Serpent Spear part II

 Continued from Part I here

Quite some time ago, as I now realize, I forged a spear head in search of possible historical techniques to achieve this pattern sometimes found within sword blades. The thought experiment and discussions relating to this topic and, due in part to the lack of information relating to the original artefacts, I have come to no great conclusions (yet).

In the interim of when this project began and now, I was able to at long last get my belt sander back up and running and with the excess of both time and old projects these last few months I figured it was time to go back to this one. While effective in light surface removal, the scraper I forged to work the faces of the spear was nowhere near fast enough to get through the thickness of this thing for pattern development reasons, and outside of taking several consecutive days of just scraping, I ripped through it on the 24grit belt instead.

Almost all of the seams and corners from the welding are gone with exception of where the socket meets spear tang, and those are only small aesthetic defects. If I were to tack the socket in place with a welder or even leave everything just slightly more oversized and neck down, it would be gone entirely.

Overall, I am not totally convinced that the pattern is as even and sinuous as intended, there being significant variation for how small an overall length (in relation to sword length) the spear head ultimately ended being. I'd be curious to try this again with a different approach, but first want to look into what compliment of tools were proven to exist at the time of the first emerging serpent cores. The way the forcing down of the straight core by flattening the undulated edge bars obviously had the desired effect, just not to the extent it needs. I believe that there is an upper limit to how severe a counter bend can be achieved in this method, and any additional depth to the valleys of the edge bars will simply translate to elongation rather than undulation of the core.

I have been thinking about this project a good deal lately, and have revisited some of the initial planning concerns with how to achieve the pattern. In theory, the same pieces could be forged, but the outer bars flipped so the undulations are on the core rather than the edge. I initially discarded that idea, and as I think more about it, I think I was right to do so. Based on how the serpent pattern of a core is relatively well known (not unusual, that is) and how clean the geometry and welds seem to be in originals, I do not think starting with a pre bent twist bar would work. To fit the serpent to one of the edge bar undulations would be simple enough, but getting a perfect match for the second opposing side would be far more difficult. Sort of in the examination of wolf's tooth patterning I did with Emiliano and Luke a few years back, there is a fine margin for getting everything to seat perfectly before welding.

One of the methods of reexamination I am considering is forging the individual bars closer to the final thickness prior to welding the billet together. Although this one wasn't overly thick, there was enough residual deformation from thinning that some of the tightness of wavelength may have been lost. If I had thought about it at the time, I would have measured the overall length pre and post shaping. With thinner bars, it not only reduces the lengthwise pattern deformation but I think more importantly will make the 'upsetting' of the undulating outer bars into a rectangle less taxing with regard to stretching.

Although it may be an unrealistic approach, the inclusion of wrought in smaller pieces (thinking back to the wolf's tooth pattern with several individual teeth plus a thin bar across the entire surface) may be able to eliminate the need to upset and forge back down to straight lines. Welding several smaller 'teeth' in the valleys of the serpent with another edge layer outside that may achieve similar results. I am not convinced of the practicality of that approach, however, and the asymmetry of the process is dissuading. Worded another way, the wavy edge bar would be used as a form while cold for a hot twist core forged down into it to match, then the second edge would take the 'teeth' one valley at a time in order to reduce the required precision of perfectly matching a mating frequency of peaks and valleys. Those individual parts for the second half could be easily rough forged, then finish forged into the cold, already bent serpent prior to welding for a much tighter fit. That way the trialing ends of the 'teeth' could be smoothed over and possibly lap welded over one another or if close enough to the same height, just adding another thin bar of wrought over that to match thickness to the first side.

I should note that wrought is not necessarily a choice material, having made swords with wrought in the core before and experiencing the ease at which it takes a heavy set regardless of the other steel, but other material could as easily be substituted there. For some reason in my head wrought iron makes sense simply for the subsequent etching and revealing of the process in its grain.

Anyway, I digress. Whether or not that method is either viable or plausible doesn't matter much, but in thinking out loud through as many different ways to do this with minimal tooling I begin to develop a list of details to look for in originals and how the processes either exclude certain techniques or demand them.

