Four Saxes à la Petr Florianek (Part II)

The next project I had was more or less the centerpiece of my work in CZ and the hub of my learning.  It utilized my design skills and all the material and technical aspects of what I was trying to pick up.  The blade itself was an early experiment in multi-bar pattern-welding, and, while the manipulation of pattern is certainly less than dazzling, the geometry and proportions of the blade were pleasing to me, and I decided to use it. 

With a wide profile and a thick spine, I wanted the handle to echo that sturdiness and straight lines, especially with the parallel grooves I scraped out of the blade.  The materials I chose to meet my designs were elk antler and bog oak, both strong words in the mouth and stout things in the hand.  They also have strong intrinsic narrative properties, at least for me, and evoke ancient things when I touch and smell and admire them. 

The blade shape, construction, and features I had constructed were inspired by drawings I had seen from a record of Vendelperiod graves, and Petr's practiced eye placed them in the 7th century.  Following that judgement, I turned further to books full of period ornament to see what would flow from the page onto my piece.  The Salin style-II biting-beast chain I had drawn earlier fit perfectly around the waist of the handle.  I became infatuated with strange faces within ellipses that seemed to permeate the ornament, and I decided to incorporate them. 

 I brought my ideas to Petr to discuss application, and he suggested I try my hand at engraving, a common method of decoration for the historical work in question, as well as  particularly applicable and striking in the brass that I was going to use as the ferrule and butt-cap.  So, I rolled some brass out and squared it up, sizing to a paper mock-up.  Petr showed me how to attach it to a block of wood with a little bit of black pitch, which was then placed in an engraver's ball vise.  Next, he showed me his v- and round-tipped push gravers, and how to use them.  I spent hours and hours hunched over a small table in his backyard, filled with matched frustration and determination, constantly enraged by the loss of control when the graver slipped and the endless gratification of it making the exact cut you want it to.

My control got better and better, but my injuries did not turn around so quickly.  My hands were soon covered with scrapes and cuts from brass burrs and puncture wounds from the graver itself.  But it was worth it when my work yielded recognizable but strange moustachioed faces, staring pupil-less from the brass. 

The next step was to remove the antler waist and transfer my design onto it, which was certainly an exercise in eyeballing!  It went over pretty well, and I altered the lines to match the cuts I was going to make with the dremel.  I can't really convey exactly what it's like to cut antler with a dremel tool, but it's soft and grainless, and it's pretty much like cutting butter.  It's going to cut exactly where you put it, so you better put it exactly where you want it.  It's not like filing, where material is removed (relatively) slowly and you can plan it out while it's happening.  You have to have a plan and stick to it, because there's no following your groove and coasting along the cut.

That said, if you know what you're doing and have the feel for it, you can make it exactly as your heart desires.  It also means that its speed and power in antler make for very quick work.  Also antler just looks awesome, and I'm going to be using a lot of it, as well as carving a lot of it when I have the tools. 

 Project #3, really quick, was the re-hilting of an old sax blade I made in Worcester, Massachusetts with my good friend Jack McAuliffe of Underhill Edge.  I knew it was vaguely early-Frankish in design, and I knew that most Frankish saxes from that period have limited non-organic materials apart from the blade, so I wanted my principle elements to be wood, antler, and leather. 

I made a curving handle I felt complimented the design, and I ought to pay due here to the extensive research of Jeroen Zuiderwijk, a Dutchman whose work has really bolstered the historicity of the bladesmithing community.  He more or less started the trend of long, accurate handles. 

 I couldn't resist the new technique Petr had developed for texturing sheet, however, and I decided to do in brass what he had done in silver in this knife.  I also set risers where I felt they were ergonomically desirable, dyed some leather, and wrapped it all up.

With a lot more carving, steel-wooling, scraping, and banging things around to make them fit, I had four unfinished pieces but a lot of new things flowing between my hands and my head.  It'll be more hard adventure to finish it all up, but doors have been opened and I'll charge through them, messily at first but always getting better.

Stay tuned for finishing the handles, making the scabbards, and hopefully some more originality on my part!

