VOIVODE BOWIE WIP (FINAL PHOTOS ADDED!!)

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Sep 4, 2012
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Some of you may know this and others not, but each year I like to do some type of Halloween themed knife, and while it may be early on yet in the year, I wanted to make sure it was done in time for this Halloween. A few years back I did my Van Helsing Bowie which was based around several elements of the Van Helsing legends/ stories. This is what I had come up with:

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Pretty much from the moment I finished the Van Helsing bowie I wanted to do its brother in the style of Dracula. Each time I attempted this project I found my skills lacking for what I wanted the end result to be, so now three years later I am making myself finish the set.

Now due to having other paid work to complete this project will go in fits and starts, but at this point the blade is successfully heat treated and ready to be polished and etched. I started this project over two months ago and only have time to work on it a few hours at a time, but by hell or high water I will have it ready in time for Halloween!

Now with all of that being said the name of this bowie (as the title of the thread suggests) is Voivode which was the title of Vlad Dracula a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler. Voivode translates roughly to prince or ruler in the native tongue of that time in the kingdom of Wallachia. The styling I will use on this knife is a blend of the historical Vlad Dracula and the modern myths around the figure. Hopefully everything will come together in such a way that it will embody the character we all know from tales of horror.

So without further ado let's get cracking shall we?

This whole blade will be forged in a multi-bar construction from 1084 and 15n20. There are two billets that will comprise the edge, one being a jelly roll and the other being crushed W's. First the billet for the jelly roll is welded, drawn down, and rolled up.:

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It is then welded together, cut, etched (to check the pattern), then drawn down to 1 1/2" x 3/8" flat bar.

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Next we start on the W's billet:

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I drew this billet down and re-stacked it six times to achieve a low layers Ws, this was then drawn done to 1" square and twisted:

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Each of these bars were 4 1/2 inches long and drawn down to 3/4" square. I then cut two pieces of jelly roll billet to a matching length. I then took a piece of the jelly roll billet and cut it in half length wise.
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Then with the top bar of JR in place it is fully encasing the crushed Ws:

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After forge welding, this is what the bar looks like. In the future with this type of pattern I think it would be wise to increase the thickness of the outer layers as they ended up getting a bit thin.

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I then cut this bar in half and welded it to its self:
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I then cut this in half and forge welded it again to give four bars.
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And that completes the edge bar.
 
Now for the other bars I wanted to have them be a more basic pattern so I about twenty layers and three billets of JR evenly placed throughout. This was then welded together, drawn out and cut for re stacking:

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Then to add some additional interest, I added .30" W2 in between the layers, this was then drawn out to almost 50 inches of 1/2 inch square bar:

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I gave these bars a Turkish twist configuration so every other bar twists the opposite direction from the previous one.

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After being re-squared and ground clean on their mating surfaces we can now see how they will be ordered in the billet. Between the edge and back bars I placed a single piece of 15n20.

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I trimmed a bit off the ends of the Turkish twist bars to make everything even and tack welded it all together.

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Then it was all forge welded:

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The next installment of the thread will cover the blade forging. Thanks for looking!
 
And this post should bring everything up to date.

First I forged the tang. My intention is to do this as a take down construction hence why the tang is so long.

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Now that I have something to hold on to I can cut the billet free from the handle and check the state of the welds.

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Looks good to me, now to cut the rough lines of the point. (This will allow me to bend the pattern back in line with the flow of the blade.)

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Now I begin the rough forging:

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And a quick etch on that corner piece to see some pattern.

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And finally a normalizing cycle post forging:
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Then I left the rough forging in a vinegar bath overnight to remove most of the scale.

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Then surface ground the tang and ricasso to .25"
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From the sharpie lines on the rough lay out you can see I will be doing my usual beveled ricasso and also another bevel on the spine. To me these are the scariest grinds because if you mess them up you pretty much have to scrap the knife and they can mess up quickly.

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With the bevel done on the ricasso I can now move on to the spine.

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Then cleaning things up via hand filing.
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Finally I roughed in the clip:
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Then on to the primary bevel:
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And a quick sneak peak at the pattern near the tip:

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And here is the blade, as of today, successfully heat treated, and ready for the final polishing and metal carving to be done to the blade.

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Here are a couple of last photos from today (my wife is away so I can work late into the night
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) I wanted to add some metal carving to this blade so that is what I have done. This first side is now all finished to a base 400 grit.

