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I Forge Iron

Suggestions on blade.


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I bought a few pieces of steel the other day and decided to try my skills out on it. I started working the blade on friday, and I thought it would be smart to bring it here to ask for suggestions on what to improve, what to get rid of... etc. I have attatched photos of my work. Any comments. suggestions, or questions are welcome.

post-51068-0-09323400-1391390065_thumb.j

post-51068-0-15167600-1391390144_thumb.j

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The guard is too thin and the blade is too bulky. Does the steel have enough carbon to heat treat?

I don't know what kind of steel the blade is made of. I didn't buy it from a manufacturer; I bought it from a steel shipping warehouse that had a scrap pile, but thankfully the steel itself is not of poor quality. I will see if I can heat treat it tomorrow, but I thought that I saw some colour on the blade after I was done working it.

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I don't know what kind of steel the blade is made of. I didn't buy it from a manufacturer; I bought it from a steel shipping warehouse that had a scrap pile, but thankfully the steel itself is not of poor quality. I will see if I can heat treat it tomorrow, but I thought that I saw some colour on the blade after I was done working it.

 

If this is the case, how can you possably know what quailty it is ?

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If this blade is to be a flattened diamond cross section you need to practice hammering a center ridge in and smooth tapers from it for all 4 tapers (front and back right and left)

 

Note that practicing on a decent grade of steel is much more useful than practicing on mild as you will train in working at the correct temperature intervals.  Mild steel lets you work too hot and too cold for blade steels.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks like you put in too much distal taper.  By the time you grind/file the surface smooth, the tip will either be excessively thin, or you'll have moved it back an inch or so.

 

Does the chunk look like a knife?  No.  It looks like piece of hammered steel that could potentially be turned into a knife with a few dozen more hours of work.

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this will definitely give you some practice on your shaping and forming of bevels, and maybe draw filing ( if thats the route your going) However i wouldnt spend a lot of time with the finish work such as polishing, guard, pommel. ect. ect. If you dont know that youll be able to harden and temper the blade. you might want to spark test the metal to see if you have an acceptable metal to heat treat.

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  • 4 months later...

It is a good idea to have a strong picture of your finished product in mind when you start a project like this. if you haven't already I strongly suggest you study the Oakeshott typology (google will get you loads of info) and look at as many antiques as you can. if you go to www.sword-site.com there are a ton of photos of antiques there as well as information on Oakeshott's typology.

as said above your tip may be too thin. the tip section on most European swords tended to be in the neighborhood of .080-.120 inches (2-3mm) thick but you need to add about .060 inches (1.5-2mm) to that for your final forged size to account for what you will take off with the grinder for shaping, sharpening, and descaling. you should start a sword by making a pre-form or what the Japanese call a sunobe. all this is, is a plain bar with the distal and profile tapers set in. so you should work your bar thinner as it goes from guard to point and narrower also. do all this before you do bevels or fullers or the tang. once you have this pre-form made you straighten it and then you can do the rest. this is actually the hardest part of the forging in my opinion because even though I Suck at forging bevels they can always be ground, filed, or scraped in pretty easily while the sword is unhardened.

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