Back in 2016, my wife and I went to the ABANA conference in Salt Lake. One of the demonstrations I attended was Jim Austin forging a Viking age broad axe from scratch. I bought his DVD and have since been reading everything I can find by Jim and another Historian/Bladesmith named Jeff Pringle. These two guys have spent a lot of time doing the research and forensic smith work figuring out how these ancient axes were made. It is truly remarkable how many variations there are in the process and technique. I told myself I had to try this, but was stopped by the amount of tooling needed. Today I got some of that done.
A friend of mine had dropped off a couple of used jackhammer bits, which are perfect for the job. Here is the result of about 4-5 hours in the shop today.
Other than some wire brush work, these are all as-forged.
From the left, there are two bicks, one is fairly flat, but trapezoid in cross section, the other is round. There is a round mandrel. These three are Hardy-hole tools. There is a long round tapered drift. This will be cut into 3 smaller drifts used to enlarge the eye and keep it in shape during other forging operations. The last two drifts are a squat D shape and a more modern eye shape for a typical hatchet.
The round vertical mandrel
And the two bicks.
Joshua States
www.dosgatosforge.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJMFMqnbLYqv965xd64vYg
https://www.facebook.com/dos.gatos.71
Also on Instagram and Facebook as J.States Bladesmith
“So I'm lightin' out for the territory, ahead of the scared and the weak and the mean spirited, because Aunt Sally is fixin’ to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before.â€
Nice work Joshua. I can't wait to see some finished Viking axes.
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That's a little impressive!
Karl B. Andersen
Journeyman Smith
|quoted:
That's a little impressive!
Thanks Karl! A lot of guys laugh when I tell them my power hammer is a 25 pound Little Giant, but she gets the job of roughing stuff out done!
Joshua States
www.dosgatosforge.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJMFMqnbLYqv965xd64vYg
https://www.facebook.com/dos.gatos.71
Also on Instagram and Facebook as J.States Bladesmith
“So I'm lightin' out for the territory, ahead of the scared and the weak and the mean spirited, because Aunt Sally is fixin’ to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before.â€
|quoted:
Nice work Joshua. I can't wait to see some finished Viking axes.
Thanks Jason. The axes may be a little while in the making. I've got a lot of projects on the bench right now. The axe bodies are made of mild steel (traditionally plain iron) with a HC steel bit forge welded in the edge. The old axes all had elements of forge welding, both in the edge bit and to make the eye. I was contemplating making the edge material out of bloomery steel, but that would require me smelting some ore or sand down to make the steel.....that could take some time and effort.
Joshua States
www.dosgatosforge.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJMFMqnbLYqv965xd64vYg
https://www.facebook.com/dos.gatos.71
Also on Instagram and Facebook as J.States Bladesmith
“So I'm lightin' out for the territory, ahead of the scared and the weak and the mean spirited, because Aunt Sally is fixin’ to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before.â€
It takes a lot of "behind the scenes" time to get set up for projects like this. Actually the developing of the process is more important than the individual product because it determines the outcome to a large degree. Once all the tweaking is done you can make many multiples of the product with reasonable consistency.
|quoted:
It takes a lot of "behind the scenes" time to get set up for projects like this. Actually the developing of the process is more important than the individual product because it determines the outcome to a large degree. Once all the tweaking is done you can make many multiples of the product with reasonable consistency.
It's kind of funny how that works. One day you say, gee, I'd like to try forging an ax. Then you start looking at folks who do it, collecting written materials, watching videos and deciding what style/type of ax you are going to start with.
I've been looking at a block of PW I made a few years ago from mostly low-C and some 15N20 for the ax body and a piece of PW scrap for the bit of 10965/15N20. Once I got those pieces, I stopped and said: Gee, I need to make a bunch of stuff before I can make that ax. I still have one more drift to make, but I ran out of jackhammer bits!
Joshua States
www.dosgatosforge.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdJMFMqnbLYqv965xd64vYg
https://www.facebook.com/dos.gatos.71
Also on Instagram and Facebook as J.States Bladesmith
“So I'm lightin' out for the territory, ahead of the scared and the weak and the mean spirited, because Aunt Sally is fixin’ to adopt me and civilize me, and I can't stand it. I've been there before.â€
