Making a bastard sword the hard way

 A few years back I got it into my mind that it would be neat to make a bastard sword from scratch. Well, not entirely from scratch; I had an old piece of spring steel I found at a museum (I think it might have originally been from a carriage that was disassembled and scrapped).

The project ended up being a lot of work and I learned a few lessons along the way.

I started by drawing some rough sketches and made a wooden version of the sword to get the sizing right.

Here is the wooden version made from some scrap I had lying around. This only took a couple of days to finish and was very useful in determining the shape I wanted the finished product top have.

The crossguard:

Blade tip:

 Entire blade:

Connecting the two:

I originally considered threading the end to secure the pommel. That's why the last couple inches are rounded.

 Entire thing:

Notice the broken tip? There is a reason swords are not made of wood...

After I was satisfied with the wooden version (I never bothered to make a pommel or grips for it), I started working on the blade for the metal version.

Unfortunately most automotive springs have a hole in the middle of them and my spring was no exception. So the first thing I did was weld it shut using a welding stick (nickel for flexibility). Notice the difference in colouring between the two metals:

Noticeable now, but barely visible later

Since the spring was not very close to the blade dimensions I wanted (too wide) I cut the edges off using an oxy/acetylene torch. If you are skilled with the torch you can make some very precise cuts with it.

Unfortunately I am not that skilled and ended up cutting off a bit too much at one point. This did not affect the shape of the blade (I had to grind it down anyway), but it did negatively affect the temper at a single point around 3/4 the way down the blade. However I only noticed this much later.

Kind of blurry, but this is the edge after torch cutting:

The resulting shape:

by this point I had done some extensive straightening on the spring using a sledgehammer and a hydraulic press

What ensued next was a lot of grinding with an angle grinder. Actually, two angle grinders since I burned out the motor of my first grinder along the way.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of this portion of the project, but suffice to say I severely underestimated the amount of time that was required to grind out the shape of the blade using a standard grinding disc.

This was due to the fact that I was grinding extremely tough spring spring as well as the difficulty in grinding a fuller in the middle of the blade to cut down on the weight.

I did eventually finish, but it probably took about 60 hours total.

It turns out that under all that rust was some shiny steel:

Pointed end with fuller

Next up was the crossguard.

I insisted on making this piece as well as the pommel out of stainless steel. Stainless steel can be somewhat difficult to work with, but luckily I had a mill to do most of the work.

Side View:

Stainless steel can be hard on cutters. Hence the cutting fluid to the right.

 Top View:

Close up:

Twins:

The metal version ended up being slightly larger than the wooden one.

Next up was the pommel. I picked a fairly complex hexagonal design for this piece, so to aid in the process I created a 3d model in Sketchup:

I added the diameter measurements to ensure I didn't remove too much stock on the lathe.

Turning this down on the lathe was the easy part. Although not necessary, it sped up the time on the mill later on.

On the lathe:

For scale:

Doing the geometry on the mill for this was tricky. I probably spent more time setting up the table than actually cutting the piece. It was also tricky to grab a cylinder shaped piece and I had to watch out for excessive vibration along the way.

Getting the table centered:

Mounting the piece:

Lots and lots of cutting:

All done:

In the end I was really pleased with how the pommel turned out. It was a very challenging design and unlike the blade I actually had to pay for the stock, so I only had one shot at it.

To get the proper square hole down the middle I was even able to cut it with an EDM machine! All it cost me was a case of beer...

The result:

Other side:

Now it was time to join everything together. For the crossguard I simply welded it directly to the blade.

 Here is the blade handle prior to welding

Few sword handles are this wide. I kind of went overboard on the design. Strong though.

 For the pommel, rather than welding I press fit it onto the end of the blade.

Heating it up with a torch:

Noticed the recessed area around the blade. This is where the material from the blade will collect upon hammering and hold the pommel in place.

Very ugly, but an extremely tight fit:

Looking much nicer, although still needs more polishing:

The other end:

Everything connected:

Now that all the hardware was connected, the only thing missing was a handle.

I ended up making this out of a piece of poplar wood I found in the yard.

Getting the rough shape on the lathe:

I don't have a wood lathe. This made a mess :(

After that I cut it in half and chipped out space in the middle using a small chisel:

Fitting it back together:

I then glued everything together using gorilla glue and some hose clamps:

The glue foamed up a bit, but I was able to sand it down after it had dried.

At this point I considered leaving the handle as a plain wooden handle. But in the end I decided to add a black leather grip over the top to improve handling.

Gluing on the leather:

I added some shellac to the wood before gluing on the leather. It was almost a shame to cover it.

Wrapped and waiting for the glue to dry:

After cutting the excess leather some final polishing, the result was a completed bastard sword!

Overall about 42" from top to bottom:

In hand:

Metal vs wood version:

Another view:

For the most part I am extremely happy with how project turned out. The result ended up matching my original vision, it didn't cost too much, and I had a lot of fun chopping up different things with it.

I am especially proud of the pommel, which is probably the most complex shape I have machined thus far.

Regarding the blade, in retrospect I would not have used an automotive spring as a starting material. Although barely visible, the original hole in the steel is a potential weak point. Spring steel is also very difficult to work with in its hardened state and I would not be willing to spend the same amount of time grinding another blade if I had to do it all over again.

I also ended up finding a point on the blade where the cutting torch heated up the metal too much, causing it to lose some of its temper. The result is that if the sword is bent too far in this position it will not snap 100% back to its original shape and must occasionally be re-straightened by hand.

I think in an ideal situation, all grinding and machining would be performed on a soft, annealed piece of high carbon steel. Then, when the correct shape was achieved, the blade could be heated and tempered to the desired hardness. It would also be nice to know the exact carbon content of the steel.

The downside is this process requires a rather large forge, high temperatures and a fair amount of experimentation to get the process down.

Maybe for the next sword?...