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That's a phenomenal amount of forging....thanks for taking time for all of the pictures while you worked. :)

Looking forward to seeing the finished piece.... :cool:
 
Those who can, do and show, while those of us who dont, watch with facinated interest to the amount of time and skill that is put into these knives that are a world away from simple stock removal.
 
Thanks guys, I was able to finish the carving today and do the etch. Overall I am pretty pleased with the pattern and look on the blade.

Here is the finished carving:

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And then the etch:

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It's awesome to see the pattern come to life in the blade and to see individual elements in the various sections you show in the earlier photos. Marvelous craft.
 
I've known Robert for a few years now. (I introduced him to the Blade Show this year and he was my roommate.)
He is very, very talented on many levels from steel smelting to Damascus and silver wedding rings!
He thinks outside the box. And he's comfortable out there.
It's great to see more of his WIPs on Blade Forums.
 
I tried uploading some updates from today, but I am having all sorts of issues with my account on here, resulting in just the one photo posting. I will try to get this fixed. Thanks for looking everyone!
 
Just a small update today. So when planning for this knife I knew I wanted to use shibuchi for the guard and but plate (in the same way I did on the Van Helsing Bowie), but with this one being more refined and complicated I decided to try my hand at lost wax. This is my first time carving wax and it really has been fun beginning to learn the process, definitely something I want to do more of in the future.

First I made the rough cuts in the wax and roughly fit the tang. I also cut my wax too short on the back part of the guard, but as I learned that is very easy to fix.

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First things first is to add back on the piece I cut to short and to thin down the guard a bit.

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Then I began rounding the junction between the (quilion?) and the center of the guard.

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Then I carve the first channel:

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Then I add in the second step to complete the ring.

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Now I am just laying out some lines for future carving to take place tomorrow.

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Another small update on the wax carving, the guard should be complete by the end of today, and the butt cap and finial should be done by Friday, then on to casting.

But here is where the guard stands after refining the one side and starting the other.

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Then carving mostly done on the other side:

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Lastly I seated the guard up further on the knife and now need to tweak and correct certain aspects on the center of the guard.

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Thanks for looking!

-Robert
 
Another small update on the wax carving, the guard should be complete by the end of today, and the butt cap and finial should be done by Friday, then on to casting.

But here is where the guard stands after refining the one side and starting the other.

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Then carving mostly done on the other side:

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Lastly I seated the guard up further on the knife and now need to tweak and correct certain aspects on the center of the guard.

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Thanks for looking!

-Robert
 
I can't wait to see how that casts as it's something I'd like to do.

Are you going to do something to allow extra cast material in the tang hole for final fitting? Or are you going to block the hole off completely when you set your mold?
 
Right now I am fitting it up all the way to make sure all of the carvings are in the right place and then before casting I will add in some extra material to the tang hole to prevent the slot becoming to large after shrinkage.
 
Here is another small update on the knife. I am still working on the wax to have everything ready for casting this week or early next week. All of the fittings will be cast from shibuichi (an alloy that is approximately 25% sillver and the remainder is copper). To start off the center of the guard is finally roughed to shape.

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Then the decorative elements are carved in and the fossil ivory handle is finally fit up.

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Then I trim the end of the handle to size and to shape for the butt cap.

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This being my first time working with wax, perhaps this was the wrong approach but it worked well for me. To fit the curve of the but cap to the curve in the ivory I cut the curve into the wax pretty closely then heated the wax with a torch on a low setting and pressed the but of the ivory into the wax. This seemed to work well as it fit the wax very precisely to the fossil ivory and it also showed me exactly where to put the slot for the tang.

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I then cut the tang slot and trimmed off most of the excess wax.

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I then trimmed the thickness of the wax down to a more uniform dimension:

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I then began the rough file work on the butt cap. I am leaving a lot of meat on either side of the cap for post casting clean up. With this being my first lost wax casting I'd rather do more clean up later on than risk not having enough metal in the right places once it is cast.

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I then began work on the peen block/ finial, it is inset into the butt plate approximately 1/16th of an inch.

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I wanted the finial to have aspects of the steel crown of Romania in its style, a very cool story if you wish to look it up. The photo doesn't show the detail well, and while crude, I believe the carving will lend its self to the overall feel of the knife.

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And that's all for today, next is clean up of the wax and then on to casting.

Thanks for looking!
 
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