Completed [Sultros Blades] Hilt Decoration

[Eanos]

70 Fall, 513AV

Following on from his thoughts about the places that he needed to improve his skills with regards his crafting Eanos turned his attention to the question of inscriptions and decorations on the swords themselves.

He had yet to make up the hilt fittings for the short sword that he had recently completed and this seemed an appropriate time to do something about that. With the forge up to heat he started work on the blade guard which would be a simple oval shape, but reasonably thick and heavy for the hilt on the sword needed to be fairly heavy to compensate for the thick and heavy blade. In addition the thick guard allowed him to have space to decorate in a design which he thought would be quite eye catching and something that he’d not seen here.

Starting with a bar of metal he heated it in the forge and bent it in two using another bar that he’d shaped to the same size as the tang. This was a typical example of something that might be cast but for strength he preferred it to be forged. This was all that stood between the swordsmans fingers and another blade sliding down the length of this blade so being sturdy was essential.

Wrapping it around the dummy tang he brought it around and closed, taking it up past yellow hot and welding the two parts together so that now he had a slightly oval rectangle with a slit in the middle for the tang. This all needed shaping, both to bring the outside down to a smooth oval and on the inside to match the tang. Once slipped over the tang it would be held against the shoulders of the blade by wedges which in turn would be covered by the hilt wrappings.

Although it took considerable time to get this far he was still early in the project as now the finer work started. He’d practised first on a piece of the same steel bar first so he knew exactly the measurements that need to be made. Measuring carefully he scribed marks evenly along the length of the edge of the guard and then with a square extended those lines across the width of the guard so that when he was done the edge of the guard was covered in a series of parallel lines. The gap between the lines was very carefully calculated and tested for if it were too far apart or too close then the effect would be lost.

Now he needed a very sharp and very fine chisel which he honed carefully then slowly cut down one of the lines. The second pass deepened it so that there was less risk of the blade skipping and marring the surface of the guard. With those two passes done he altered the angle of the blade and started cutting deeper but this time he was opening out the cut so that there were two roots which angled out slightly.

[Eanos]

Each of the lines of the hilt would need its own grooves cut into it, each groove having two grooves cut into the bottom of it that splayed outwards. Into each groove he would be hammering wire and the grooves would act just as a wedged tenon joint would work in carpentry since once the wire was hammered in it would not come out again as the top of the cut was smaller than the base.

He did not make all of the cuts at once because it was a long and tedious job. Instead he started to lay the wire in place and for this he had silver and copper wire, both in two different gauges. Taking the thicker silver wire he cut a slightly overlong piece and making sure to save all of the scraps he laid it centrally over a cut groove then tapped it lightly in place. Once he was sure it was held by the edges of the cut steel he hammered it harder and as he did so it was forced down into the groove, the bottom edge of the soft wire being cut by the top centre of the ridge in the bottom and forcing the cut parts down into the grooves either side.

At the same time the top of the wire started to flatten under the hammer blows. He did not drive it all the way at this stage though and instead cut a length of the thicker copper wire and repeated the process with that, leaving one groove between the two. Now he had two pieces of wire embedded into the hilt, neither of which were fully hammered home.

Between then would go another wire but this one would be a wire twisted from both the thinner silver and copper wires. He twisted them together carefully and again cut off a section. As he went along he would not cut the wires at this stage for it was wasteful, but it did allow him a better view of the process.

He turned the wire around so that the twist ran in an leftwards spiral running up to the front of the guard and then lightly hammered it also into place. He cut another length of the twisted wire and placed it the other way round in the next groove to the right of the pure copper wire, lightly hammering it home again, then placed a thicker silver wire in the groove to the right of that.

Now he could see the pattern though it was still incomplete as there were gaps between the wires where the steel of the hilt could be seen. Starting with the thicker copper wire in the middle he started to work that down watching it to see that the top part flattened out and spread evenly. As it started to do that so he worked on the two twisted wires to either side so that they flattened out at the same rate. It would be a mild disaster if one wire spread more than the ones next to it as it would be wider and lower which would make the pattern uneven.

He hummed to himself as he worked, realising now that it would work better if he had ovalised the wires and made a note to do that. Soon the soft metal spread and met, the gaps between the wires now eliminated. He tapped them mostly home, needing to do the same with the silver wire before he could finish. The gaps needed to be removed entirely and then when the whole work was filed down and polished to a flat and even surface it would no longer be possible to tell that the pattern was made of wire.

[Eanos]

With the hilt decoration under way he turned his attention to the blade for he had decided to add a decorative engraving to it. Had he considered it earlier he could have done so and welded in a contrasting steel to fill the marks. Since he hadn’t this would be a simple relief carving into the steel. Of course to carve into the steel surface would require a very hard steel chisel and that would need sharpening often, but since he would be carving into the softer steel of the spine he didn’t expect there to be any particular issues.

The location and the steel both acted as restrictions on the design that could be fitted into the space available and this gave him some pause for thought. His initial idea had been the Tree but since he’d never actually seen it and it likely enough wasn’t the right shape in any case he gave up on the idea and sought something else instead.

He decided in the end on a mountain scene which could be appropriate to either Sultros or a somewhat romantic view of Sylira. He made some sketches on paper first, working out some ideas and deciding on what he liked then he refined it and produced a pattern that he liked. He drew it a few times to get the feel of it and then with ink carefully drew the pattern onto the blade in the place that he’d chosen close to the hilt.

