Cool Uruk Hai look! How long is it?

I love it! I thought about doing one of these and planned to pound a hardened blade into it before HT to make it look like it had seen some battle and had some scars. It looks like it is was crafted in the underworld. Good job and I bet it was a blast to make!

Yeah it was a blast a friend and i actualy made it as a gift for a video game company producing a game we are eagerly awaiting.  One of the "sides" in the game is a nordic like people so we wanted to make something that looked like it beloned to them and had seen a lot of battle.  So we hammered heavy and didnt grind clean then after tempering we put boiled linseed oil on while still hot so it would darken and age the blade then scrubbed it in with scotchbrite pad.  To end we only clean/polished the edges to 400grit so eaven though it was "old and battered" it was "maintained and deadly"

Actually it looks like a fairly standard variation of a billhook used for centuries, especially for hedging.

You may want to read up on stress concentrators as battle weapons would generally NOT have them "built in" Any smith that could forge and heat treat a weapon would be able to leave a smooth surface hammering.

Thomas is just feeling under the weather which produces a multiplier for the crumudgeonry. Those aren’t smith’s Hammer strikes, they are deflections from a war hammer. And this isn’t a hedge trimmer, it’s an instrument of battle forged in Helm’s Deep (which coincidentally has a portal to NM/El Paso. Get feeling better Thomas

There is a set of mountains around here that look perfect for Mordor...war time manufacture is generally lower on fit and finish---to a point!

That is sooooo true! War time manufacture, you would probably be lucky to get a handle! LOL!

I can see the Thesis title now "Quality control in the weapons industry during Saruman's tenure of Orthanc in the War of the Rings"

Let's start with the cast blades shown in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring.

had a guy that wanted me to teach him sword smithing, asked about if I do the casting here or at another location

 

Alan Williams was mentioning a chinese sword that looks like it was cast and then decarburized in ancient China---they used that technique for farming tools too.

I have some basic questions I ask to see if a prospective student has any connection to reality...like how much should a sword weigh?

Well, the two-handed sword of the State Guard of Julius of Brunswick-Lunüneburg in the Cleveland Museum of Art weighs 8-1/2 lbs, but it's (A) ceremonial and (B) pretty huge.

Bearing swords are a special case; but even the zweihanders carried by the doppel soldiers may be 1/5th the weight I've had suggested to me by people.

Remember the scene in "the 13th Warrior" where Antonio Banderas' character can't lift a sword that would have weighed 3 pounds or *less*  and so ground off all the higher carbon edges to end up with a blade that could be out cut by a RR spike KSO?   So much wrong in that scene; made me want to cry.

56 minutes ago, ThomasPowers said:

Remember the scene in "the 13th Warrior"

Never seen it, actually. 

1 hour ago, ThomasPowers said:

Remember the scene in "the 13th Warrior"

Never seen it, actually. 

This one is lovely, though. 

http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1916.1508

9 hours ago, Steve Sells said:

had a guy that wanted me to teach him sword smithing, asked about if I do the casting here or at another location

 

Should have said you do the casting in Hollywood.

Wasn't it "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves where they cast an arrowhead? (ah yes, IMDB even has it on their goofs page!)

If i remember right game of thrones had a scene of them casting a sword as well

1 hour ago, Binesman said:

If i remember right game of thrones had a scene of them casting a sword as well

Yes, the opening scene of the episode "Two Swords", where Ned Stark's greatsword "Ice" is melted down and made into two smaller swords, later named "Widow's Wail" and "Oathkeeper". 

Hmm somebody is a much bigger fan then i.  Yes that sounds about like the scene i was thinking of.

Dramatically, it’s a great scene.

Metallurgically, it’s annoying as all get-out.

I much prefer the forging a sword from the broken bits of another sword. That actually can make metallurgical sense: Why did it break---it was too brittle. What does welding up a billet generally do---lowers the carbon content.  So the second sword should have a lower and better disperesed carbon content.