I am working on a new bearded belt axe to replace the one I made for myself last winter but sold to a very persuasive customer at the first show I was at, but that's a simple matter.
Currently I'm working on a nice damascus hunter for myself, seen on the left there.
So far I've got the blade billet forged out, 288 layers of 1075 high carbon and 15N20 tool steel, shaped, ground, filed, tempered and etched. I have the handle blank done, and I'm working on the guard and pommel.
The guard and pommel are being made of what I call "Scrap-mascus". I made so many tomahawks from railroad spike heads that I had a bunch of spike shanks laying around from cutting the excess off the tomahawks. As I was contemplating what to do with them, a friend said, "why don't you forge them into a billet?"
So I took six spike shanks, tacked a piece of 1075, then a piece of 15N20 to one side of a spike, 1075,15N20,1075, then another spike, 1075,15N20,1075, another spike, 15N20 and 1075 for the first layer. Then laid 1075 on top of each spike shank, then another set of spikes, 1075, and 15N20 on top of it so I ended up with a billet that's 13 layers wide and three layers deep. Forged it down and twised it, then forged it down again.
My project for today is to grind down the pieces I cut from that billet into my guard and pommel, once the pieces are done annealing, which they're doing right now in a bucket of vermeculite.
I've been posting pictures of it while it's in progress, you can find the album on my facebook page Wolf's Den Forge if you're interested in following my build process along.
Back to the forge with me.
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