Four Saxes à la Petr Florianek (Part I)

But to the work!  As I said, Petr and I agreed that we would work side-by-side on our respective projects, and I'd be free to ask him for advice, instructions, etc., in which I did not hold back.  Being the open-minded teacher he is, he asked me for the occasional advice as well, but he's got a strongly guiding muse if anyone does, and usually has a very clear idea of what he's up to.  My mission was to soak up some of Petr's excellent sense of material and composition, where I had little experience.  In the realm of what bladesmithing is as a craft to me, I felt that my skills to forge and finish blades were sufficient for my current learning stage, and that my artistic growth lay in the direction of Petr's strengths: handle/scabbard/accent material, decoration, and aesthetic cohesion thereof.

So, in order to concentrate on those goals, I gathered up a small collection of pattern-welded blades I had lying around, unfinished, and resolved to dress them in handles to expose myself to the materials, processes and challenges of Petr and his work.  Fortunately, all the blades fit well with his somewhat specialized historical tangent: Vendel- and pre-Viking-period knives and saxes.  If you're a new reader and are unfamiliar with the importance of saxes in my life, check out this ancient post.  They're exciting and fascinating vehicles for the exploration of Iron Age Germanic art through the craft of bladesmithing.  I'd dipped into it in the forging, but the true shaping came with the handle-making.  Petr showed me the above trick (attributed to Jake Powning) of designing a handle by sticking the blade through the paper, because there is something about two-dimensional drawings that doesn't translate exactly right to three-dimensional work, especially with something as organic as a knife handle.

Petr set me up with books and PDFs aplenty and told me to look for designs that fit the spaces I envisioned filling, to pay attention to dates and provenance of artifacts for historical cohesion, and to just use my design sense in terms of density and spacing to adapt them to my piece.  If that doesn't sound difficult, it is.  I settled on the one to the right, a 7th century Swedish design, and sketched it out to see if I could get a sort of bone-knowledge of the lines.  I felt that I did, and showed it to Petr.  He said that was not enough: that one also must understand how the lines must interact with the material: how the lines will be made and defined, with what tools, and attention to the use of positive and negative space and degrees of depth. 

It was also challenging to draw the design to scale as it would appear on the piece, especially if it had curvature around the handle.  That involved little tricks like wrapping a piece of paper around the handle, sizing it, and drawing it on that.  But while I was working on the design for one piece, I was already making the simpler handle for another.  The small broken-back seax to the left (part one and part two) was promised to a customer who gave me a beautiful block of figured walnut for the handle.  I cut two slabs, dremeled out the inside (work with Petr was very dremel-heavy), and glued them together with a tight fit.  That was step one of something I repeated with all the saxes and still definitely stand to improve upon. 

After I had the handle roughed out, I had to choose a design for it.  I was stuck by some brass openwork, from either scabbard or shield hardware, of contemporary Anglo-Saxon origin, which I believed I could make work with the blade profile.  I set some boundaries on the top and bottom with brass ferrules, and decided the method of ornamentation would be dremel carving. 

 I decided on an antler bolster within the ferrule, and carved a recess accordingly.  I did the same on the handle butt, although I had a less clear plan about what that was going to look like.  Now the jewelrymaking skills I gained from my short class at Maine College of Art would be put to my first true test of applicability.  Granted, none of it was really difficult jewelry-wise, but I'm glad I had the grounding in preparing, working, and finishing non-ferrous metals.

I used a simple design for the first bolster that made a good tutorial: brass, rolled to thickness, cut and filed to size, chiseled with lines, soldered, cleaned up, and tight-fit.  It looked good, but the antler bolster had become so thin on the ends of the tang-hole that I decided to hold it down with brass tacks.  It was very helpful that Petr had a high-quality rolling mill for non-ferrous sheet and wire.  It was awesome to see him melt down his silver scrap in a small crucible, cast it into a flat, rectangular ingot, roll out the casting into sheet, and cut it into wire.  You only need a few tools and ingenuity, but these allow a lot of control and an incredible lack of waste in jewelrywork.

