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Google Engineer Shows How To Forge Swords and Knives
An anonymous reader writes "Niels Provos, an engineer at Google working on malware and phishing protection, is showing on YouTube how to forge knives and Viking swords. The process is absolutely fascinating and follows the steps of Viking blacksmiths from a thousand years ago. It starts by taking small bars of metal that get heated and hammered together until they become a solid piece. He then shows how to form it with the hammer, heat treat and polish it. All the videos are narrated explaining the purpose of each step. Sure beats sitting in front of the computer."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.html
I can own a +12 undead slayer. Can I forge this IRL?
You only ever hear people with nice soft office jobs make these kinds of dumbass statements. This sort of thing might be fun as a hobby, but as a life it would suck. It is hot, it is dangerous and the pay would not be great.
No one really wants to do hard work for a shitty living, stop romanticizing it. I think it is an offshoot of the Noble Savage BS.
Don't need acres. Many hobby smiths are using a space of little more than 100 square feet for a shop. Of course no power hammer, just forge, anvil, and some small power tools.
While I don't make knives (not because I can't) my "workshop" is my driveway. Everything gets put away in the garage when I am done. A person can start out using a coal or lump charcoal fired forge made by digging a shallow hole in dirt, and using a hair dryer with an iron pipe on the end for air. Find a large steel slug, or piece of axle, or railroad track, say 30-100 pounds for an anvil (and it will be better than a cast iron anvil by far). Get a couple hammers such as a 2 pound ball pein and a 3 pound cross pein to start with. You can use long stock without tongs, and make your own tongs (Remember the BLACKSMITH makes the TOOLS, not the other way around)
Car or truck coil spring is nice stock to make knives and tools out of for a beginner.
There are forums dedicated to blacksmithing and knifemaking.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
How to get your own article. (not necessarily on /.)
1. Make or do something cool
2. Document how you did it
3. Share
4. Gain recognition
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I mean, if you work at Google in the anti-malware devision you've probably got a good idea about the types of exploits coming down the line. Now, if someone like that is acquiring skills they'd only really need if life as we know it were blasted back to the iron age...
I have acres. I have timer to stoke the fire. I can even cut timber to build the forge and a building to house it. It would take a little ingenuity to come up with a bellows and an anvil cheap. But, you know what? THIS IS WORK!!! There's a lot of stuff that looks cool, if you can sit around and watch it being done. But, when it's your muscles, learning a new skill, man it's ROUGH!!
The physically hardest job I've ever done was pouring concrete. Following close behind was roughing out some prison buildings, in the mud, in the middle of winter with cold rain running down my back. Then, logging. By comparison, carpentry is easy, and that is real work.
What I'm saying is, I'm familiar enough with real work to recognize it when I see it. Forging iron is going to be about as hard as pouring and finishing at least a half mile of city street. If you want quality work, you'll do that half mile of city street after at least six months of hard work acquiring the skills to do it. You're not going to light a fire, and turn out a beautifully crafted sword on your first attempt!
Call me lazy, but if I decide that I want to craft my own knife or sword, I'll machine it on power equipment!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
At least mine was more tech geek releated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZuyYBgI2Qg
and very similar to what the original article was about.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Good advice! May I add a few things...
- Ear protection. You don't have to go for uncomfortable headphones, but cheap ear plugs are definitely a good idea.
- Keep a fire extinguisher handy
- Expect to get through a number of wire brushes; brush off the slag regularly, if you want a clean result
- Experiment with quenching, (water is OK, oil is better, but see remark above fire ex. above), if you're using good-quality steel, (easy to pick up as parent suggested)
- Try carbon face hardening if you're using (cheap) mild steel
In either of the two last cases, all you need is an open-topped container...
I suggest you start here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel
Sorry, forgot the most important - eye protection!
(I have had more shit dug out of my eyeballs than I care to remember... fortunately, if you don't destroy your eye totally, it seems to heal pretty fast. But life's a bitch while it does, believe me)
Unfortunately a very small number of gun deaths in the US are committed with rifles.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-12-18/american-gun-deaths-to-exceed-traffic-fatalities-by-2015
From a nested link in the link you posted, gun deaths outnumber blunt object deaths 17 to 1 in 2011. The other years in the article were similar.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-11
Oh noes, in a minute? That totally makes an objective difference!
I'm kidding. It makes no difference. Rifles kill well under 400 people a year in the US, and assault rifles way under that. It's noise.
But carry on with your emotional arguments at will...
I was simply drinking coffee in Starbucks. Then someone told me you can actually brew the coffee at home. Start with a simple stove top percolator, he said. Then it became a cheap 10 cup presto coffee maker. Then came the French Press, then the "grinding your own just before brewing", roasting your own bean just before grinding just before brewing, espresso machines, pump based espresso not the wimpy steam pressure espresso, .....
Now I am driving 150 miles each way to slopes of the Smoky Mountains each weekend to tend a patch of coffee shrubs which I am going to harvest, dry, grind and brew. They are saying the next step is to feed the coffee fruits to some weasels and collect the beans from its other end, then to dry, grind and brew. No one told me this is where I am going to end up. So watch out.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well now I'm curious. It turns out whenever the word 'cost' appears in a Google search the results tend to point to online shops. But here's what I found: http://www.vincelewis.net/vikingsword.html
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/Small-Breed-Milk-Cows.aspx
So a good Viking sword was worth 12 milk cows, and each milk cow is apparently worth about $2500 so $30000. Well that's assuming the value of a milk cow is constant throughout history. Not quite a Lexus, maybe an Acura.