMI) into our friends. 

 

1. If you work with a char coal forge with side blast and properly keep the  air volume,  the distance and mass of coal between tyere and piece virtually no decarbonisation happens.  Quite opposite  you can get carbonisation if you intend to.   It was tested many times both by me and  many others beginning from my teacher V. I. Basov in the 70-s
2. Of course we remove the scale  at least on the edge if we are sharpenning it in my case by a file and with stone.    Scale is better removed since it it creates  cohesion with the piece we are cutting.  No matter how I like the forged surface it is not good on the knife unless the people specially ask me to leave it.

 

1. I do not work with stainless steel mostly because I do not enjoy  the process of forging it into edges. Carbon and iron are good  hearty boys.  I like communicating with them.  Chromium  is a strange man after 10 percent. For me at least.
2. Hardenning of already sharpened edge gives you the opportunity to heat only the edge stip and get diffrential hardenning (something like hamon ).   The process of heating takes seconds.  The scale simply doesn’t have time to form.  Again it is best done with the char coal side blast forge.  Tempering is also differential
3. Sharpening of  already sharpened blade after hardening and tempering is extremely quick.  Few strokes on a water stone and done.

I am absolutely sure that forging skills is much more important than any device including grinder.  If one is approaching blade SMITHING   why not to learn it.  

 

It is possible to forge  almost perfect shape  with no grinding at all which needs only  minor hand shaperning on a water stone to start  cutting.   Time needed to do this is almost the same as with grinding.  

 

However the advantages are:

1.  You save every bit of steel wich makes sence if you are using very valuable steel (like refined steel that I prepare and use myself)

2.  Properties of the forged blade are usually better due to directing the metal texture  according to the function. Of course if forging and heat treatment is done properly

 

 

But polished surface of a knife still  better for cutting  (and more hygienic).  To get it I use a set of high quality  files.   They work amazingly quick if you anneal the blade properly  and  are VERY precise.  And silent . And safe.  And you can do it anywhere even without electircity. 

 

One of the most important tricks is to harden already sharpened and polished blade.

On March 8, 2013 at 3:33 PM, beth said:

dancho these are so beautiful! to me they look like works of art - i expect i am missing the point, as usual beautiful beautiful beautiful tactile functional items made with integrity I am intrigued to see surface design - is this a first for you? i like it very much, it personalise the tools...

Thanks Beth!

 

I just got tired from this sunless cold snowy winter and wanted to do some blacksmith magic to call the sun in :)/.  Thats's how these solar decorations appeared.  xxxx,  it didn't work...  Hope I sell these for more money at least...

With the handle...

Self wedged handle

Dancho,

 

  Very nice ! I would like to know what your opinion is of the notch, just ahead of the eye? What purpose do you think it serves? It is a common feature on axes from many cultures yet not on all axes even within cultures have used it.

Hard to tell for sure.   Could be be an atavism survived from bearded axes

New one made few days ago

 

The
traditional Carpathian axe theme

Weights about 1 kg.   Main body – mild steel.   Edge is split weld with 0.9 percent carbon
steel .   Eye is formed by chisel piercing
and working on the horn and drift.  Pure
free hand  forging as it is. No grinding
involved apart from sharpenning the edge with file and filing the outline a bit

The handle

is traditionally self-wedged (not shown)

Traditonal Carpathian patterns made by chisel before hardening the blade in oil

 

Some new Carpathian knives made in February

Dancho, I really like this style of knife. I have some wrought iron and have been thinking about sandwiching some around some bandsaw blade I have. Is it difficult to weld? And at what temprature do you weld it at? The temprature for the wrought or the temprature for the bandsaw blade? Thats something I've often wondered about. Thank you for showing this, your craftsmanship is very good. I always enjoy your postings.

Thank you Bryan!

I found so far two important things fro welding this type of work.

1. the best forge for this is char coal forge with side blast and ceramic side walls to give the well effect and spot fire. it is important to keep the metal high above the tyere hole still hot enough (reducing environment).
2. do not know what the tempereture . I control not by the colour but by the surface state -- it should get wet.


I have no experience with the band saw. I think - it is too thin. The peice of steel strip needs to be at least 3 mm thick to provide mass. Mine is 25 wide and 4 mm thick wrapped as a staple outside iron wedge 25 on 10 mm at base.

An archeologically correct replica of ancient russian knife blade with some modern Carpathian fantasies about the handle. The wrought iron core wrapped with 1 percent carbon steel for the edge. Pure forging to the final shape with light filing and hand polishing and sharpening on the water stone

Some new axes made for the exibition in Kiev a week ago.

Both are split welded with 1 percent carbon steel. One head is 700g, another 400 g. The smaller one is decorated with sun symbol.

Dancho,
Two more beautiful axes. What have you done to the surface to clean up the scale. It looks like it was cleaned up with a wire wheel. You dont use electricity so is this filework/sand paper or ?
Thanks for showing your work.

chichi
I found that wire wheel pruduces a too uniform surface which tends to be just bright rather than emphasizing the inherent beauty of REAL HAND FORGED surface. Not to mention any kind of mechanic grinding which kills everything.

A file for the edge sharpening (before hardening) and sand paper by hands for the rest of the body (starting from 40-60 grit and then 180-200) is what I prefer. It is pretty quick -- 10 minutes and done. Hands (fingers) are the best -- they go into the cavities and follow the shape.

I do use electricity actually. My
blower for the char coal forge takes some 30 Watts. The LED lights in the forge another 10 Watts if dark outside. But mostly audio system (100 Watts). Need proper sound when forging
Thank you and everybody for the response!