Chloe

That's me! I had a few days before they picked up the sword so I did a photoshoot. Since it was my first sword, I kinda just went minimalist on the design and didn't really base it on anything. Length is about 27" blade, 33" overall. It weighs about a pound and a half? I never weighed it so that's an estimate. The balance was perfectly on the crossguard and she handled like a dream. I quenched it over a double-lung-bellows-driven coal fire in a 200-year-old forge, slowly bringing up the temperature for the normalizations and the quench by moving it back and forth. I worked in near darkness, the forge only lit by the yellow-white of the fire. It was an absolute pain. I quenched the sword in hot canola oil around midnight. I think I'm sending the next few off to heat treat.

Enough people asked me "when are you gonna make a sword?" until someone finally paid me to make her one for her wedding. Four months of work (on and off) and I have this thing! She's fully heat treated 1075, brass crossguard with bronze fittings, and a handmade scabbard. I hear she cuts wedding cake quite nicely. Thanks, y'all, for leaving all sorts of interesting and helpful info on this site. I spent cumulative days of research reading about tempering, heat treating, nonferrous metals, grinding, and assembly to get this blade finished. Lots of testing and trials, too! And all without writing an ambiguous post asking "how do I make a sword"

I don't think that one ever gets old

Wait, are they tempering with hot sand?? That's so cool.

Of course, Steve, I do this all the time with smaller stuff like chisels, draw knives, hatchets, etc. It's not too hard to get an even enough heat on our coal forge, and I usually just quench stuff in a can of oil and temper it in the little toaster oven in the back (we have our electric tech like bench grinders and the mini fridge tucked away out of sight). This is the biggest piece I've worked with so far, and I'm already realizing its size is going to present different challenges.

Cool, thank you George! We have a big firepit at the museum that's typically used for historical cooking, I'll see if they'll let me temper a tool there when it's not in use. As much as the forge boss would love to have some outdoor workspace, we have a power pole right where that would be. Sigh.

Hi! I work at a 19th century museum forge, and have some pieces that'll need tempering, but are too big for either the shop's tempering oven (it's a little toaster oven) or my own home oven. It definitely makes me wonder how tempering was accomplished before the advent of temperature-control ovens! Even the country blacksmith needed to make and repair scythes and wagon springs. Do y'all have any suggestions on techniques I should look into, or better yet any books written with the pre-industrial-revolution blacksmith or even swordsmith (scythes are close enough to swords) in mind? Currently my research has been a dead end. The local libraries are rather scant on blacksmithing information beyond the basics, and the answers I tend to find online and from folks I know is "buy a heat treatment oven" which I neither have the budget nor space for at the museum. I am absolutely willing to sit over a fire for an hour moving a blade back and forth, if that's how it was done. That's all I've been able to come up with so far. Otherwise, if anyone knows anyone in the Baltimore area who can do a heat treat on 1075, that'd be fine, but would remove the learning experience. (I know Carey has his shop in Catonsville but they're pretty busy right now and can't do it. My friend works there.) Thanks in advance!

Frosty, I have a lot of friends who knit, crochet, and do all sorts of fiber arts. I appreciate the idea, I'll look into making some with aluminum. George, I'll definitely give coke a try. This is a pretty good area to find it, and my forge should be set up to run it well. Thanks!

So here's some results from my latest adventure in hot cutting 1" bar. Other than missing my saw mark (sigh..) my friend and I cut this pretty efficiently! It took a single heat and didn't mess up my hot cut made from the chisel-y end of whatever the end of this was. Come to think of it, how did I cut this originally...? Ignoring the torn up anvil (it was cheap as dirt during the plague and rings like a bell) here's the result of my hot cut. Pretty satisfied with it, but I'm not sure about the little burr on it. Came out worse on the other piece, but I just ground it off after a ridiculous attempt at hot-filing it off (fuel costs too much for *that*). Any way to avoid the burr? Or is not worrying about it and just having my apprentice grind this off with the belt sander the best course of action?

That's an amazing anvil, how did you come across it?

Hi! I'm Chloe; I run a small smithy in Baltimore City making little decorative doodads to sell (hair sticks have been popular) as well as small tools for woodworker and leatherworker friends. I forge entirely with charcoal because I live in a row house and don't want to shill out for a gas forge, which certainly presents its own challenges. I used to do demos at a historic park before I moved. Would love to get into iron smelting as well someday, but that's a whole other shebang.