To begin with, this post is about a "replica" (or sort of, actually) of a blade from Coppergate, York, that almost took all my sanity for a while. I could finish it in time for the Salão Paulista de Cutelaria, one of the most important blade shows in Brazil.
Well, it all started some time ago, when I saw an image at the York Archaeological Trust website, while looking for some new references. I'm also a viking age reenactor, so this kind of stuff really calls for my attention. And after a while I just realized that that very blade was on the book Anglo-Scandinavian ironwork from Coppergate - York, written by Patrick Ottaway.
Then I also found some scannings of the book on that blade, I just edited a part of it, but it is almost the very one running on the web:
After that, reading to the book, I decided to use this one as inspiration after all. But I have to show the whole thing before the knife, of course.
To begin with, was the bloomery furnace. I made it for a workshop with some friends, hoping to get enough material for some knives, but as it was the first time I was actually refining the bloom, I lost almost it all, so if you find the numbers on the video weird, you are right. But next time I'll try to make it more fruitfull.
After that, the refining part finally began. With a help from the fellow bladesmith Andrey Navarre and his hydraulic press I could quicken it a lot, although next time I'll try to refine it a bit just before the press, so I'll not have so much slag incursions trapped inside the bars.
I had to ground it a lot to get to the final shape, as I was really afraid of loosing all the material and all the efforts I had till then. And after that I just ground the fullers, a bit larger than the original too. It resulted on a blade some millimeters smaller than the desired size, even so.
The tang was also about 2cm smaller than what I wanted and I was without any bloomery material left, so I forge welded a small piece of mild steel on it.
Then I just had to harden it. I normalized the blade about 6-7 times before quenching it in cold water. As I wanted the backbone to be soft, so I could make the inlays, I used a kind of clay to make something like a hamon. It worked, but didn't result in any visible pattern.
I polished the blade and made the inlay. All the information I found on it said it was "cooper" or "cooper alloy", so I decided to use nickel silver, which is, in fact, a silver free cooper alloy. I also knew it was found only on one side of the blade, but judging by the cross sectional scheme, I assumed the other side also had it, but it was lost over the centuries.
After all the hard work, I had to decide what sort of handle it would have. I considered a richly decorated one, but I was fascinated by an image from the Old English Hexateuch, with very simple handles on some saxes, then I went on this direction.
I was thinking about using maple or ash wood, then ash was the choice and after riveting the tang on the "pommel" part, I burnt it on it's surface with a torch and used a fine sandpaper, so it would have this dark looking present on the manuscript. Then I applied some tung's oil on it.
The final part was to make the sheath. I was looking for references from York and I found a lot of them. But I just had the time to cut the leather, after that I went on a travel for England to attend to a course with Petr Florianek. I got this chance to visit York after the classes and was able to see the original sheaths I was studying at Jorvik Viking Centre and once I returned to Brazil, This knife became my top priority. You can now see it's final look here:
The sheath is made of bovine leather and has iron rivets and brass washers. The ring for suspension is also brass and the cord on it is braided horse hide.
It has a lot of welding flaws due to the nature of the steel and my inexperience on work with bloomery material, but I loved how it looks like after all. And, of course, looks much better than the ore itself.
Overall Lenght: 3,5cm
Blade: 16,5cm
Blade thickness: 0,9cm
Blade width (maximum): 3,7cm
Hope you all like this knife and all it's meaning.
To begin with, was the bloomery furnace. I made it for a workshop with some friends, hoping to get enough material for some knives, but as it was the first time I was actually refining the bloom, I lost almost it all, so if you find the numbers on the video weird, you are right. But next time I'll try to make it more fruitfull.
After that, the refining part finally began. With a help from the fellow bladesmith Andrey Navarre and his hydraulic press I could quicken it a lot, although next time I'll try to refine it a bit just before the press, so I'll not have so much slag incursions trapped inside the bars.
After that I took it to my shop once again and tried to clean all the mess and resolve some huge welding flaws. And then, I started to draw a vaguely knife-looking form, and on the end of some days I finally was able to get a very thick bar of the desired shape. At this point I had to make a deviation from the original one, as it's back was originally made with a different, softer steel and I only was able to make a very high carbon content bloom. So I made it all from a single steel bar.
I had to ground it a lot to get to the final shape, as I was really afraid of loosing all the material and all the efforts I had till then. And after that I just ground the fullers, a bit larger than the original too. It resulted on a blade some millimeters smaller than the desired size, even so.
The tang was also about 2cm smaller than what I wanted and I was without any bloomery material left, so I forge welded a small piece of mild steel on it.
Then I just had to harden it. I normalized the blade about 6-7 times before quenching it in cold water. As I wanted the backbone to be soft, so I could make the inlays, I used a kind of clay to make something like a hamon. It worked, but didn't result in any visible pattern.
I polished the blade and made the inlay. All the information I found on it said it was "cooper" or "cooper alloy", so I decided to use nickel silver, which is, in fact, a silver free cooper alloy. I also knew it was found only on one side of the blade, but judging by the cross sectional scheme, I assumed the other side also had it, but it was lost over the centuries.
After all the hard work, I had to decide what sort of handle it would have. I considered a richly decorated one, but I was fascinated by an image from the Old English Hexateuch, with very simple handles on some saxes, then I went on this direction.
I was thinking about using maple or ash wood, then ash was the choice and after riveting the tang on the "pommel" part, I burnt it on it's surface with a torch and used a fine sandpaper, so it would have this dark looking present on the manuscript. Then I applied some tung's oil on it.
The final part was to make the sheath. I was looking for references from York and I found a lot of them. But I just had the time to cut the leather, after that I went on a travel for England to attend to a course with Petr Florianek. I got this chance to visit York after the classes and was able to see the original sheaths I was studying at Jorvik Viking Centre and once I returned to Brazil, This knife became my top priority. You can now see it's final look here:
It has a lot of welding flaws due to the nature of the steel and my inexperience on work with bloomery material, but I loved how it looks like after all. And, of course, looks much better than the ore itself.
Overall Lenght: 3,5cm
Blade: 16,5cm
Blade thickness: 0,9cm
Blade width (maximum): 3,7cm
Hope you all like this knife and all it's meaning.