Before he could start work first he had to secure the blade and he did this by caoting the top of a block of wood with pitch and then whilst that was still warm sticking the blade to it. Now the blade was securely fixed to the wooden block so that he could work easily and securely. Taking in hand a very fine chisel he followed the ink lines and marked their edges; lightly at first and then made the marks deeper being very careful not to allow the blade to slip as it would create a scratch which would require the blade to be polished once more, though it was not yet in a properly polished state as there was still work to do such as the hilt.

Then taking up a hammer and slightly heavier chisel he moved to one end and started to carve the design more deeply into the blade, one careful chip at a time. The design would not just be an outline as was sometimes seen on swords but would in fact be a full relief carved into the surface of the sword. He shifted from one end of the design to the other, slowly carving each end deeper into relief and working that across until the two met in the middle and then he evened out the depth so that the design was now cut evenly if still somewhat roughly into the steel.

As with making the sword so the carving went through cycles and now he worked his way back over the design, this time with smaller and finer chisels slowly cleaning off the roughly cut surfaces.

[Eanos]

For the smoothing process no hammer was used, instead each of the carefully hand shaped and sharpened blades slowly cut away the raised edges of the previous cut marks, bringing the surface down to a smooth and even one.

When the surface was as smooth as he could make it with the chisel then he changed over to fine slips of abrasive stones which he would normally have used either for sharpening blades or the polishing of them. With the shaped tips of these he slowly went over the designs once more removing the fine marks left by the hand chisels.

Now was the time for some artistic decisions to be made for with a fine polish applied but not a mirror finish so it was the time to decide which parts of the design were to be left like this, and even which parts were to receive a design of scratches whilst still others would be further polished. In this manner he could reinforce the idea that this was a mountain scene, perhaps with snow reflecting off some points whilst the rougher areas might simulate shade thus creating more of an impression of relief.

The finer polish to those points that needed it were applied with finer polishing powders applied to the tip of a wooden stick which had been carefully shaped for just this purpose.

He was not quite finished with the engraving into the sword though for he still had to inscribe his rune into the metal of the tang. The process was somewhat similar for once again he used ink to mark the rune upon the swords surface but from there the detail was very different.

Tradition dictated that the signature on the sword was done not by carving it out but by making it with a series of hammered chisel marks and for his rune he used a number of fine cuts rather then larger and somewhat cruder ones that some smiths preferred. Before he started marking the rune he first had to finish the tang and this was done with a file in a series of carefully placed passes so that a rough but even pattern was left which would provide a good grip for whatever was used over it to create the padding for the grip itself.

He tapped the chisel firmly as he followed his inked marks over the rough surface of file marks. Every mark overlaid the one before it so that the surface of the rune was a series of ridges which was quite unlike the carefully smoothed and polished surface of the design on the blade itself. The signatures and the way that they were applied were unique to each smith and each could recognise the signature of the smith from the way it had been cut without ever needed to actually read the mark itself.

With the blade done he turned his attention back to the hilt and carried on cutting the grooves now that he was happy with the way that the wire was fitting onto the guard.

[Eanos]

With a two handed sword there was the possibility to add in a hilt decoration and Eanos was curious enough to make an attempt at what one might look like if he were to take the mountains as a signature mark for his blades. He didn’t think it would work on a single handed hilt as it might be a little slippery to the grip, but that he might find out when he made an attempt.

He took a small sheet of brass and cut out a section that was just a little larger than he thought that he would need and then took out the tools for chasing and repousse which were a series of mostly rounded punches of various shapes with a large leather sandbag. Done properly and with greater skill he knew that pitch was a better surface than the leather for much as he’d used it to grip the sword, the pitch, used thicker, provide a firm surface and at the same time flex exactly with the metal which allowed much more control. On the down side it was very messy to use and required cleaning of the metal every time it was turned over. In the future he would experiment with it but for now his skills at this were not enough to warrant that.

He practised the mountain design once more this time scaled down in size and somewhat simplified so he needed to make some compromises in it but he quickly found the changes that pleased him and then inked the design onto the brass plate. When he came to start he quickly realised that because the design would be raised that he would need to reverse the design and draw it on the back so he worked on his sketch and then when happy again reinked it on the other side.

Before he laid punch to metal he had to envisage the design in his mind and for this he found it useful to lay the sword on the bench in front of him. Now, although the designs were a little different he could see which areas needed to be raised and which would lay flatter. He chose the first point and gently tapped the punch against it, then tapped again harder and then still harder as he tried to learn the force required. He knew that it was going to be easier to strike more times than to hit too hard and ruin the piece but he needed to get the feel of the right amount of force and he was cautious because the work was much more delicate and the metal softer than what he was used to working with.

The punches stretched the metal out but the work was very general and rounded for the most part, it was hard to get precise definition and so it wasn’t long before he turned the work over and worked around the edges pushing the metal back and tightening the curves. Once the metal was stretched it was almost impossible for him to shrink it again so he started to learn the process of working both sides evening, raising the detail from the back and then chasing it back again and adding detail from the front.

As he had expected it did not progress as well as his mind had imagined but he was content that his fingers still had the ability to learn these finer skills.

[Radiant]

Eanos :

Experience

Skill	XP Earned
Observation	+1 XP
Metalsmithing	+4 XP
Blacksmithing	+1 XP
Drawing	+1 XP

Lores

Lore Earned

Blacksmithing: Crafting Sword's Guard

Metalsmithing: Wires

Metalsmithing: Smoothing Process

Loots

Notes :

As always, amazing work, Eanos.

My radiance is not bright enough?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, beam me a PM and we can work it out.