The Museum of Sharp Pointy Objects came from a "Rocko's Modern Life' cartoon. It was too good a bit to pass up. There was also a reference in one of those terribly overdone twister movies, which one escapes me at the moment.
Bear is a Large Lad. He makes me look positively petite. He outmasses me by a good 100 pounds. MY personal best was an A pillar on an old burned out Chevy, and it damn near dislocated my shoulder in the process.
Wish I had some way to get fotos into the web, but digital cameras co$t Big Bux, and the bills come first. Maybe someday...
As long as it using metal ;-) Again we match, I've been swinging a sword for sport for 25 years, although I use metal weapons not rattan.
Sure that renown in my book too :-)
I rarely base a replica on the artifact alone, I back it up with, literature, research and interviews with history professors, the practice of European blades having a keen edge came from the crusades. The arabs were cutting through mail like butter, they used extremely sharp weapons, so naturally the crusaders adopted the practice, and it filtered through to the rest of europe.
I should qualify the I only make european replicas (there's enough people making Japanese swords).
Cool :-) I use spring too, although I get mine done to 57 rockwell, anywhere between 55 and 63 is good for a sword.
My generic type X Oakeshott has an overall length of 1 metre, at it's widest 5 cm, bronze fittings which I alloy and cast myself (I get my jollies making a solid into a puddle). I make the grip an uncommon 11 cm long, most people find it difficult to manage the common 8 or 9 cm accurate grip, especially with square facing pommel and cross. I do a through tang also, makes a nice solid grip... makes the swords sing.
The weight of the blade is approximately 2 lb. (or approximately 1 kg), the bronze fittings can weigh about 700 g (depending on the style of the fittings of course).
I cheat sometimes too, nothing beats a wrist-breaker-boshe angle grinder (also good for p*ssing the neighbors off with noise pollution :-) ) for a quick blade. Nothing wrong with using tools, I only do tribal blades for those that can afford it ;-)
Never done a cable blade, I've only done maiden hair and star patterned damascus, using file steel and mild steel. I'll do some cable one day.
Did you see the guy on the net that does a cable damascus, and dips the red hot cable into molten brass, basically making a brass and steel cable damascus... very pretty.
You have all the fun, I'd get a fine and prison if I did that on the streets here, I can own weapons, but am not allowed to act in a threatening manner towards people on the street, that comes under the summary offenses act.
Regards Charles P.S. Am currently working on a damascus sax. A find that my friend recently purchased a lovely little straight iron blade, Anglo Saxon 9th
- 10th century. I'm using it as a guide to make a slightly bigger sax :-)
Rockwell C (55-63..) it is and Brinell hardness 555 through 700+ BHN.
That is rather hard. But blade to blade is rather harsh as well.
Martin
Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH & Endowment Member NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member
The object it to block with the flat and strike with the edge.
If done this way swords last longer. People that use swords for sport don't seem to treasure swords like our ancestors did. For them it's just a toy to help them play their sport.
The guys that H&T my swords can accurately get the 57 which is great for spring steel. I'm experimenting with a heating tool that will allow me to do a differential temper, without using Hrisoulas clays mixtures.
More on that later.
Regards Charles P.S. I do H&T my smaller blades, I consider blades small when they are less than 16" :-)
Mart> Rockwell C (55-63..) it is and Brinell hardness 555 through 700+ BHN. >
Cable is really nice steel. Around here, it's usually 1095 draw wire from oil drilling rigs. When the patch went bust in the early 80s, the drillers just left great huge piles of it in the fields. The farmers are glad to have you come out and chop it up and haul it off, so their cows won't get hung up in it. It welds easy, forms like butter at bright orange, works like mild steel cold, hardens up to about a Rc 65 in water, Rc 61 in oil. And... you never get the same pattern twice, it's always a surprize. Fold it a couple of times and the wires lay up like cord in a bias ply tire and it gets really stiff. Inch and a half 7x19 'extra flexible' makes a billet just under an inch and three quarters wide at .300" thick after the first pass, so it's a great starting point for swords.
Sounds gorgeous, but how does it heat treat? 1600 degrees is pretty close to the flow point for brass, I'd hate to invest all that time and have it drip off in the tank. I've had good results with nickel 300 folded into the mix, polishes up silver-white and resists blueing and other post HT surface treatments.
