Forging a Viking Langseax, from a truck leaf spring the complete movie
2,234This video shows the forging and making a Viking Langseax knife from 5160 steel. It is the complete movie. The entire process of forging, hardening and constructing the blade and its handle is shown, together with sharpening and testing following the 4 steps of the American blade smith association Journey Man testing method. (Without the bend test as this will mess up the blade too much)
The Langseax is a longer version of the normal Seax blade, used all around Europe for more than 1000 years, the handle of the knife is a handle best known from the early Viking swords. Some seax knives have this kind of handle, although using some modern methods and machines the shape is not much changed in my version.
The steel I normally use is 5160 steel, a low alloy spring steel, very tough and forgiving to work with, it has the tendency to scale a bit but when forged rich using a low oxygen forge environment, scaling is much less of a problem. The 5160 steel is best for longer blades and heavy knives, the hardness is around 62 HRC. The knife is tempered more on its back, giving it very good impact resistance. As the test showed, it could withstand some extreme chopping without any damage to its edge, as it is still razor-sharp.
The 5160 steel is salvaged form a old semi truck leaf spring. I buy these leaf springs at a truck scrapyard. I first test the steel for its attributes by destruction tests and hardening tests to determine if it is the real deal.
For hardening I use a relatively fast oil based on diesel. Most of the time I do a hardening just until the boiling point of the oil has past, this gives me some time to straighten some warps, this method is an exchange between hardness and toughness, as the blade is essentially already tempered after the quench, it did not reach its ultimate hardness, for big knives and swords this is perfect as they are very often used as impact weapons rater than cutting weapons, they rely very much on there toughness. After hardening it is best to temper using a good electric oven, I use a torch, but I do not recommend this, as it requires much practice.
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