Pattern Welded Sgian Dubh

What I've been doing # 2

This is a custom knife created for a customer who wanted to mark his upcoming wedding with a distinctive heirloom object.



The knife has a 5 1/2 inch long pattern welded blade in a semi drop point style. The hilt is bog oak - in this case oak recovered from an original Roman era timber dock at the city of London, about 2000 years old. (What the English supplier told me was the source.) It bears Celtic knotwork carving on the right (out from leg) side and the owners name and wedding date on the inner.



The blade is formed of a total of four core rods - each at about 40 layers.
I started with a stack of 9 plates, then welded and folded in four. The starting stack was composed of mild steel / L6 alloy / wrought iron / high carbon tool steel. The sequence was M/I/M/L/H/L/M/I/M. This block was drawn and half was twisted. This section with the right and left twist was then cut and forms the two core rods along the back of the blade. The remaing half of the block was drawn out and cut in two. These pieces were then welded to another piece of carbon steel. When I count the lers (I include all four bars) the total layer count is 158. The decorative material is ground back to expose that hard carbon steel cutting edge.

This was a fairly complex project. The creation of the pattern welded billet was the most straight forward part, but is always quite time consuming. The bog oak proved quite difficult to get. This material is quite hard, working almost like copper metal. The surface carving was done with burrs on a rotary shaft.