Thought I would start a thread about the things going on over here at Odin's. Jordan Abernathy's new zweihander pics are up on link in the "Off Topic" section and there has been some questions and Jordan after working with me for a few years has learned enough to answer most. But if there are any questions you would like to ask me, feel free to ask here in this thread. Jerry Rados took on the task of making the blade stock and did some shaping and he had to get the steel to basic shape on the lugs and taper and that was a feat, but 72" of high layer pattern welded steel is rare if never before seen at all. There has been some factory made stuff for industrial use mad before but even that is very rare.
After I got the billet which had the basic shape forged into it by Jerry, I had to grind all the edge bevels, distal taper and fullers and shape the lugs by hand on my big bader grinder. Holding the sword for several days even with breaks was pretty tough work, but I ain't bitchin it was fun. Took it down to a 120 before I heat treated it right here in my shop. After tempering took the blade to 400 and hand polish before etching in ferric to bring out the damascus pattern. Wow, saw the pattern after first pull and was amazed at how it followed the shape especially the lug area. Took on a random pattern with a tiger stripe effect, very cool. Then I did a hand polish job on the steel. The ring guard is 5160H which is higher carbon than regular 5160 and after forging took on a nice ring tone, but was very hard to file. The rest are mono 1018. The grip is wood core with cord and thin leather wrap, lots of cord:) Jordan gave some stricked dementions but also let me do some ideas which is cool for custom sword work but there was no strange surprises becuase of good communication.
Funny I'm working on a dagger right now and jian. Made a couple sword blades for an Eljay basket and other hilt I have from a customer and I have to do stingray and mount up one is a rapier one a scattish basket. Bunch of other stuff comming as well. Gonna try to get some pics up asap, but any questions would be great thanks John

Egads, John. The Zweihander is positively epic! I can imagine the pucker factor was pretty high during the heat treating of this one. No one even comes close to your work on these really big swords, congratulations on a true masterpiece, and to the proud owner as well!

I would love to see some shop equipment photos of the apparatus you used, and what you recommend as practical in terms of costs for a one time project of something that big. Heat treat oven (vertical gas fired?), quench tanks, forging press (hydraulic?) etc. I have long term intentions of pattern welding swords. For now, I am limited in that all of the local ABANA guild here only does knife sized pattern welding that can fit into 12" Paragon ovens. So, eventually I will have to build economical equipment for sword sized objects.