New Axe/ Warhammer idea

[Avery P.]

I really got to keep up a little on this thread, lol. Seems I've missed quite a bit. The cut job on is fantastic, it looks like you really wont have a lot of grinding to contend with. Do you plan on re-heat treating the heads after you get them cleaned and polished? I'm interested in seeing the finished pieces, handle and all.

[Ringulf]

When I outlined the cut for Brandwyn I made sure the top horn kirf was about a half inch or so back from the actual edge. Brandy said that that area never did get super hot or changed color appreciably. (being thinner it cut quickly)

So at this point I am going to try not to have to heat treat it beyond what it already had.

As I look at the use I intend for these, I believe I will be throwing them more then cutting and chopping, (though I won't shy away from that either).

In my mind a good throwing piece should have a strong edge but be somewhat soft behind and since I spend more time sticking the top horn in than anything else (on a good day) I think it will work out ok.

The grind of the horn will be somewhat pyramidal so we shall see, same with the spike.

What do you smiths think? I value your opinions.

[Avery P.]

I don't know about not heat treating it, Along with the torch heat, you're going to have the heat off the grinder as well. It's kind af a catch 22, you can grind real slow and constantly cool the piece, which takes up a lot more time, or grind away like a mad dwarf but have to heat treat them at the end. If it were me, I would do a quench after. Axes are a lot easier to quench and temper then a blade is. With a blade, it's a 2 step process; the first being the intial quench(that's the cool part, dunking it in heated oil, watching it sizzle and pulling it out) and then the temper. I usually use my oven, preheat it to 400, stick the blade in, let it sit for an hour and turn the oven off, leaving it in there till it completely cools.
However, with an axe, all you have to do is heat the whole head up to non magnetic, quench the back spike just about all the way to the eye, flip it around and quench the the first inch or so of the blade. The part of the axe that is still hot will push heat back into the areas that you quenched, tempering it as a result.
It's kind of funny, it takes me longer to get the forge going and the coal just the way I want it than it does to temper a standard 'hawk or hand axe.


Plus, if you're going to be throwing it alot, there is always the chance of missing, which leads to a chane of hitting a rock, and chopping with a somewhat soft edge means constant sharpening.

If Brandy has a way to torch the head in such a way to heat the whole head evenly, tempering these would take less time than what it would take you grinding them very slow so as not to induce heat. All you'd need is a metal coffee can and a gallon of conola oil. Or I can temper them for you at no charge as long as pay shipping here and back. The one cool visual thing about tempering is the temper line you get in the steel after. On Katana you get a pretty, wavy and long hamon, but even on an axe you get a pretty, somewhat straight temper line. I feel odd calling it a hamon on an axe, but the visual line is still pretty cool. If you get a clean enough polish, you can acid etch the line to bring it out more.

Didn't mean to ramble on, but when someone speaks "axe", they're speaking my native language, lol.

[Ringulf]

You ramble on as much as you like!
I too eat it up! And I know what you mean about speaking axe! there are not too many that do but having watched your videos and seen your work and the bit of conversation we have had, I truly admire your work and gladly look up to you for your knowledge and experience.

Up till we lost the church site I was throwing every weekend for about 4 months and the two gentlemen that I have been throwing with (prior Ranger Captains and thrown weapons officers here in the Kingdom of Trimaris)
have taught me a great deal in a rather short amount of time. They feel I have an aptitude for throwing and the passion to advance it. Now I need the discipline and experience to become a good thrower.

Actually making the weapons has been a fascination for me too but I look forward to the day that I can do more than put together already made peices or modify existing ones, and really forge my own!

Thank you for your kind offer totreat them. I think I could, however learn more by following your instructions and trying it myself. Once I get them I will shoot you a pm and if you are willing perhaps you could guide me. The above description is great and I almost feel as if I could do it right from that. However I may have a few more questions.

[Avery P.]

Oh, I can ramble, trust me lol.

I think you can absolutely treat them yourself. When I first started out forging, I corresponded with a few different makers. Some liked to make heat treating sound mystic or esoteric. In the end it was all b.s., and it took me a month or so to figure it out. Two local makers I talked two, who happen to be Carolina men, really gave me great info and were open and honest on their process.

