May 29, 201412 yr Forged a spear for my buddy's Viking wedding. He called me a week before the big day because he had ordered enough stuff for his groomsmen but forgot a spear. It only took a few hours to knock it out from 3/8 x 2 5160 flat bar. Pics show the flat bar in the forge, spear head tapered and socket swaged out, socket rolled, grinding done, getting to hardening heat in the forge, and the finished spear. And a shot of the forge and anvil etc in there too. Wedding was awesome, it was nice to have some of my work in the spotlight. Enjoy! - Rusty
May 29, 201412 yr I like it, nice work. Have you hardened it? How hard? I've always thought spear heads have to be as tough as they can be and no brittleness is allowed for the case it is thrown. Nice work and nice pics. Gergely
May 29, 201412 yr Author Hey Gergely! I hardened it at non-magnetic and then tempered it back to a spring temper, in the blue color range (round about 490F). This works good for me with this batch of steel and gives great edge retention and awesome toughness to handle lots of abuse. The slightly softer edge makes it easy to sharpen in the field too, which is a big bonus. The socket is welded but not hardened, I only quenched to the base of the blade and then drew the temper on the whole piece. Thanks for the compliments! Yours - Rusty
June 2, 201412 yr Beautiful! I love how you left the scale in the middle of the blade. For the socket, did you basically swadge it out, roll it around some sort of a mandrel and forge weld it closed to whatever radius you needed?
June 3, 201412 yr Author Hey Benton! I swedged it out with my straight peen. Started at the base of the socket working a taper in from 1/16 (or so) from the edge of the socket to the blade, thinner at the base and thicker near the blade. I formed it without a mandrel rolling freehand and forge welded it over a 3/4 inch bar with a rough taper forged in. If I had taken the time to make a mandrel it would have turned out way more even. It was supposed to fit a 1" shaft, so doing the circumference calculation C=2 x pi x r, you end up with 3.14. Spear sockets are wonderfully easy. So I flared the end with the allowance for the lap for welding, and off it goes.
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