Large Seax Style Shortsword -Hotforged

Another gift, I made a seax styled shortsword for my grandfather. I decided to do a seax both because I love the blade style and because my grandparents live in Sussex, home of the Southern Saxons for whom the seax is named.

I had a bit more time on my hands than usual, at least at the start of the project, so I decided to forge the distal taper into the blade rather than grind it out. As seaxes have a really unusual taper where the thickest point is towards the tip of the blade, this would allow me to make that area extra thick and give a real dynamism to the feel of the finished weapon.

I cut a bar to the approximate edge taper I wanted and through precise hammering moved the bulk of the metal of the blade from the base up to the tip, ending up with about 3mm thickness at the handle and about 1cm at the tip. Here is a little forging montage, starting with the rough cut bar and ending with the pointed and tapered blade. Because of the unusual section, it doesn’t appear to change much but in each photo the blade curves a little more as the edge is thinned and the spine thickens.

So here is the finished rough blade. I gave it a quick cleanup on the belt grinder, turned off the lights and heated the forge up to quenching temperature:

After quenching and tempering the blade I spent a few days profiling and detailing the handle. These pictures were taken in the early stages of work as I burnt the blade into the handle to get tight fit. This is a bit of a tricky operation as if you push too hard or too fast the handle will split but if you go too slow it will char a huge hole in the centre and the handle will not fit. Practice and a tolerance for acrid smoke are a necessity!

Here the handle is fitted, and I could continue with the carving without fear that I would put hours of work into it only to have it crack as I fitted it! In the end I removed the rounded end and covered the whole surface in basket-weave knotwork  stained to an almost ebony shade. The raised bands were then covered with gold leaf which was a pain in the a**e but gave a great and gaudy look that I think is appropriate for a blade from the dark ages.

I don’t have any pictures of the finished sword but I’m hoping my Grandfather will take some glamour shots for me as he is an amazing photographer and it would be nice to have some better pictures than my phone can produce!

Edit: Finished sword: Finished Seax style shortsword