One is a fella who I first contacted named Stuart Willis. Here is a link to an ebay page of one of his hawks;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blacksmith-Cust ... 2a2185198b

The other, and one I consider a mentor is a man named Butch Silver. Here's a link to one of hawks;
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BLACKSMITH-CUST ... 3a7845904b

Butch and me see each other about once a month at a local blacksmithing meetup, and the man has never failed to share information and technique on any aspect of forging.

Now, obviously, I make a slightly larger style of axe, but the fundamentals are the same and Butches method on heat treating has always worked for me. I've expiremented with different ways, but when/if it fails, I always fall back on his method.

So, here's my reason for this particular ramble, lol. Heat treating an axe is not that hard at all. In the grand scheme of things, I haven't done many treats. At most, a few dozen. Butch and Stuart on the other hand, have done much, much more than that and I relied heavily on their non-B.S. wisdom from the start. Also, a man named Steve Barringer, who isn't an axe maker but a master smith with an incredible shop.
From these men I have learned one of the greatest lesson of steel anyone can learn; as long as you don't melt the steel, if you screw up it's not that hard to fix.

[Brandwyn]

Oh yes, please do ramble on about all topics forging. I came very close to apprenticing in the SCA to a Master Smith named Brock, but we couldn't get our schedules to match. I also have gotten to see some forging techiniques on a massive scale at work where they repair anchor chains for the big ships. I am totally fascinated by the process, but I only get to particpate when they need me to cut one of the links apart because they can't get the pin out. Cutting anchor chain links that are pretty much the size of my entire torso is quite challenging and takes a LOT of acetylene!

But I have never tempered anything and don't know a lot about the "chemistry" behind the tempering or the actual process. I understand there are different tempering techniques for different things you are trying to temper, right? I would love to learn more forging techiniques and begin making all kinds of wrought iron items, not to mention making our own blades. Some day...

As to heating the axe evenly, would slowly warming it by running an oxyacetylene torch all over it work? Generally if I stay off the metal and keep the torch moving I can usually heat items up until they get cherry red, but I am not sure exactly how even that heat really is. I suspect no matter how hard I try, there would still be some pockets that are hotter than others.

We did repair a forklift blade once like that though, but that was just to heat it up to pound the thing back flat (one of the guys ran into a railroad tie and curled the tip of the forklift blade up a good inch - major "oops!" moment). After we got it flat, they parked the tips of the blades into the big oven in the forge shop and heated it and then let it cool down slowly. As far as I know they didn't mess the integrity of the blades up, but I still think it was a bad idea to mess with it in the first place. Ah.. the things that happen on night shift - if day shift only knew...lol

[Peter Remling]

Brandwyn, Just a quick question that has little to do with the original topic, Why didn't they just grind the bent inch off? An inch off a forklift blade would hardly effect the lift and it seems it would be a much less costly effort.

I've run a variety of forklifts over the years and it seems an easy fix, unless it was a rental and the company didn't want to deal with a claim from the rental company.

Just curious

[Avery P.]

But I have never tempered anything and don't know a lot about the "chemistry" behind the tempering or the actual process. I understand there are different tempering techniques for different things you are trying to temper, right? I would love to learn more forging techiniques and begin making all kinds of wrought iron items, not to mention making our own blades. Some day...

As to heating the axe evenly, would slowly warming it by running an oxyacetylene torch all over it work? Generally if I stay off the metal and keep the torch moving I can usually heat items up until they get cherry red, but I am not sure exactly how even that heat really is. I suspect no matter how hard I try, there would still be some pockets that are hotter than others.

There are a few different tempering techniques, but really it's not vastly different. As for the chemistry, there are a ton of people out there that know more about the cyrstal structure of steel. As steel heats, depending on the temp, it'll form crystals inside the steel. These determine whether it's super hard and brittle or a little softer and more flexible.
For instance, a differentially hardened katana will have a spine that is pearlite(softer) while the cutting edge is martensite(hard and easily sharpened). I wont bore you, or ramble, but that gives you an idea of two different structures.


Onto the the heating with a torch; I've never done it myself, but I have seen it done. Basicly, just do as you said. Except instead of cherry, go for a low orange. What you're looking for is when the steel becomes non-magnetic(annealed). Once the whole thing is about the same even color and annealed, that's when you quench. I keep a magnet stuck to the side of my anvil for convience. As for there being pockets that are uneven, no worries. The heat will evenly distribute as it cools. If it were a large blade, sword or big battle axe, it'd be more important. With these, not so much so.

