Ragnar's Axe - Vikings - MAN AT ARMS: REFORGED

I'm Matt, I'm Kerri, we're the deer, my brother is a knife and sword from Baltimore. Let's build some of your favorite weapons with some weapons you've never seen before. This is a reformed man-at-

arms

. This week we're going to forge Ragnar's x from the hit show Vikings. Now in that show we've seen many different warriors reeling from very similar acts, but Ragnar is the main character and he's the one we see using it the most. He uses it in battle, he almost always carries it with him and that's quite appropriate. The Vikings carried axes very similar to this one, not only their weapons, they also used them as tools on a daily basis.

We wanted to do this for a long time. I'm a big fan of the show so is my girlfriend, we've seen all the episodes so I asked her to make a shield made out of a costume but she's working on it right now, you'll see her later when we do the demos but Ilya will get things started by forging the axe, it has a lot of really interesting steps up to this one, let's see what it has in store for us, the first step in forging is to take that round butt and square it, there are many historical ways that the Vikings and other cultures to do axes like this, the one Ilya chose is the most modern, that's how really good forging hammers are made and that's the punch and drift method, so once these materials are nice and square you can move on to using the punch to make that hole and then continue with the ax forging from there, the first thing the blacksmith has to do is mark on his material where that hole will be drilled.

He's using the corner of his tool, then he'll come back and get more heat and start drilling into it. You will notice that the punch you are using is quite tapered and is also not solidly welded to the handle. It's loose and caught at the top to take away much of the impact when you hit, so you'll hit about a quarter of the way. You'll see, then turn the material on its side, give it a good tap allowing the tool to loosen. You can remove it, heat more, and repeat the process until it has completely gone through Fragonard's axe.

We've chosen a nice A sturdy piece of white oak from here went ahead and pronounced it here where I pulled my lines of where we're going to cut along this piece of wood to make Ragnar's axe, so I have the shape of the cutout of the Ragnar's ax that he is using a bit. blade a little thinner than normal, you can see that he left a little bit of a cut in the wood, nothing to worry about, although we're going to go ahead and remove all this extra material on the sander and shape it. Once the preform for the ax is ready and the hole is drilled, it is time to insert the drill bit.

Now you can notice that the preform has quite a bit of excess material because I used to use it to grab and navigate after cutting it. We'll turn the ax like this and make a cut right here, this cut and open up the body of the ax and allow us to receive this bit. This is a piece of high carbon steel. In our case, it is a Damascus piece. I had it lying around, it's tapered, it's great after you put the bit in. I'll cover it with flux and insert it back into the Forge, which will raise it to temperature so the materials can fuse and form a higher carbon edge afterwards. inserting the drill bit and spraying borax over the surface to ensure a good weld.

Ilias returned to the forge to bring everything up to forge welding temperature and moves to the broad to set up the welding by hand, then goes to the electric hammer to correct everything. Above you will see Illya from time to time as she works on her ex using a superior tool under the electric hammer. This tool is shaped slightly domed like the face of a hand hammer, so each blow mimics that of a hand. At this point Illya is now, using a stamped spring under the electric hammer, this actually allows him to identify that material and draw specific areas, in this case the beard of the axe.

Now, if the ax has enough shape, it's time to go back to the hole that Ilya made earlier and slide it to the proper shape. I help Ilya by holding the ax over the sturdy hole while he drives the detour. We will do this several times on each side making sure the bypass goes the same amount on each side creating a perfect hourglass shape. inside the hole, looking closer at this axe, Hilly has now realized that she has forged a little big, no big deal, she will mark off the excess that we will move during grinding.

It's okay, Ilya has done a great job forging the foundation. of our ax now that we were shooting for Ragnar's axe, this is almost the size of rolos, but it's not a big deal. I'm going to be able to trim a lot of the back here and then some of the front and around the entire perimeter and get our desired shape now that I've worked as much as I can on the 12 inch wheel, I'm going to set it up and move on to a 12 inch wheel. 2 inches, this will allow me to define the ground jets and simply trim off the excess around the inside of the beer, so we have Ragnar's ax handle pretty much in shape and there are still some deep grooves in the wood from the aggressive sandpaper.

I'm going to take this scraper. I'm going to handle the ax very carefully, just remove it. just the outer layer of wood and as you can see you are removing very fine woods with a little effort it will remove all the splinters and leave a nice smooth finish. Now we have our profile of acts to shape. You can see I removed a There's a lot of material from this, but now we're right where we need to be. The next step is to make that hologram I talked about, it has a very distinctive border, very wide all the way down, so I'm going to move on to the wheel here and make a border up the length of the wheel like this so you can see the thickness of my edge and making sure I don't go over my center line, you want a treat, we're just going to use the flame to harden the wood on this handle, both will give it a look that we like and it will harden the surface, then we'll take linseed oil and soak it all the piece, it is the same thing we do with the handles of our hammers to make them very strong with the perimeter of the ax now established on the edge. ground, then the next step is to polish the face and you can see that this ax has a very aged look on the surface, so normally we can leave it as forged, but since we use the electric hammer, it has some pretty nasty grooves, so I'm going a Go ahead and clean the entire surface with whiskey-brite and then we'll go ahead and add that forged look again before a tree since Matt made the decision to sand the entire surface of this piece and polish it and we know we want a rough hand forged look , let's go back to the Forge, turn up the temperature and lightly click on the heat a few times.