For the butt-cap of the handle I wanted matching lines with the lower ferrule.  I also wanted a brass ring hammered out of a piece of squared wire and twisted together at the ends  (one of Petr's signature accents).  I debated a few ways of attaching it and ended up looping it through a strap riveted inside the handle.  But before I could do that, I had to solder a cap onto the butt-end ferrule.

While I'm not ecstatic about the work I did on this particular handle, it definitely set the stage for me to expand my work on the next three.  Soldering, chiseling, hammering to shape, predicting fit and cutting accordingly: these were the skills that I knew I would need to improve, and I relished the challenge. Developing my technique with the dremel, of course, was the great task of my experimentation, being generally familiar with every other tool I used, and it was really only an introduction; once I get one I'm going to just have to put in the hours to get proficient at it. 

This was just the beginning of my introduction to Petr's vast array of skills and deep-running artistic sense, and it's obviously revolutionary for my work.  I can only continue to pay it the homage it deserves in bettering my own skills and sense, just as Petr does for the great unnamed artists of the past.  

Making at MassArt

In March, I wrote a little bit about my bladesmithing class at MassArt with JD Smith.  I wanted to write a little bit more about what I actually did in the class, what I learned from JD, and how my world of making has evolved. 


JD is a deliberate and clear teacher, whose strength as an educator perpetuating the craft lies in the universal respect he holds for his students and the standards he holds them to.  He treats his students like the next generation of craftspeople.  He speaks intelligently and coherently to them, expecting them to understand and to ask questions when they don't; to engage directly and honestly.  In this way, he is able to ask his students to push themselves, to follow their intuitions but also to respect experience and perspective.  The result is a knowledgeable and talented student base, with a great array of individuality in their work.  Anyone who has taken bladesmithing at MassArt is well-informed and interested.  JD awakes both artistic passion and the seriousness of craft in his students, and is an invaluable asset to the growth and life of bladesmithing.  As for his work, it's skilled beyond my ability to judge, and more something I stand in awe of.  I might  also add that he's a captivating storyteller and evident badass.  If you find yourself in Boston, meet him.  If you live there, take his class.

 Now to the technical stuff!  The materials we used in class were 1095, a simple low-alloy high-carbon steel, and 15n20, a steel that behaves very similarly in heat treatment and welds to 1095 very well, but contains a certain amount of nickel for contrast with the 1095.  JD truly taught me how to draw, cut, and fold billets efficiently.  We started out with eleven layers of laminated steel, and I decided that for my pattern, I wanted to fold it to about 325 layers and hand-hammer for random pattern.  On the left is a billet cut for folding at welding heat.

The billet was humongous, and I ended up cutting it in half.  The first half was used to forge a knife blank that I ruined irreversibly while practicing a difficult but later rewarding grinding technique JD showed me.   The second half was forged into the blank below, which was the first stage of creating a knife that is influenced, very much in form and function if not materials, by the native Persian kard (Farsi for "knife").

I'll go into more details about the artistic/aesthetic and cultural/historical details of the kard later, but right now I'm going to focus more on how JD's class has altered my style.  His forging is fast and efficient: he taught me that unless you have a specific pattern, there's no reason not to hammer the hell out of your billet on the fullering dies just to get the damn thing longer, because you have to do that quickly.  The flat dies are for squaring things up later, but they'll make everything alright, so you might as well get the quick and dirty stuff done.  Draw that billet out, square it, cut it, fold it, weld it, draw it out again.  He works hard to facilitate the rhythm of production, an essential part of making things.

The truly revolutionary part of the class for me was JD's well-explained and well-modeled grinding technique that gave me real insight on how you get an even grind.  I'll say that Owen Bush taught me how to grind a sword, but JD Smith taught me how to grind a knife.  Standing on one side of the belt, feet firmly planted, body relaxed, hands supporting but not truly gripping the knife, and constant, steady pressure (not too much!) against the belt.  Starting in the same place every time and slowly letting off as you get closer to the tip, which has less mass. 