And I agree with Pete, cutting the fork would've been a lot safer, lol. What they did was dangerous and the heat treat method wasn't done correctly. But, like you said, funny things happen on third shift.


Edit to add: This may help a little on the chemistry part of it.
http://www.threeplanes.net/toolsteel.html

Even it says go to a cherry red, but when I anneal, I always see orange or yellow...odd.

[Brandwyn]

Brandwyn, Just a quick question that has little to do with the original topic, Why didn't they just grind the bent inch off? An inch off a forklift blade would hardly effect the lift and it seems it would be a much less costly effort.

I've run a variety of forklifts over the years and it seems an easy fix, unless it was a rental and the company didn't want to deal with a claim from the rental company.

Just curious

Well the entire affected area was closer to 4 inches, but only an inch was completely curled up. And since they were paying us anyway, it didn't really cost any extra to have us fix it - except time. Actually I think the supervisor was just trying to avoid filling out an incident report on the thing. He figured if they fixed it, no one would be the wiser. Seems to have worked, for I never heard of anything happening because of it. The things that happen on night shift...

[Ringulf]

The next phase of this project was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the hafting and I finally came to a decision the other day.

I decided not to alter the drift at this point with this project and mount them on double bit axe handles cut down to the right preportions.

Well that was the next point of contention, what were the right proportions?

I had originally thought of these being more along the lines of the big CS spikehawks, warhammer, or Nemo's axe, and then I saw the Tzikourians and how light they were.
This head is not only a bit heftier than those in the pictures but also had a large, narrow, oval drift hole, so mounting them on light handles was not going to be functional or pretty!

I played with the idea of using a tapered punch to change the shape of the hole then decided against it due to the possibility of breaking through the thin walls and ruining all Brandwyns hard work!

So I got a nice hickory double bit handle that was strait and shaped it to fit the head. I then debated for a few days what I was going to do about the legnth.

I had been doing some experimenting with my other axes and had determined that my new handles had been too long at almost 20 inches and they worked a bit better when cut to 19". I could throw them well from anywere in front of the 18" but then needed to go back past 24' to get a second rotation. (Avery's "backward seven" helped me win quite a few matches during that time as it was the only way I could get my throw behind the 18' mark without a spotting scope!)

So I cut the haft on these monsters to 18 inches and with the weight of the head and the sturdiness of the double bit handle these things threw beautifully!The heft of the weapon made it sound like I was firing a canon at the target!
(I am fortunate to be almost as "dwarflike" as M.E. Ringulf as concerns having the arm stregnth to throw these, it is not easy, and took a bit of time to get any endurance with it)after about three weeks of daily practice, I am now throwing them for close to 35 minutes before feeling the fatigue that effects my accuracy, but that is getting better.

I absolutely love how chunky and dwarven they look and feel, I look at them as a nice fussion between a dwarven throwing axe and what a Varangian would do with a Psilos's Tzikourian if he were taught to use one.

I have taken some comparison pictures of the axehead rough cut and ground and then some "before shots" after mounting on the haft to show you.
I am going to do some decoration to them soon but most likely after the Holidays, with all I have going on craftwise.

Hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think!

[Peter Remling]

You've got better arms than me.

Those hafts should take a lot of throwing abuse.

Nice job !

[Ringulf]

Yeah they are not lightweights, but they are very nicely balanced for their weight so the whole feel is good when throwing or fighting with them. I was working over a wooden pell with them and they certainly are not to be trifled with!
The handles, with the extra beef near the throat gives it a lot of stregnth. I really like the way that dorsal horn bites no matter what angle it enters. It gives me a bit more flexibility when throwing on the fly!

[kaelln]

That's a serious weapon! I don't know if you have the capability to shoot video, but I would love to see some video of you throwing various things. Axes, knives, hobbits, you know, anything to hand!

[Ringulf]

Ha ha Fox!
I guess I would have to throw the Hobbit first so I can stick him with the rest of the weapons to the target!
I can put up a picture series of a throwing run I did in the summer that is amusing, but I have no video at present, however Brandwyn got a new camera that can take video and we can work on that as well as learning to put a video clip up here. (may need some help on that from some of you more technologically savy Rangers.)