Sword Tutoral.

[Mr Smith]

I think Ian's speaking from experience there ;-)

[Shane Stegmeier]

There are no shortcuts in life, if someone tells you otherwise they are lieing, or selling something. The closest thing to a shortcut is a good guide, but even then it still takes a huge amount of time. If you want real skill you pay for it in time. I read in a book that most complicated skills, like mountain climbing, or chess, smithing, there are about 40,000 bits of information that have to be assimilated to achieve a base mastery. The book was on the history of human acomplishment, and was primarily concerned with truly exceptional contributions to human history, in art, music, philosophy and science. Most of the people who made significant contributions to history were nearly monomaniacal in there focus. To make a sword properly requires almost that level of dedication. It is a very complicated process, and to do it properly it takes huge amount of skill. Almost anyone can grind an edge on a leafspring and chop through a cinder block and call it a sword, but that is no more a sword in my book than an ugly gaudy wall hanger. Forging and grinding long blades is flat out hard, and if it isn't done right heat treat becomes very hard, if not impossible. A 6" blade is relatively easy, and a 12" much harder, and an 18" blade is very hard, and swords are even worse about warping in heattreat. I have been smithing for twenty two years, and I'm fairly good with a hammer, ok at a grinder, but my fit and finish leaves a lot to be desired. I have one bastard sword blade that I did as a test piece, its not perfect but respectable. I did it so I could make a two handed sword for a freind of mine's son's wedding, again it wasn't prefect, the grind lines weren't perfect, but it did have a nice distal taper because I forged it out of 1 1/8" square disc axil. (I did the forging as a demo for our local blacksmiths group "Swordmaking for Dumbies: with Power Hammers;-)" I might send Glenn a CD of half the pics from the demo, course we ran out of memory half way through... In my copious free time;-) It's late, I'm probably stupid, sorry...