It is another saturday morning in the idyllic
San Jose mountains.
Previous videos showed our attempts creating
crucible steel with Wootz like patterns.
In this video, we show how to make a wootz
seax from the steel we created.
The term seax is an old saxon word that means
knife.
It was in use from the pre-roman iron age
till the high middle ages.
The point of the knife was frequently in the
middle of the blade and the blade and bolster
continued smoothly into the hilt.
Wootz steel may have reached Europe via the
Volga trade route and the knife created here
may have been plausible.
We took the bar from the previous video and
forged it into a knife shape.
Now, we slowly beveling the cutting edge.
As mentioned previously, this steel needs
to be worked at much lower temperatures than
traditional steel.
Wootz steel is ultra high carbon steel with
impurities such as Vanadium around which carbides
segregate and form visible patterns.
We aim for a blade width slightly larger than
1 1/2 inches and continue to forge the blade
so that the cutting edge smoothly tapers into
the point.
In addition to the tapering of the blade width,
we also forge in a distal taper in which the
back of the blade also becomes thinner towards
the point of the blade.
After we are happy with the overall shape,
we normalize the blade before cleaning up
the profile on the belt sander.
The process of normalizing relieves stress
in the blade that built up while forging the
steel under the hammer.
Once the blade has cooled down, the final
profile is created on the belt sander.
First the cutting edge is thinned by creating
a flat grind.
This takes quite some time due to the high
carbon content of the steel.
Before the heat treat, I remove all grinder
marks as these my function as stress risers
where the blade might crack.
To harden the knife, the blade is heated up
to its critical temperature in which the carbon
is dissolved in the iron matrix forming austenite.
Quickly cooling it down transforms the austentite
into hard martensite.
I use a file to test if the blade successfully
hardened.
If the blade is hard the file will just skid
over it.
Now comes another time consuming step in which
the blade is further thinned using finer grit
belts.
This is also the time were the profile is
trued up to make it easier to fit a bolster
and handle.
Once almost all grinder marks have been removed
it is time for a quick test etch to see the
patterning of the steel.
The pattern that we see here is essentially
dendritic and not as refined as one would
expect from traditional Wootz steel.
That is disappointing but just a step on the
way to perfection :-)
A seax knife usually comes with a very simple
bolster that is just a continuation of the
hilt.
Here a simple copper plate is used.
I scribe the size of the tang onto the copper
plate and then drill holes and cut out the
basic shape.
Once the tang fits into the bolster hole,
I slowly drift it to the final size.
In this particular case, I started with a
hole that was too small and the copper got
pulled into the hole which is something I
wanted to avoid.
The drifting process also ended up bending
the copper and frequent adjustments on the
anvil were needed.
In the next step the I scribe the overall
shape and then painstakingly cut it out with
a jeweler's saw.
Even at 20 times the normal speed, you can
see that it took a while.
However, finally it's done and another exercise
in patience has been completed.
While the hilt will mostly be made from wood,
I also plan to insert a piece of bone decorated
with dot and ring motifs.
Here I am using a test piece to get a better
feeling on the overall look.
In the following steps, I will adjust the
shape of the copper bolster and then fit a
piece of cow bone to it.
As the bone is mostly hollow I need to find
the orientation that works the best.
Grinding bone is extremely messy; it generates
a lot of very fine dust.
I set up a blower to blow most of the dust
out of the shop but am also wearing a respirator.
For the final fit of the bone to the copper
bolster, I glue the pieces together which
makes any subsequent work on them much easier.
Choosing the wood for the hilt is not always
an easy choice.
In this case, opportunity knocked on the door
in the form of discarded ironwood flooring.
Ironwood is very dense and heavy and will
give the seax a very substantial weight.
Since I am already pursuing a hybrid weapon,
I am not too concerned that ironwood might
not have been available in continental Europe
in early medieval times.
However, I did have a lot of difficulty working
the ironwood with the chisels I had at my
disposal; in the end I needed to use a file
to clean up the channeled I carved for the
tang.
The glued construction of the wooden hilt
is another artifact of the ironwood panels
I was working with.
If the piece of wood had been larger, I probably
would have burned the tang into it.
However, since I have shown how to burn in
the tang in previous videos, I get to show
another technique here.
When glueing the panels together I intentionally
leave some space without glue around the carved
channel.
I also coat the tang with oil so that it does
not become trapped by potential excess glue.
The knife is slowly starting to take the shape.
Now everything needs to be fine tuned.
I establish the rough shape of the handle
using a bandsaw.
For a seax, it's important the blade shape
continues smoothly into the hilt.
The final shape of the hilt is established
using a belt grinder.
Since I aiming for compound curves the rubber
contact wheel on the belt grinder will come
in handy.
For any kind of grinding that involves fine
dust, I recommend wearing breathing protection
or at the very least have a door open to the
outside to which the dust can escape.
Creating the hilt shape is a very incremental
process for me where I constantly check how
the shape is developing.
For the final adjustments, I sand the hilt
by hand using sandpaper up to 220 grit.
As you can see the seax is slowly coming together.
A lot of work still needs to be done.
In the following, I use Japanese polishing
stones to polish and sharpen the blade.
The first step is to true up the stones.
As you can see, my current set up is far from
ideal, but this is only a temporary situation.
In the meantime, don't get sea sick.
Using the stones, I can remove all scratches
that were made by the belt sander.
Finally after many hours all scratches have
been removed I can etch the blade.
The polishing stones themselves already reveal
some of the steel structure, the etch will
bring out different parts a little bit stronger.
To achieve a uniform etch. it is important
to remove all oils from the blade.
I do this by thoroughly cleaning it.
For pattern-welded blades, I might etch up
to ten or twenty minutes, for the crucible
steel I dip the blade in only for about 30
seconds.
To achieve a very subtle look, I remove most
of the black oxides using 1000 grit sandpaper.
Afterwards I mix red iron oxide with oil and
rub down the blade; this creates a somewhat
matte finish.
Before I can put everything together, the
bone and wood needs to be mated together perfectly.
First I fix the bolster with a drop of glue
to the blade.
Then I use copy paper to find the high spots
on the bone in relation to the wood and remove
them with files.
I also polish up the copper and slightly bevel
the edge which creates a nicer look.
One of the motivations behind creating this
knife was to experiment with decorating bone
using the dot-and-ring motif.
This is a very old motif that was still in
use during Viking times.
I use a cut off disk to frame the design with
two solid lines.
For the dot-and-ring motif, I created several
drill bits that I use to cut differently sized
rings into the bone.
For the actual patterns I use simple geometric
arrangements.
Since the bone is curved, the drill bit needs
to be carefully placed so that it does not
wander on its own.
To create a strong contrast, I mixed beeswax
with charcoal to create a greasy black substance
that I can force into the holes in the bone.
The excess is carefully removed with a knife
that is scraped over the bone.
Since I don't own a buffer, I use felt cloth
to polish the bone and make it shiny.
To my eye, the result looks quite nice.
The last step is glue everything together.
For that I use a slow setting epoxy.
In my original plans, I had meant to use cutler's
resin but I was running out of time.
I use small pieces of wood to fill up the
cavity in the bone.
After waiting for a day that epoxy has completely
cured.
Now, I just need to seal the bone and the
wood.
I use a 
mixture of tung and linseed oil which is distributed
as gun stock finish.
I put on about five coats and use fine steel
wool in between.
I test the sharpness with a piece of paper
and detect that the knife still needs more
sharpening towards the tip.
After a lot of work, the knife is finally
finished.
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