This video shows the forging and making of a late medieval sword 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 some testing on wood and mild steel.
This sword is a 1,5 hand sword. It had a very good balance and gives very powerful blows. The sword measures 101 cm, the blade 79 cm. It weighs about 1,770 kg. The balance is very close to the grip, at about 8,5 cm. Due to its very tapped shape is has a very good weight distribution, when you hold it, the sword feels like you what to hit something with it. As you can tell I like this sword allot, so I think I will keep this one for my self as a working horse and use it to test prolonged abuse on blade and handle.
The steel I normally use is 5160 steel, a low alloy spring steel, very tough and good 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 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.
I hope you enjoy the video, pleas like and subscribe, as this will help me make more content.