Secrets of the Viking Sword

[stonehart]

Not a bad we Doco that I have just watched.

I should expect there are a few members of the paracast forums with Norse or Scandinavian ancestry here (myself being one of them) who will find this interesting.

Or if you are into weaponry as a subject it is worth a look.

To be blunt there is far better reading material on this particular subject but if you find this interesting then it was a good place to start.

Are there any sword or weapon collectors here on the forums? I kind of suspect Mike would be one

Just a note at the end here, the vikings were not a specific people or nation as this is a common misconception.
To go viking was an act and really meant to go raiding.

 

[pixelsmith]

I am 100% Norwegian and met Rick Furrer the maker of the Ulfberht in the video. He is a great guy.
Forging damascus knife blades and creating knives and sheaths in the norwegian style is something I did for several years. I haven't made one in awhile tho.

 

[Burnt State]

I am 100% Norwegian and met Rick Furrer the maker of the Ulfberht in the video. He is a great guy.
Forging damascus knife blades and creating knives and sheaths in the norwegian style is something I did for several years. I haven't made one in awhile tho.

I watched a Katana being made recently in the traditional style on video - a very involved, process completed by a very skilled artisan and tradesman. It was simply incrediblehis knowledge of heat, water and metals.

How long does it take to make a Damascus blade and is it also the type of process where simple mistakes can mess up the entire project?

 

[boomerang]

I happened to see this particular documentary about the Ulfberht sword via Netflix, and it's very interesting. We seem to be finding that peoples of that time and place were more technologically advanced than previously thought.

 

[pixelsmith]

I watched a Katana being made recently in the traditional style on video - a very involved, process completed by a very skilled artisan and tradesman. It was simply incrediblehis knowledge of heat, water and metals.

How long does it take to make a Damascus blade and is it also the type of process where simple mistakes can mess up the entire project?

It can take several days to produce a pattern welded (damascus) blade. It depends on what type of pattern you are going for and YES it can take one mistake to ruin a blade. This first one below is a 3 bar composite that took me a week to produce and it turned out to have one little bad weld shown with red oval. This started out as 7- one inch x 1/4 inch x 7 inch bars of alternating high and low carbon steel stacked then forge welded down to one bar for 7 layers, then it is cut in the middle and restacked and forged welded down to one bar of 14 layers and the process is repeated until it is up over 300 layers.. I then drew it out to about 28 inches and cut into three bars. I heated and twisted 2 of the bars and left one untouched. I then stacked those three bars so the twisted ones were on the outside and the untwisted in the middle, I then forged it to the knife profile and ground it to its near finished state you see here and that is when i noticed the bad weld. AARRRRGGGHH! that sucks.
above is another completed bar ready for hammering into a knife blade and a couple "letter opener practice blades"

This one is a random pattern blade that I drilled hundreds of holes in then forged flat again. I love this pattern.
It really sucks to put hundreds of hours into a blade only to find a bad weld or an inclusion.

 

[pixelsmith]

This is my first knife and sheath I ever made. It is a laminated blade in the Norwegian style consisting of a piece of low carbon angle iron and a piece of high carbon steel sandwiched in the angle iron. The back stays "soft" but the cutting edge is hard.
I used some German orthopedic leather with a raw center to form the sheath. I calculated the shape of leather i needed by wrapping paper around the finished knife then created a wooden form in the shape of the handle and blade, the hand stitched the leather and soaked it in water and pounded the wooden form into it and let dry over night. I then added sterling silver hardware to it to match the sterling silver pieces on the knife. The handle is from a burled birch tree from Norway. It is a very very old "friction fit" design that does not need a snapped strap to hold it in the sheath. I also did some tooling on the leather utilizing some old Norwegian designs depicting a good harvest.

 

[Han]

Really nice handiwork I really like the symbol:

I also did some tooling on the leather utilizing some old Norwegian designs depicting a good harvest.

It reminds me of this:

Larnax - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia