I was thinking maybe Viking-type sword, with extra width. We shall see. Gonna need some fairly serious trip hammer power to flatten this thing.
First round of flattening on the bar, courtesy of Mr. Ed Schempp letting me use his air hammer. It's a start, but there is a lot more to do before even thinking about grinding. The bar drew out to about 7 feet long and was cut into three lengths...enough for a very large sword, a big companion blade, and all hilt fittings.
It's big doins', iff'n I do say so m'self. One of the reasons there has been such a delay on your insane, punishing, maddening axe.
Basically, I have a really small "comfort box" with these blades so it doesn't take much to push me waaaay out of it.
The big piece is long enough to make two large gladius, and the short piece is big enough to probably forge into one also. Gonna have to see, it will be a little bit before I can get to them.
Maybe a large single edged migration era viking chopper like Albion's Berserker with a companion large seax. Just a small suggestion. It will become great blades for sure.
Turning blue waiting to see.... any chance of little mystery blades made out of a scrap or two for those of us who sit on the sidelines and wish we had a large piece of mystery Ti? Good luck with this project. Always love to see what you are up to. This one will be spectacular!
This thing is quite a ways out, due to all the craziness going on. One of the reasons I haven't posted much is because of just fading things out in preparation to make more san mai blades, which is the start of a new "level up" in titanium sword development. It displaces the normal flow of what I was doing up until now. There have been a few things posted to Instagram that I've made recently, but even better, Dan Keffeler has been posting some of the prototype swords he's been working on, made from billets me and him worked together on creating (he made the swords, I just worked on the billets and HT). The advancement of making layered billets has consumed a lot of my energy over the last few months, but it's in preparation for some really crazy stuff to come. Definitely check out Dan's Instagram, the last dozen or so posts, to see his handywork applied to some Mad Science titanium! I just posted up a jian sword that's almost finished, too, not san mai, but forged Ti Nb.
Saw the title of the latest Forged in Fire and got excited....Titanium Smackdown. But the titanium was only for the handle
I vote you make a blade to cut this Covid crap outta our lives. Your Titanium would be perfect for this!