One of the reasons for doing this is to create the climbing surface we want Ilya to take. its time and heat soak the ax head, it will put it in both directions, it will raise the temperature pretty evenly and then it will cool straight in whoa and give us a better cut of the ax after question two, accent oil and sit on the anvil . and I wait for the temperature to drop to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point I take a wire brush and scrape the scale so I can see the metal, the important thing is that the shiny metal indicates the temperature of the metal during tempering, as in the reaction with oxygen.

It forms a magnetic layer when the metal turns blue, yellow or green, etc. I can't expose the edge of the ax directly to the flame because it will already be red by the time this starts to temper, so I glue the The ax is placed in the forge first avoiding exposing the edge to the flame. What I'm looking for is a bronze ash color along the edge, so it's going to be a bronze right here, bluish here, and here it's going to be gray. In the area, the sound difference should be obvious when you skate a file, so this is the fit, it should be relatively smooth and now the edge feels like glass.

The file patinas, so it's the perfect temperature now in field conditions, all without computerized ovens. Probably how Viking axes are tempered after being key treated and then tempered. It's time to start putting the final finish on this plate. Let's move on to a special wheel that we made for ourselves. It has a bunch of different Scotch Brite pads blocked. together on one axis, this will allow us to eliminate the scale, but leaving the nice Ford Service right at this point, the surfaces of our ax are exactly where we wanted them to be. The next step is to get the color we need, so I'm going to soak the entire ax in a tub of ferric chloride which will turn the body of the ax a dull gray color and give it an aged look, but will also show some of the pattern rolled into an edge that Illya forged earlier, so I'm going to leave it there for about 45 minutes, but let's go ahead and take a quick look.

You can see the welded steel pattern on the edge, so that's our nice high carbon edge and the rest will turn a nice dull gray color. there and that's it, now that we've completed the handle of Ragnar's axe, we're going to attach the head to it, that's what we're going to do to get a good fit, so I'm just going to press it with my hand. First, it looks good from here, let's go down. I'm going to take a soft hammer so tomorrow it won't be the top of the ax head and I'll slowly hammer it down when I try to hit these points, you'll see these lugs as flush as possible to the wood part and sticking out from the top. , so you have a pretty good fit.

Now the last step is to take our wedge to drive it. The reason we are driving a wedge is that it will help expand the wood and prevent the ax head from coming loose now that we have our wooden wedge we will take a steel one and place it in the opposite direction and along the formation . Once we have the shims in place, our last step is to wrap the middle with leather. and it's ready guys, so like I told you before, we invited Natasha to be our shield maiden at the show, but what I haven't told her or you is that I plan on asking her to marry me during that. demo is a pretty special moment.

It's my honor to share it with you now, as we all know we've seen Ragnar in the Vikings raid and loot a lot of different monasteries on the show, they steal the gold, they steal the treasure, they take it. They often melt it down and reuse the gemstones, so what Lauren and I did was find a beautiful white gold setting for the ring and then even more beautiful diamonds, one of the most beautiful diamonds I've ever seen. Laurens will go ahead and put it on the ring and then when show day comes I hope she says yes so I have the diamond here it's a 1 carat stone it's a beautiful color versus 2 G which is very tall, bright and white, and we are going to place it.

It has a vintage 18k white gold setting, it has two square side stones and then eight small side stones underneath, everything is engraved. Now that the guys have our Ragnar's ax assembled it's time for me to start doing the leather fitting on the handle and then we'll do the grip later, we've cut some narrow strips of dark brown leather and I'll ask Rick to come over here and help me hold it. I'm going to use some modern comfort. Here's some hot glue to help secure this in place and make life a little easier, so I think this is close to where we need to be for the first section and I'm just going to close this for now once we get there . the other half tied, we'll go ahead and wrap the handle and tie a big knot at the bottom and keep the action out of your hand, then we'll all be ready to go.

I think this ax build turned out amazing. I love the extra work Ilya put into the Forge welding Damascus onto the edge. Now let's see if my shieldmaiden accepts my proposal and becomes my queen Natacha. We all know that you are now a worthy shieldmaiden. There is only one thing left to ask and that is. Will you be my queen? Click here to subscribe or click here to watch more episodes. Thanks for watching Man-at-

arms

Reforged. We need to know what you want the guys to build, so tell us in the comments below what weapons you want to see next.