Until I am able to find better documentation of original patterns and preferably high resolution imagery of the steel, here are the final results of the first attempt at recreating this pattern.

Pickaroon

Before asking what provocative thing I just used to describe your mother, a pickaroon is a type of logging tool used to push/pull/drag/roll wood around that would otherwise be too unwieldly to do by hand. Essentially a spike on the end of an axe handle, you swing it into a log or stump or timber and use leverage to help with the ergonomics of manipulating heavy objects.

At the logyard, the current and only pickaroon is serviceable but needs improvement. First, I noticed that the narrowness of width at the eye is insufficient to keep the repeated motion of burying the point in dunnage from breaking the haft away. Second, the head is held on the handle with a rivet. While there is nothing specifically wrong with that, it tends to make inevitable handle replacement more difficult (i.e. now). Third, there is only one.

After a brief study and many hours of use, I ventured to make another. Not a replacement, but rather a compliment.

Based loosely on the original, which seemed to be forged, I decided to try and to a combination of a lap welded collar with a three layer point. The lines marked above are where the mild steel body is cut. The top half is wrapped, the bottom half paired.

The body of the pickaroon is about 2 inches wide. Originally I intended to go wider but due to what material I had on hand, this is what I used. Looking back, any wider would have been too much.

Because I did not need to full material length for the socket weld, I cut about half of those arms off in preparation for the weld.

One arm is bent in, the other around it to form the scarf. This measurement was based on the drift I previously made, which is approximately the same size of a commercial axe handle.

If I were to do this weld again, I would instead have the laps of the scarf lay flat instead of trying to weld the curve. Then, I could go back and flatten the eye collar back into the intended shape rather than struggle through so many interesting bickerns and mandrels to get the weld solid all the way through and across.

Next up is welding in the pick. This is a piece of jackhammer bit, a steel I expect to be in the 52100 or Dxx category. The toughness of the steel is great, but I did not heat treat it. As it is, the normalized bit is more than enough to keep its form at this size when burying only into wood.

Here it is with the arms welded to the bit. A little blending and shaping all around, drifting the eye to its final form, and it needs little else. As a working tool, the primary objective is strictly function.

This is the final shape. Dimensionally, it is extremely close to the original excepting the width of the collar. This one is about a third again longer, which will help with the wear issue and prolong the life of the handle.

Carved out of hard maple, the pickaroon enters into its service life. A simple tool, yet interesting examination of processes and improvement. As of this post, it has had about a month of use and is performing admirably. The point is as forged, and may use a touch of filing to sharpen it for those logs which have hardened while drying, but overall a minor correction.

70000 Miles

70000 miles, or more technically 70000 nautical miles, is just short of three times the distance around the equator. By land, that is as many miles as most people drive in over 5 years. When Magellan's fleet circumnavigated the earth, the 18 surviving men sailed for nearly three years... to sail only just over half as many miles. More, it's just short of a third of the 233,000 mile distance to the moon. With a number as high as 70000, it becomes abstract- while it is something that seems like a lot, it loses any real meaning. For nearly 8 straight months, living with the constant movement of the seas brings, at least for me, that number much closer for the magnitude of how truly far that is. Across the seas and back again, seeing much of what lies between, the endless expanse of ocean begins to take on its own character divided between the shores of those places which define it. At times as calm as glass, others with a tempestuous wrath, in the storming gale of rain or stagnant, burning sun, the seas are as different as the people who lie beyond its far horizon. It is those places which, at the journey's end, which cast a dreamlike memory over the time away, for it is neither what was expected nor familiar. And that is perhaps why it is so vast in the depth and colour of the experience.

Instead of a rambling, full recounting of so long a voyage, of which the stories and memories are as varied and plentiful as the 600 people with whom I shared it, I will rather try to explain an absence in the sights awaiting on the foreign shores.

At night, all modern cities share a similar mask. One which under the glow of electric lighting and infrastructure, in whatever condition it may be, blends into the shadows of darkness and becomes a common thread of humanity even ten thousand miles away.

