Project Three - Reasoning - Blades
For this project I knew what I wanted to do so I cited in and took the shot. With a life long love for blades and swords, I decided to take a deep dive into the world of blade smithing. Covering everything from blade metals to different forging methods I saw the true variety that exists in the blade smithing world. To start off this project I decided my two goals, make a blade for my art portion, and understand why blades from history were designed the way they were. For the fording process portion I focused on the why of everything, why this hammer, why this temperature, why this anvil. Continuing with the reasoning mind set I researched blades from some of the greatest civilizations in history and created a visual essay. That's enough of an intro though, I hope you enjoy the summery of the past three weeks of work!
Art portion
We begin the fording journey where one would expect any journey taken by a teenager in the 21st century to begin, the internet. After about an hour of searching and comparing prices and dates i decided on a small place called The Under Hill Forge. So bright on a Sunday mourning, I left my home at 8 Am to make an hour drive to the forge and begin class at 9:15.
(NOTE -The following slide show is in the same chronological order as the text. |
We started out with 8 inches of 1080 steel. 1080 steel is used for knives as it is a higher carbon steel, which allows it to hold an edge better, but as it is harder and more bridal, it is not used in swords to avoid the snapping of a long blade. With my steel cut and and an example blade to use as a goal, I began my work. I started by placing my steel in the forge. As it heated the blade smith explained the basic of metal working. He explained that we wanted to keep the blade within 1,500 and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If we work the steel too hot we may accidentally do more then we intend with the hammer and even bend the blade with the tongues we use to hold it. On the other hand if we work the steel to cold we risk having the crystal structure of the steel form and then break said structures destroying the blade. With this in mind he shows me the color range we want to keep the steel at and we begin. We started with a 3 pound hammer and later moved to five to get the power we need to move the metal. Due to the heavier weight of the hammer though to maintain control the blade smith had me choke up on the hammer. I forge a curve on the spine of the knife so when we draw out the edge, the blade would stretch itself straight instead of bending back and creating a useless curve to the knife. At the beginning the metal need heated more often as with a cold hammer and anvil, the heat has somewhere it wants to go, as the day moves on however they both heat up and I get more and more time to work the metal before it cools and needs placed back in the fire again. After we work out the rough shape of the blade and draw out the tang, we take it to the belt grinder to semi-finalize out shape and edge profile. After this step we take it back to the forge for the curving of the tang to make a handle. After the the blades profile and handle has been finished we heated the metal up to temperature in the forge and then pulled it out and let it cool slowly 4 times. This is done to relax the metal and to make the crystal structure consistent throughout the blade. On the 5th heat we quince the blade in oil to harder it. We then put it in a special oven the temper the blade. Tempering is the slow heating and cooling of the blade to relax the crystal structure just enough to allow the metal to be more flexible but still allow it to hold and edge. While my blade spent about 1 hour in the oven and commercial chefs knife would do 3-4 2 hour treatments at diffrent temperatures to ensure perfection in the metal. We created a simple leather sheath for the blade and the did some grinding to do some last clean up and put an edge on it and the blade was finished.
English Portion
For my english portion I focused on the why of the designs of swords. I analyzed everything from the time period to the soldiers using the diffrent weapons to understand them in the fullest way. Through trial and error I eventually created a recording covering general bases on the design of each blade. One thing that I realized after finishing the project that I have not had an issue with before is the way I decided to portray the information was not the best. The issue was is I had far too much important information and to try to fit all that information in a short slide show under in an under ten minute recording just could not have happened.
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