One aspect of making things that I have struggled with (as a natural perfectionist) is failure and compromise with my work.  Basically, things rarely turn out the way you envisioned them when you're starting out, and it can be pretty heartbreaking.  I'm not saying veterans are immune to this either.  I had learned to do something about this, which was accepting flaws as an attribute of handmade objects, and to compromise with the object I was making.  

JD had something to say about that:

"Stop accepting flaws." 

That gave me a turn.  But I thought about it.  A lot.  And you know what?  Steel doesn't have a brain.  It's not going to outsmart you.  It's going to do whatever you want it to if you give yourself the time to think about it and the space to execute it.  It's not you against the material.  You don't have to compromise with it, you have to learn to speak its language and then you can say whatever you want. If you learn Romanian, you can write poetry in it.  How well is up to you.

The above picture does a poor job of illustrating it, but I was very pleased with the evenness and beauty of the grind (read  more of my obnoxiously spiritual musings on grinding).  The next step was clamping the blade up and hand-polishing with a grit-variety of waterstones from Falcon Tools, which JD and his incredible apprentice Kevin Klein converted me to.  I'm sick of sandpaper anyhow.  Stones keep things much flatter and do things more quickly, in my opinion.  There was much camaraderie among the students in the class at this point, as we all sat around a table with our blades clamped to it, stoning and talking away. 

But soon enough our blades were hardened, sharpened, and etched, and it was time to begin working on handle materials.  I learned some excellent techniques for flattening my surfaces and making everything line up, but I kind of love the freedom of making somewhat random shapes like the handle bolsters, much as I loved making the crossguard of my sword: they're three-dimensional affairs that you can really alter at will and aren't as automatic as grinding a blade.  It's very freeing, feeling the weight of it and constantly eying it up and gauging how to get it where you want with a little grinding here and there.

The picture to the right captures an interesting phenomenon that occurred during the heat-treatment of the kard blade: a hardness line that shows the molecular softness of the spine of the blade at the base by the tang, and the hardness of the rest of the blade running diagonally with it and in the rest of the blade.

With all the parts lined up before final finish and assembly, I had again made something that was enough of an object now to give me a start.  This thing is becoming real.  I drew it, I messed around with a bunch of metal, and then now there's this real thing that was just thoughts and two-dimensional drawings.  It was abstract made concrete.  That's magic, if anything is.  I don't think it will ever stop amazing me. 

Inspiring Projects - SCOTT ROUSH // ZEB DEMING Merovignian Langsax

One thing I'd intended to do with this blog that I haven't yet begun was to talk about exciting and inspiring projects and ideas being put out there by other smiths, craftspeople, and artists that I feel both kinship and creative difference with.  I'll try to talk about why I think their work, ideas, and the questions they raise are important for me and how I would like my work to reflect my influences and give credit where it is due.  I'm also just really happy to share the work of talented and passionate individuals, for the amount of inspiration and excitement I get from others is incredibly awesome. 

So basically, I'm going to announce some stuff about other people's projects and provide links and pictures (with permission).  I'll probably talk about my perception of their work overall, hopefully without pigeonholing them, but their voices are strong, and I just wanna get the word out.  Here we go! 



The first project that's been on my mind lately and has made me whistle and say "awww yeaaah" is this excellent Merovingian langsax collaboration between none other than the Michigan iron-smelting maniac Zeb Deming and the Wisconsin blade wizard Scott Roush!

Zeb gazing adoringly at his iron smelting stack.

First the smiths: Zeb Deming is a daring, patient, and talented ironmaker who has taught himself well the methods of bloomery smelting (producing iron from iron ore) and hearth melting (melting iron in a small furnace to carburize/decarburize it at will).  He is also a proficient bladesmith and pattern-welder who has drawn attention to himself though the use of unusual and exciting steels and irons, such as his own bloom steel, hearth steel, and meteoric iron.  Not only do these materials lend his work an indisputable authenticity in fact and in feel, they give his pieces infinite uniqueness, a deeply-imprinted sole-authorship (see this post by Myles Mulkey) and intrinsic story (see this one by me).  He's also an incredibly nice gentleman; "Michigan maniac" only works because of the alliteration. 

