Seax with meteorite and bog yew.. and spear. -- myArmoury.com

Scott Roush · Industry Professional

Hi folks.. here are a couple of things I've recently finished.

The seax is a 'narrow broken-back' type and is Anglo-Saxon in styling and artwork. I made this knife from bars of beautiful carburized bloomery steel made by Götz Breitenbücher (https://www.facebook.com/GotzIronworks/), an extremely talented smith who smelts much of his own steel directly from iron ore for use in his wonderful weapons. One of the bars he sent to me had Gibeon meteorite folded with the bloomery steel. I have taken these bars and forge welded them together and forged this blade. The blade is mounted in ebony and bog yew from the UK that dates back to 3300 BC. This wood was salvaged from bogs and used for cabinet making. I was able to purchase a chunk of it. The rune carving motif comes form the ‘Franks Casket’ .. an ancient relic that bears a rune poem telling the story of Weyland the Smith. The ‘gripping beast’ motif is a classic Anglo-Saxon theme found on many aspect of their craft-work. One side of the grip was left largely without carving in order to allow the grain of the bog yew to dominate. I have inlaid my maker’s mark on the spine with 24k gold wire. The scabbard is cowhide, bronze and bog yew and made in the Gotlandic style.. a style commonly found associated with the seax knife. The total length of this knife is 12.5″ over-all. The spine is a bit over 1/4″ at it’s widest.. and the distal taper is historically accurate having it’s widest point at approximately the ‘breaking point’ in the shape of the blade.

And here is a commissioned spear heading to the UK. With box and matching carburized wrought iron foot spike. The core is 1084/15n20/mild steel and there is a composite edge bar composed of 19th century shear steel from some kind of old farm implement and 1075. The core was welded to a mild steel plate which was forged into a socket around a mandrel. The bind rune, which was inlayed with bronze and fine silver wire, was chosen by my customer. I fashioned a storage/display box from old growth white pine with a floating birch top.

Thank you for looking!

Peter Lyon · Industry Professional

Wow. Beautiful work there.

Jerry Monaghan · Posted: Fri 13 Nov, 2015 11:28 am Post subject:

Great work Scott love all of this the seax is so nice love the carving and sheath as well.
Big thank you for posting this. Bliss

J.D. Crawford · Posted: Fri 13 Nov, 2015 5:14 pm Post subject:

Wow again - that's a seax fit for Sigurd or Beowulf! It must have magical powers for slaying trolls and dragons.

Aaron Hoard · Posted: Fri 13 Nov, 2015 10:56 pm Post subject:

Some really stunning work there.

Jonathan Hodge · Posted: Sun 15 Nov, 2015 2:19 pm Post subject:

Scott, this is just amazing. Really impressive work.

Tim Harris · Industry Professional

I'm not particularly interested in seaxes as a rule, but that really grabbed my attention. Wonderful stuff.

Scott Roush · Industry Professional

Thank you everybody for commenting as well as the generous compliments. I appreciate it very much.... and keeps me fired up to continue adding carving to my skill palette....