Indonesia is one of the most populous and geographically important countries in the world, bordering the busiest waterways, and covering thousands of islands across the Pacific. The capital, Jakarta, was much like the costlands I call home, and yet this was the first in a series of new places and languages and cultures so familiar to the seafaring world.

Singapore too, although taking to the extremes a sense of modern architecture and world class hub of business nestled at the corner of the busiest waterway in the world, bore a reflection of nightstape that tried to blend in with the familiar. Only here, that was not quite the case. The nights were filled with lights and music and merriment and a grandiose sense of other worldly adventure. By day, the illusion was painted over with sunlight and the true scale of the city was revealed.

The magnitude, both large and small, exist in an eternal balance on the high seas. At times the sheer vastness of the ocean seems impossible to welcome our transient life when it was not born beneath the waves. And yet over the course of thousands of years we have sought- not without its dangers- to tame its mysteries, its opportunities.

On the far, Eastern shores the land changes yet again, and the seas beside it. Where in the Pacific the waters were vast and rolling, chopped by the wind and darkened by rainclouds as often as a singular hue from horizon to horizon, the sheltered waters grew calm. Stagnant. Breathed with scorching winds and blazing sun, the span of Oman sees both endless southern summer and the greater northern seasons. Where first we found desolation, it was later a cradle of an elder culture from which the legends of our own are born.

Unlike any other city in the world, Dubai evokes the feeling of hyper modern architecture, concentrated wealth, and broken rules. From the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, to a ski slope in the middle of seemingly endless desert, there is very little you cannot find there. All around, the landscape and the cityscape and the mix of people and stories and opportunities form a culture like nothing I have ever seen before or since.

The return to Oman, now in its northern reaches, was so vastly unlike the southern corner that it might have been not only a different country, but a different continent. Mountains ringed the port, watchtowers and palaces and fortresses intermixed with incredible souks and menageries that, although of the local flavour, were much closer to the modern age than endless sands. In a word, it was Sword country.

 

Once more, shocked into the starkness of contrast, desert sands became fields of rice and the blazing green of a tropical world. Sri Lanka the small island nation south of the Indian subcontinent so close as to nearly be touching, was both breathtaking and filled with hospitality. The food and rich history, the natural and ancient beauty, were all so incredibly welcome after weeks upon weeks of nothing but the embrace of the open seas.

In the darkest nights, when the seas were just right, a lightning streak of bioluminescence shattered the pitch black waters. On those hours where the final glow of twilight fades away and no reflected moonlight dispels the illusion, the violent blue white of the wake casts a light so bright that it can be seen for nearly a mile in a wandering V behind us before fading back into the murk. Beneath the curl of the wake, other things could be seen beneath the surface, disturbing the planktons on their own. Shadows of something larger than fish, tentacled and nearly 40 feet long.

On the other side of the narrows, India sits in a state of confusing history and vastness. For a country so populous and old, of a seemingly endless depth to its history and landscape, it was difficult to find representation for the nation in a singular place. In a sense, it felt as though stepping through time and into the apocalypse. That is to say, a place where the world had ended and those who continued to live there did so by making for themselves what they were able and scarcely anything more. At times it felt as though rule and order did not exist, ramshackle vehicles driving anywhere there was room, in the weaving in the wrong direction as the traffic around them or through sidewalks or unpaved sections of what might have been a lawn in better times. Mountains of rubble and garbage spilled between buildings, and the beaches were a combination of a fishing industry, living quarters, and extreme poverty. More than any other, the experience was harrowing.

At long last, the return voyage began, and those other places, the heart of Djibouti, the shores of Kuwait, the UAE and Philippines, the calling of Thailand and Guam, it all began to blend together into that sensation of water running through open hands. Soon, it would be at an end.

Crossing over the International Date Line, we had a full moon to guide the passage east. So many months ago, that same light called us west, only then we were younger and naive to the grander scale of humanity

Home, I have learned over the years, can be many places. And yet when the time comes around, after a return so long anticipated and so long traveled to meet, there are few places which can welcome you back so quickly and so wholly.

Long overdue, I think at last it's time to get back to the workshop.