JPH

Hello: Well the sword it done....here are some pics of the mounts..He wanted an "Ice Dragon" theme and well it took a while to get the colours right om the siya but I think I got the idea and the motif down pretty well... Silver and gold tsuba and kashirae, ice blue/grey silk over white rayskin with a silver dragon menuki...this is now on its way to its new owner.. JPH

OK..Some of you have heard me talk about this in the chat room..well here we go...For those that haven't...here is the story.... I am now starting to suspect my own sanity is compromised...maybe my brain is fried but I got this idea and being a cheap bastar...ummmm no make that frugal....I couldn't let this go to waste... I had to recently replace my drain snake...it's about 125 feet long of 3/8" ID coil with some stainless steel cable running up the centre......made from 1/8"ish diameter round spring steel. It looks to me to be either 1060 or 1070 on the spark test...Hardens in oil A-OK, gets really HARD in water... so I got some "good stuff"...just don't know exactly what kind of good stuff.... Now it took me close to three days to pull out that stainless cable and then straighten out that long coil and cut the steel into 18" long pieces. Boy my arms got tired from all the pulling, but I done did it..... Anyway my lame idea is to weld this up into bars, weld those together and then make the Sword of Septis... I divided the material up into seven bundle and welded one up... Now I have 6 more bundles to weld..all the same size (I counted the wires) and I know that all I am doing is making really REALLY EXPENSIVE wire rope but hey..this shall be a blade of legend...handed down from generation to generation..The Sword of Septis WILL NOT BE DENIED its rightful place in the history of mankind (where ever that place may be)... If all goes well I may have enough for two swords..the Sword of Septis and the Son of Septis...I dunno..still thinking about that....I don't even know what kind of sword it will be yet... I even know what I am going to call the steel when I am done welding it...taking it's origins into account and giving it all the respect it is so rightfully due..I am going to call it "crap-agane"...Only once in a generation does a sword like this get made...maybe not even then... More as things progress... See what happens when a bladesmith gets bored and has good spring steel laying about?? I need my head examined... JPH

Hello: This one in particular was made for a gentleman in Pasadena, California...so it already has a home....I just finished it today..will post pics of the finished sword sometime tomorrow once I get the right lighting.. JPH

actually I really didn;t need that much flux as the stuff just stuck together pretty well on its own for the first three welds...after that I need to flux and then I used my steel glue.... JPH

PK: The Hada is the grain visible in the surface of the steel..you are correct there...This can be seens as "layers" as in mokumegane (Wood metal) or as little "flecks" like is seen in the photos. The Hada is also visible ever so slightly in the hamon but there is so much more "going on in there" that it is almost obscured. The Kissaki is the point, you are also correct on that...you are on the right track so not to worry. Alway feel free to ask anyone here any questions you have, I am sure that no one would mind...I know I don't... JPH

Kevin: It really isn't all that hard to do..just requires the time space and at the least understanding neighbors..Lucky for me I am not that close to anyone else and besides, when you use hardwood charcoal it smells like you are having a cookout...which by the way I did for lunch that day...No sense in letting a good mesquite charcoal fire go to waste right??? Smelting you own iron and making steel is the way it was done for centuries and centuries if you were a blacksmith. Trade of iron/steel bars came later on..so it really isn't all that unusual when you start to really delve into it. I will say every time I do it I learn something new...My next one I am going to try a tatara-esque design and see what happens... JPH

Hello: Well my latest experiment on making steel turned out pretty good...This was done from taconite pellets and magnatite sand using direct reduction in a hardwood charcoal beehive smelt. The resulting bloom was refined and welded back to itself..I figure by doing what I did the "layer count" is in the 100,000 range. This was oil quenched and the results are as pictured...this blade is about 3/4 polished. I am doing a hybrid polish using abrasives and reagent etches. The Hamon has a good deal of activity in it and you can see the very fine Hada from the refining of the bloom. This is a section of a Kobuse blade that I am doing for a gentleman in Southern California...I am working on another one for my website from the same bloom...this one will be posted once it ios done and I get the furniture in from my art foundry... Hope the photos turn out. The Hada is best seen in the photo of the kissaki..Hopefully the rest of the blade will display the same degree of Hada as the kissaki does... All in all I say this one turned out OK..for an olde fogey working in his garage JPH

No damascus barreled gun should be considered safe to fire regardless of powder used or manufacturer.> arftist: Guess I shouldn't shoot my .338 WM, my .50-120-3 1/4" Sharps Str or my 12 bore Greener double rifle... Just because a barrel is welded doesn't mean it is unsafe..the problem is most of these barrels are wll over 100 years old and well..a 100 year old gun is just that..an old gun that needs to be examined by a gunsmith that KNOWS what to look for. THis does NOT mean modern powders...I use either the proper black powder or cordite loads in mine..depending upon the barrels in question...still you chould not "hot rod" the loads either. Personal responsibility reings supreme here.... Most of the shotguns I shoot have welded barrels..three have nitro-proofed barrels..In fact welded barrels are still being made by a couple of European gun builders and they command a hefty price tag too...and they are nitro-powder proofed... So making a blanket statement like that isn't really correct... JPH

