Sharpening a Deepeeka Godfred Viking sword
Aug 9, 2015 4:53:35 GMT
Post by Aikidoka on Aug 9, 2015 4:53:35 GMT
Yesterday, I received a Deepeeka Godfred Viking sword from KoA:
I had read good things about the thickness of the tang and other comments that led me to believe this would be a tough sword, but I had no illusions that it would perform as a good cutter, especially not in the configuration that I would receive it. The stats listed on Kult of Athena for the distal taper were interesting: 4.6mm at the guard, 5.1mm at the tip! So I assumed that the blade basically had no distal taper and that I would need to use my belt sander to introduce an appropriate degree of taper to the blade. But as it turns out, the reality of that blade's distal taper is even weirder than this would suggest.
The blade that I received was indeed 4.6mm at the guard. The fullered portion of the blade then tapered down to a little less than 3.5mm near the end of the fuller. But then, at the beginning of the central ridge, it jumped back up to 5.1mm and remained that thickness basically all the way to the (blunt) tip. So at the end of this fullered, tapering sword there is this fat heavy section of blade.
My initial thought was that there would be less work to do than I had assumed to fix the distal taper on this sword. I would just need to remove the central ridge, which doesn't belong on a 9th century Viking sword anyway, and then reshape the end of the blade to produce a nice lenticular spatulate cutting tip. When I began to attempt to do this with my 120 grit sanding belt, I quickly realized that this blade is made of very tough hard steel. 30 passes with that belt on each side of the blade removed about 0.2mm of steel! So I drove over to Harbor Freight and purchased a pair of 40 grit sanding belts for $2.99 and tried again. Much better! After perhaps a half an hour, this tip:
had been transformed into this re-profiled tip:
And with the application of some elbow grease and 220 grit sandpaper (no sanding block, just fingers), the 40 grit scratches were gone:
Tomorrow, I will sharpen the edge and perhaps cut a few bottles. But a box of tatami mats is arriving Monday and that is the test that I'm looking forward to. The blade has a good spring temper. I have flexed it multiple times in either direction, perhaps not quite 45 degrees and it returns to true. The hilt feels solid, the peen looks good... I'm optimistic
I'll post more pics and cutting videos tomorrow and early next week...
I had read good things about the thickness of the tang and other comments that led me to believe this would be a tough sword, but I had no illusions that it would perform as a good cutter, especially not in the configuration that I would receive it. The stats listed on Kult of Athena for the distal taper were interesting: 4.6mm at the guard, 5.1mm at the tip! So I assumed that the blade basically had no distal taper and that I would need to use my belt sander to introduce an appropriate degree of taper to the blade. But as it turns out, the reality of that blade's distal taper is even weirder than this would suggest.
The blade that I received was indeed 4.6mm at the guard. The fullered portion of the blade then tapered down to a little less than 3.5mm near the end of the fuller. But then, at the beginning of the central ridge, it jumped back up to 5.1mm and remained that thickness basically all the way to the (blunt) tip. So at the end of this fullered, tapering sword there is this fat heavy section of blade.
My initial thought was that there would be less work to do than I had assumed to fix the distal taper on this sword. I would just need to remove the central ridge, which doesn't belong on a 9th century Viking sword anyway, and then reshape the end of the blade to produce a nice lenticular spatulate cutting tip. When I began to attempt to do this with my 120 grit sanding belt, I quickly realized that this blade is made of very tough hard steel. 30 passes with that belt on each side of the blade removed about 0.2mm of steel! So I drove over to Harbor Freight and purchased a pair of 40 grit sanding belts for $2.99 and tried again. Much better! After perhaps a half an hour, this tip:
had been transformed into this re-profiled tip:
And with the application of some elbow grease and 220 grit sandpaper (no sanding block, just fingers), the 40 grit scratches were gone:
Tomorrow, I will sharpen the edge and perhaps cut a few bottles. But a box of tatami mats is arriving Monday and that is the test that I'm looking forward to. The blade has a good spring temper. I have flexed it multiple times in either direction, perhaps not quite 45 degrees and it returns to true. The hilt feels solid, the peen looks good... I'm optimistic
I'll post more pics and cutting videos tomorrow and early next week...