Chalk that one up to 'barbaric Colonials'. The cops don't seem to see a sword vs a Tek-9 as anything other than self defense against a superior weapon. Besides, I didn't threaten "them", I trimmed a branch off my tree. The fact that the branch was about the size of a femur wasn't lost on the spectators though, nor was the ability to count the rings in the cut end afterwards. Just a lazy backhand stroke... click, thud. Hell, I wasn't even trying. There's no doubt in my mind that if I ever had to swing one in earnest, the target would be 'beside himself' after the first stroke. We have a "Make my day" law here, it's okay to defend your life and property against freelance Socialists bent on sharing your wealth.
I got a book recently "Blades Guide to Making Knives", this contains some of the most technical damascus I've ever seen, these guys at the top of the game.
Not all are aesthetically pleasing (less is more sometimes), but I was blown away with a damascus blade with pictures of the Alamo embedded in the patterns within the blade.
the flow point for
had good results with
and other post HT
The guy makes the brass and steel cable damascus for bolsters not for edges, it wouldn't hold up. It's just decorative so no heat treating.
vs a Tek-9 as anything
"them", I trimmed a
wasn't lost on the
afterwards. Just a lazy
in my mind that if I
the first stroke. We
against freelance
Most of our law and legislations are throw backs from being a penal colony, except the crooks run the country these days, but they like to call themselves politicians ;-). I can't get too nasty though I don't want to be charged with sedition.
Yeah the right to bare arms as part of the constitution does help a little I guess. If we hurt someone in self defense we end up having to support their family.
A while back a gent shot a burglar crawling in through his window, he felt in fear of his life. The media beat it up as "aw the poor criminal... look what the nasty man has done to you". The criminal stated that the gent had ruined his life... shucks :-|
A sword related incident happened to a late friend of mine, he was driving along the pacific highway, a man jumped out (obviously road raged) and proceeded to beat the daylights out of his bonnet with a crook-lock. My friend got out said something along the lines of "that's nothing" and hacked off the guys side mirror with a sword, was arrested, sentenced to prison, got addicted to drugs and is no longer with us.
I remember that, "Blade" called it 'tile damascus'. You lay up a billet out of rod stock, weld it together, then slice tiles off the end like a salami and face weld the tiles to a substrate. There were some pretty amazing examples in the article. Definitely too much work for me; I'm an engineer, not an artiste.
You realize that legislation is not 'cast in concrete'. Enough folks want something changed, it gets changed. The crooks run our country too, but they're called Corporate CEOs and Special Interest Groups.
Fair? Don't believe I ever heard the word. It's the Golden Rule here; he who has the gold makes the rules. Finest government that money can buy. I'm surprized that we haven't dug up our Founders and strapped magnets to their corpses and wrapped the coffins with wire. We coiuld be harvesting industrial amounts of electricity considering the velocity that they're spinning.
Well then, maybe it's time for you to consider moving to a country with a freer speech. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, to where the going is easier.
I have the same problem. In the past, the percecuted could 'escape to the West' but now there's no more West to escape to. While I can still type with relative impunity, I fear those days are soon to end even here. It seem like every day more of my civil liberties are being sacrificed to the bloody altar of 'national security' by our paranoid leaders and their Corporate Masters. I remember the words of Ben Franklin, who stated that 'those who are willing to sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither freedom nor security'. How quickly they forget. I hear there's always a need for good blacksmiths in Valhalla...
You have to be killed by Odin, so if you see a bearded man wearing a dark cloak, a black floppy hat with two ravens on his shoulders hi-tail it the other way.
The other is that the smiths in Valhalla don't always forge metal, sometimes they forge hair... could you imagine the smell. Peee-u!
Actually, all you have to do is die in battle with your sword in your hand. If the odds against you were high enough, the Valkeries will take you to Asgard. Kevlar is just so much cloth aganst a good sharp sword. Besides, there's beer and ham hocks. Then there's the metalurgical improvments you could introduce to the weapons room, like Bessemer steel and all those wonderful alloying agents like chrome and vanadium and cobalt. That would give those pesky frost giants a nasty surprize at Ragnarok. eh? As to the 'odor', ever been to a pulp mill? Hair is nothing compared to that stench.
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