Geeze that is a little cutie.... JPH

Hello: Since I was mentioned.. There is no evidience that there is any "suction" pre sey in a wound in flesh. Fullers were placed into blade to: 1: Lighten the mass weight while maintaining a degree of stiffness vs weight ratio, example: an "I" beam. By using "two" (or more) "Centre Spines" you increase the stiffness in a blade..which can be illustrated by putting a crease in a piece of paper..it is much stiffer than an uncreased one..same with steel. 2: Conserve material..When you forge a fuller in you will actually widen the blade, thereby making a wider blade with the same material volume with what you started with. There are other reasons as well, but these are the two Now you can forge them in...using top/bottom tooling and then clean them up by hand or you can scrape them in.. I have attached photos of a fuller scraper that I whipped up for my 4th book..It requires no "machine work" and can be put together with a 1/4 x 20 tap, a hand drill and a hacksaw. It uses HSS lathe bits as a cutter, and these can be shaped to whatever profile you wish. The photos should be pretty much self-explanatory but is anyone has any questions by all means feel free to ask... JPH

Hello: Ok...why are you using wire and not flat stock?? You need this to be as easy and trouble free as possible and using wire isn't the way to lear to weld. Get some 3/4" flat.. say 1/8" thick..some 6 inches long and use three pieces of that..will be easy to wire together in place while you learn the basics of welding with a hammer.. right now you are too concerned with trying to have the pieces stay put and that is a distraction to the learning process. You can fiddle around with that once yuou get good, solid 100% perfect welds 100% of the time... Don't mean to sound so harsh but you are making way too much work for yourself that you really do not need at this early a point... JPH

Hummm Why does this thread say it has been moved?? moved from where?? JPH

Chad: Geeze guy...remember everyone starts out the same and knowing nothing. It's what YOU decide to do with what you learn, how you learn it and what the final outcome will be. We all have "been there" where you are now. Post pics..get advise...pick other maker's brains (although mine lately seemed to be a bit scrambled thanks to that stroke I had last year)...and try out new stuff, technqiues and materials. I have picked up so much "useless tidbits" of "knowledge" that at the time seemed totally meaningless yet a few months, years or decades later they came in real handy....use the tools you have and learn all you can... Everyone starts out the same..there is no shame or embarassment in asking questions..even the simplest of ones cause if you don't know...you don't know... JPH Oh..back to the nagi..the clear coat cured on the nagi and the finish looks a foot deep..now I will do the same to the siya before the pot life expires on the clear coat... (Also...boy the wife is happy with the van with the way it looks now...and that means I can be happy too...All those years making armour paid off finally!!))

Ecart: Basically that is what a naginata is..a sword on a stick...the Japanese version of a Bullova or a Glaive.. Really a nasty bugger to face one on one if the person using it knows how to use it. I do know for a fact that these things can inflict devastating amounts of damage from doing cutting tests on goza and ballistic gel targets and there are a few moves that you can do that really gets the tip speed up there and that is what makes these so effective..Now this one is on the "large side" as far as blade lengths go....usually these are a bit shorter but what the heck? Why not go the large route and really make a statement?? What statement that would be I have no idea.. All in all the hardest part of doing this thing was the finish work..I just used some automotive clear coat (top coat) I had left over from doing some body work on the Misses' van today (some square nut backed into her bumper and mucked up the paint so....) and that is currently drying overnight. If it dries like it looks now the depth of finish will be quite nice indeed... It always seems that the "little stuff" really isn't all that "little" when you come down to it.. JPH

HW: Ummmmmm I never said I knew what I was doing...believe me I made my share (probably more so) of mistakes..especially learning how to get the gold leaf right...boy that was an expensive lesson to learn too!! It did turn out ok though now that I know what to do... JPH

HW: I dunno...about threee day's worth of forge time on the steel for the blade and forging that out and heat treating it..polishing?? well I am still in that process as I still need to do the sheath..no sense in botching up a full polish making that so...I figure the blade took me about 5 or 6 good days to this point...The rest..the copper mounts took about 4 hours with the habaki being the real PITA... The shafting took a while cause I had to strip out the door skins and laminate them up..then shape the shaft by hand, scrape, fit and seal then finish...figure a good 10 days worth of work all in all...the wood took longer than that blade did...waiting for everything to dry and all...then the gold leaf was exciting but it worked...I get real nervous when I do that... JPH

Hello: Well I just got busy and finished up my "Mongo Humongous Naginata"...Here it is in all its gold leafed glory. The blade is 28" long, with two short bo-hi (Naginata-Hi) on each side that I hand scraped in..Boy hand scraping can be a very boring thing to do but it does work..why they weren't forged in is beyond me but....oh well...The blade is San Mai construction with the sides laminated from 1050 and L-6 and shows the center plate of 1060 on the Ha and the Mune in the blade's Hada. Still need to do the final polish after I get the siya done. The habaki is solid copper (I had to forge the copper down cause all I had was some 3/8" thick bar..but it worked out OK in the end) as are the hand hammered finished mounts. I used the "age old copper pipe technique" for the copper sheet source. You can get some decent sized pieces using copper pipe and the thickness is just about perfect for fittings like these...I tell ya hand peining all that copper sheet took a while...all those little tappity tap taps with a 32 oz ball pein hammer really gets old real quick. You have to anneal repeatedly cause it work hardens like crazy and then it starts to crack..NOT a good thing Now the shaft is covered by white samegawa for the first 15" or so and wrapped in my favourite chevron pattern black/gold silk ito in what I call a "modified battle wrap". There are three mekugi holding the blade into the shafting. There are two gold guilded swan menuki under the tsuka maki, one on each end of the grip on opposite sides. The shafting is laminated from some 3/16"ish thick oak door skins that I glommed onto from a friend of mine who owns a furniture/cabinet making business. These were his "rejects" due to grain problems that I sliced into strips and then laminated up using that "Gorilla Glue"..Boy that was a mess..gets all foamy and gooey but is worked great. (even though if you get it on your skin it really turns your skin black and well, you have to let it wear off...) The shafting cross section is a "tear drop" shape so I can tell which way the edge is oriented in my hand (wider at the back..narrower on the front) so you know which "side" to cut with. Comes in handy whan you use it... The butt spike on the opposite end is not all that "correct" as far as "tradition" goes but what the heck..I am not exactly all that "traditional" myself....I hammered that out of some 1060 and left it "forge finished"..no sense in polishing a butt spike that is going to be the "down side end" on a pole weapon...it is held in place by one mekugi. All the copper fittings except for the fuchi are pinned in place with german silver studs. The overall length is just a smidge over 93".. Now I have to figure out how to make the siya for this hot little puppy...Will be finished the same as the shafting so it all matches. All in all I think it came out pretty good for a bald, educated barbarian like myself...THe wood work was more of a pain to do than the blade! Hope the pics work... JPH

Parler: Ever see a "Bowie Knife"?? That is basically a Seax...There are more Seax designs than you would first think there are...all depends upon when, where and by who they were made... Blade lengths varied from 3 inches to more than 20....some were clipped pointed, some were spear pointed...so many varieties... JPH

KYB: 10" diameter is a nice size wheel...I perosnally think that 8 to 10" is a good size for most folks starting out...not too bid like a 14" or too small like a 6"..right in the middle...and for most operations..it will do a god job on most blade designs... I do love that 14" whell though..the grins is clean ande crisp and look almost like a flat grind...I can grind out a sword in like 20 minutes..of course that is from a forging if it was a straight old bar..probaly would take a bit longer... What HP is the motor you have?? I stall out anything under a 3 HP Frankengrinder uses a 5 HP...3450 rpm... JPH

Rich: On grips..yeah I can see it being a good thing but for those I have two other grinders that are dedicated to grips only...the belts move much slower..3000 sfm... For blades though I have found that the faster the belt moves, the smoother and cleaner it cuts...of course the down side is it is a lot easier to mess up a blade...so you take your chances...it's all practise .... JPH

Hello: Ummmm since when is belt speed a problem when you are grinding blades?? I have Frankengrinder moving at about 7000+ SFM on a 14" serrated wheel and it eats steel like a termite in a 2x4... I love that 14" wheel and I will say that you should get the largest diameter wheel you can for edge bevel grinding and run with it.. JPH

Hello: The best places I have found are: Pacific Machine in OR...1-800-547-1091 Security Steel In IL 1-800-222-5160 I would advise staying away from Admiral as I have had nopthing but problems with every order they have ever sent me..the even "substituted" steels on their own without my permission to do so... I have been using the above two suppliers ince 1980..NO probkems at all.. Minimum amount you need to order is one (1) full length bar.... Hope this helps JPH

Hello; I have made a few pattern welded things and the simple answer is yes, you should see something but the contrast will not be very dramatic. What you will see is the de-carb in the weld seams, same as in welded cable. What you need to use for the best contrast is a simple steel, like 10xx seris and something a bit richer inb alloy, like L-6, O-1, 15N20 A203D/E or the like..this way the contrast will not be based on C differences alone, but on elemental differences between the alloys and that will result in different effects when etched, hence a better degree of contrast Hope this helps.. JPH

Hold on..it's way too small...you need to send it to me...way beyond ANYONE ELSE's skills here to make ANYTHING of vaule..other than me... OK Humor off... the simple answer is YES..there is a whole lot you can make..if you think it out before you do anything regardless whether you forge it out or grind it out..formulate a plan... JPH

Oh man...why does it seem that just about everyone wants to bypass learning the basics and jump right in head first into making swords?? Man alive...learn what to do and how to do it before you start making something that complicated.. For the record.. a forge is nothing more than a heat source..which can be as simple as a hole in the ground, some hard wood charcoal and an old iron pipe hooked up to a hair dryer for an air source..and anvil is nothing more than a smooth piece of steel/iron and the rest is about as simple... You can get started for well under $40.00 US if you can do a bit of scrounging around... I have been doing this stuff for a little while now and it doesn't take much to get up and running...I don't think I have $10,000.00 in my shop total...most of the stuff I needed I made..and I am pretty good at scrounging JPH