Scott with his interpretation of a Norwegian langsax.

Scott Roush, one of the preeminent swordsmiths of the American Midwest, has a style.  Anyone who's seen two of his pieces gets it and won't forget: stark, bold contrasting blade steels; dark, earthy handles with a visceral feel of hand-made and well-used.  From the get-go, he made a deep impression with clever and skilled manipulation of texture and finish.  Recently, he has been breaking new and fascinating ground for himself like a wild man, fearlessly exploring techniques with impressive degrees of success: smelting, wire inlay, carving, and (particularly) casting.  I might add that his blade photography is top notch (considering his already impressive career as a photographer).  I've never met him, but I can say that he's an encouraging presence in the scene and a deeply inspiring fellow!

Now the inspiration: Scott cited the langsax to the left, which is attributed to the Merovignian-era Franks, as the major model for the collaboration, at least as far as blade dimensions, profile, and fittings.  Materials, decoration, and organic fittings were more or less up in the air, and I can honestly say I'm proud of what they're doing with this freedom.



Zeb's steel is so clean and even and yet still so obviously handmade.  A visible grain stretched from hours of folding, but so well refined and homogenized with care and practice.  Another piece of the same steel
has never been made, and no one will ever make steel exactly the same as Zeb's; it's truly as creative a process as the blademaking, but making one's own materials is different than making a piece or even the tools to make a piece.  It's like mixing your own paint from plants; not only are you connecting hands with centuries of people through a material: your hand is occupying the same space, moving with them, learning with them.  Zeb put a piece of his soul in this steel to merge with that of everyone who's ever done the same thing and gained the same knowledge that he has.


Scott has taken it upon himself, in finishing this blade, to bring it to a serious next level of existence.  I have already mentioned Scott's strong and flavorful sense of texture and finish-feel, but I can see that in this blade he is stepping beyond his already palpable style and integrating totally badass technique in a really tasteful and awesome way.  The inlay, first of all, is nothing outrageous or glaringly inauthentic, which seems to follow so often on the heels of skill acquisition.  The pattern clearly does not overstep the feel of the piece, which is a difficult thing to gauge accurately.  Next, it is clean and very well executed, and I really look forward to see Scott's development and use of this technique!


I'm a big fan of choice of materials for this sax, particularly in Scott's use of local native copper (below).  Copper is, to my knowledge, the only metal that occurs naturally in usable quantities, and the fact that he found and is applying this material as it would have been in ancient days is awesome. 

Another interesting element of this piece that shakes the imagination is the inlaid copper element that Scott has cryptically referred to as the 'ellefen head'.  Clearly it's supposed to represent some sort of otherworldly being without any real explanation of who that is or why it's there; however, the mystery of the thing really adds something to the character of the piece for me.  Scott fearlessly adds storytelling (or story-facilitating) elements to his pieces, and I appreciate it.  For more information on the concept of otherworldly visages in period art, see Petr Florianek's post on what he calls the "fierce face" motif.
 
The overall profile of the blade is slim and yet strong.  I'm getting to the part that's so difficult to explain about blades I love when I see them, but goddamn, the lines are right.  Everything about this object screams of a past age to me, or at least a past age of my imagination.  It grabs me by whatever piece of me wants to grab it, examine it from every angle, fall into it.  There's another world in this piece, and Zeb and Scott and dragging it out.

Arctic Fire 2012 - Golden Days of Oakland Part 2

As Oakland's balmy summer of 2012 passed it's mid-way mark, I spent my days polishing blades, striking for Jim on various axes, and drinking his home-brewed beer in return. It felt like it was the place to be, with my mind tuned to internet rumblings in the swordsmithing world, and so much tangible evidence of it around me. 

