Hello all.

Phew! A long wait has come to an end. Over six months has passed since I got a chance to spend some time at the forge. And here is what I came up with.

Yep. It's a seax. Forged from a spring steel, filed, heat treated and sharpened. Here are the stats

OA lenght: 57cm
Blade lenght: 44cm
Blade width at the widest point: 4cm
Blade thicknes: 5mm with a very subtle distal taper

Any comments would be appriciated.

I've been busting my head with the scabbard. I'm aware that a seax should be slung horizontaly at the waist. Now that my seax measures almost 60cm the question is: How horizontaly should I wear it? And should I make a wooden core for the scabbard or settle with just thick leather. I think I would feel much more secure with the wooden core, but is it historicaly correct?


-mr

---

 Attachment: 116.07 KB

The Seax

Here's some in progress photos.

Boy was I sour after two days of work. I have been working only with a mouse for over six months...

-mr

---

 Attachment: 111.03 KB

The proud father

 Attachment: 64.72 KB

Handle materials all lined up...

 Attachment: 65.05 KB

The quench...

 Attachment: 59.93 KB

Draw filing...

 Attachment: 72.12 KB

Forging...

Well. It seems I messed up the order of the pictures anyway... How embarassing.

Oh well. Need sleep I guess.

-mr

Excellent work,

I like the fact that your blade is longer than other seax's I've seen makes the point more appealing to me. Short wide seax have always seemed a bit off due to the clipped point.

About the sheath. I would think the period that knives of this type were carried would lend itself to either style. Most seax(what is the plural for seax anyhow) were probably carried by folkes of a more modest fortune so a sheath of simple leather was probably more common. But I you would feel more comfortable with a wood liner I can't see why you shouldn't make one.

Kerry Neuls

That's great work.

Congratulations, absolutely gorgeous.

Thank you for your kind words :D

I too find the short brocken back seax to be rather blunt looking IMHO. I wanted mine to have a mean point suitable for stabbing and blade long enough to make a nasty chopper. Something a modest smith could have put together in a bit of a hurry.

Now that I have one I can easily figure out why the seax was so popular. It realy was rather fast to mak even with simple tools. It took me about 15 hours to complete. Someone with a little more skill could propably have done it in half the time.

Next weekend I'm planning to do some cutting with it. We shall see how it handles...

I think I'll go with the wooden core. I still need to figure out the angle and the suspension, though.

-mr

Beautiful seax!

What did you take to make the blade stuck with the handle?

Etienne:

I drilled a hole on the handle and then shaped the hole with files to tightly fit the tang. I filled the hole with epoxy glue and hammered the handle in place. Later I was told that if I soaked the antler in warm water for a while it would have soften enough that I could have just pushed the antler in to place. As the antler dries out it would shrink and seal the tang tightly to the handle. Thus, I wouldn't have needed glue at all. That would propably have saved me a lot of time, since I wouldn't have needed to shape the hole as much as I did. Antler is pretty tough when it's dry and it doesn't give up much. Therefore the hole needs a lot of shaping to accept the tang. Next time I will definitely try to soften the antler with water...

Toni R. posted some cutting pics on this http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...highlight= thread a while back. As he stated on his thread, the seax cut like dream. We had a lot of fun.

-mr

Hi Mikko,

Your seax looks great! I like the hilt. With the antler and the fittings it has a practical, simple and elegant look. The blade looks as if it's made for business ;)
Good luck with the scabbard!

Cheers,
Henrik

Excellent work Mikko. I'm curious about the quenching method you used, that almost looks like a Salt-Pot.

Great item! It is not your first,is it?

Yep. I've done differential heat treating with puukko-blades. Actualy most of puukkos I've made were differentialy heat treated. I have always used Oil as quench medium, though.

-mr