Sword Repair

george tichbourne

george tichbourne

Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
3,560
A lady brought in a sword, 1920's vintage that belonged to her grandfather, unfortunately the sword had been broken by her son by dropping it on the ground. The kid was not really the cause of the problem, the blade had a couple of old cracks where the blade had broken.

Does anyone know of someone who can repair the broken blade and re etch the pattern in the repair area? Cosmetics are the critical factor here as the blade will be displayed over the fireplace from now on.
 
I don't see why you can't do it George. If the break is clean, take it to a GOOD welder and have him use a xenon arc welder to put it back together. Leave enough to work down. Just grind enough and polish to remove the weld and copy the pattern using an etch resist.

It is a nerve wrecking job and you have to make her understand that there are no guarantees. Charge a LOT.
 
What type of sword? Any repair is likely to cause more damage then there was to begin with.
Perhaps a "shards of Narsil" type display?
 
The sword is a military type 1" wide and about 30" long with acid etched pattern on both sides. Break is in a patterned area so I am reluctant to simply weld the thing back together because I have never acid etched a pattern before.

Since it is going to be a wall hanger from now on I expect that it could be silver soldered together but I would like to refer the lady to an expert in case something goes wrong.
 
If you use any kind of electic arc to weld the sword. TIG,MIG,stick or whatever. The area that is welded will be cloudy and indistinct. The weld will wipe out the pattern in that area.

My suggestion would be JB WELD and a display that will hold the sword from moveing at all. Possibly part of the rack could be in front of the broken area.

my .02
 
Sweany is right, I'm a welding teacher at a high school and have repaired a number of things (not a sword yet). The steel in all of the welding processes I know of will discolor the sword at the weld. The weld itself will have a slightly different mixture in metallurgy than the rest of the blade. That by itself will discolor it at the repair point, and to do the weld properly the steel should be de-tempered first.
I would just JB weld it and strongly suggest a three point rest for the display to further relieve the stress on the JB weld.
 
I'm as far as you can get from a welding expert but I agree with the other guys that it won't look right. The only way to really make a decent job of that would be if you knew somebody that was really good with a TIG welder and could get rod in the exact same material as the blade. Then you'd still have the issue of grinding the bead back down flush and trying to re etch.

JB weld sounds the best so far since there's no heat to discolor the blade which even soldering or brazing could do and the clean up isn't too bad.
 
If it's in a static display case, weld it up gently on the back side only, sure the backside is yuck but no one will se it.
 
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