But it was more than just the exciting murmurs of enthusiasts.  Something was brewing that was going to change the game.  It was announced that, in the finals days of June, visionaries of the craft and art, poet-smiths and makers of artifacts at once new and ancient, would convene in the majestic peaks of Alaska.  Dave Stephens, a very talented bladesmith and unparalleled giver to our movement, was to host them all at his shop and broadcast their esoteric rituals and practices live across the all-permeating waves of the internet-plane.  Jim and Jeff, with their unique insight to the special skill of axe-smithing, enhanced by their in-depth and first-hand examination of iron-age Germanic axes, were asked to contribute a short video for broadcast. 


I had recently tried my hand at linoleum block-printing, and carved blocks to print these shirts, at Jim's request:

I printed them on t-shirts for everyone involved who wanted one, and we got down to business.  Anna Geyer has filmed lots of Jim's smithing videos in the past, and she was all set up to begin.  After a quick glass of Jim's incredible homebrew oatmeal stout to unleash our inner thespians, we took up our positions and played our parts.  It got spliced around a sped-up video of me, Nathan Smith, and Jake striking while Jim leads on an axe of his. It's a great video because the change you see is very gradual, and then all of a sudden at the end there's an axe and you realize how subtly genius it was.  

But honestly, those warm nights under long sunsets were spent doing things like the below: using Jeff Pringle's spare cable-damascus throwing knives on unassuming boxes of Lanesplitter pizza. 

Jim takes his aim, beer in hand for support!

We gathered in the shop, with a projector and massive speakers, to watch the Arctic Fire event!  Captivated by the magical and moving presentations of Dave Stephens, Jake Powning, Peter Johnsson, Michael Pikula, Dave Delagardelle, J. Arthur Loose, we learned a lot and had plenty to talk about.  Overall, the event left us brimming with inspiration and enthusiasm.

Not to mention vicious blows of an ancient blood-feud such as this one, between myself and the singularly despicable Candian:

COLLABORAMA

There are two people who I have had the strange experience of knowing only by way of the internet, seeing each other only in pictures and speaking only with written word.  This kind of relationship is somewhat unique to my generation; it's like having lots of pen-pals.  Nevertheless, the two individuals of which I speak continue to inspire me every time I hear the merest squeak out of them.  They are both glowing with whatever that unnameable thing is which draws me so deeply into this journey of time and hands, of the eternity of organic materials and what they share with those who affect change on them.

These two I speak of are Luke Shearer and Myles Mulkey.  They are not seasoned veterans of bladecraft but enthusiastic young artists whose already impressive work shows more than just potential for many years of thrilling exploration ahead, new things being said and fresh things being made, the breathing lungs of our community because of their individuality.  They are full to the brim with the light that stories and brushstrokes bring us, and are carrying it forward.

Here is a link to Luke's making of the blade:  http://lukeshearerbladesmith.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/seax-collaberation/

They have chosen to re-create, in their own vision, what I find possibly one of the seaxiest of saxes.  It's a large, broken-back war seax in the most well-known Anglo-Saxon pattern, and speaks very much to what I feel the essence of the Germanic war knife is.  I gained a deep appreciation for this type of object during my time with Owen Bush, having seen him work lovingly on them in all stages of development.  They bespeak hardiness, mercilessness and strength, as well as refinement, pleasing lines, aesthetic foresight, and surprising lightness and wieldiness.  I sincerely hope this is a piece I someday am fortunate enough to hold.

A picture I took of Owen's rough-forged but well-established sense of what a sax "is" in shape, material, style, and process.

To me, this project stands as a beacon of potential for a new era of this strangely niche art we have come to occupy.  Their work embodies the spirit that's hard to describe but so easy to feel, of stories that mean things to us, however difficult it is to say exactly what it is that they mean.  In our effort to explain it we must search within ourselves and without, and the world that pervades. 

To read more on Luke's very articulate and well-thought-out approach to story-smithing, read any of his blog, but in particular this fascinating article where he speaks of the inextricable spirituality of his work:

http://lukeshearerbladesmith.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/124/

To learn more about Myles' powerful and holistic approach to where he stands in the grander scheme of craft and time, and how that guides his hands and heart:

http://mylesmulkey.blogspot.com/2012/11/on-making-things.html