#bladesmithing

Starting a blademsmithing business and moving permanently to Colorado is my end goal. I want nothing else in this world and nothing will stop me.

When I was looking at the guard and trying to decide how to dress it up, I decided that I actually liked how I did it before. So I based the pommel on that. The vines and the bell flowers are also what shows up in my carvings on the water gourd. When I saw how much I was packing onto the pommel I did add a little sprig behind the existing ones on the guard to help fill it in. Still need to go through and clean it all up, get in there with a file or my diamond bits because it's a little rough again.

Happier with the handle. I may still do a leather wrap, or some checkering. But it's time to shift the focus to the next part.

Grinding is a skill for sure. I'm not that good at it. There are also other pieces of equipment that may be better for it than my regular 36x4 belt sander, but at the end of the day I can only use the thing for rough shaping. Sure someone else out there is a right wizard with it, but I'm just not there yet.

The picture on the left shows the faceting on the new bevel, from me struggling to maintain one angle as I made my passes across the belt. It's difficult for me, because I rely a lot on, seeing the work, but I'm really worried that if I work with the edge facing against the rotation of the belt so I can watch it, it may just cut the belt. Even facing with the rotation, I've had it get pulled into the little guard I use as a shelf and stall the motor, while gouging my work in terrible ways.

Many times I've considered building a larger table and surface for my belt sander. Even a guide that I can clamp the piece to. Lock in a specific angle, and keep it on a rail so the bevel is consistent, but I don't, do it often enough to warrant having that much equipment dedicated to sharpening. Maybe if I was more into production and selling I would but, eh.

So the picture on the right is the other side, where I had the blade clamped on my table, and was working out the flaws by hand. I've only gone over it with 80 grit sandpaper so far but it's gotten rather shiny as the surface leveled out. I'll be flattening out the other side as well, and then working the grits up to really give it that gleaming edge. I am tempted to find someway to get my worst coffee ever on it, to try and bring out the patterning on the blade, just also it just being, ground sharp isn't a bad look.

Firstly, yes, go for it, fully agree.

Secondly, yes, I’d be honoured, and will not be charging full price cause… my forge my choice.

I'm just gonna post some awkward between pictures of reshaping the sword.

In general I want to slim it down, and was hoping for a gentle curve in the blade with grinding. The original intent was to mimic my one wooden blade in metal, which left the blade very broad. I also didn't get the sweep on the front quite right, so it was heavy, and while gorgeous and I loved it, a bit unwieldy.

The handle is actually something I tried to work down before, but chickened out when I sanded it down to the poorly drilled space for the tang. There was a bit of epoxy down there. I chiseled out little blocks, and I plan on replacing the wood. I still have the piece of mesquite the handle was from originally, so I'll cut out some little blocks to splice in. If it bothers people that it's not one solid piece and has been repaired, then I pity them for not adoring an object enough to maintain it even if it isn't like new.

The pommel in general I just wanted to shed a lot of mass. I was hoping to somewhat shift the center of balance forward, but all the swell I took off the blade, meant that anything I hogged off the pommel just kept it, right where it was before. I do intend to do more carving on it, both to replace what was removed, and to pull off a little more weight. Might accentuate what's on the guard a bit more as well.