Ok, we have looked at the various supplies needed to make the sword. Now we will get to the actual making of the sword!

In this part of the tutorial we use hand tools to cut the shape of the sword.

Ok, I have the 36 inch length of sword. We are going to use the whole length of it. But we want to get the major shape of it so apply masking tape to the ends and draw the shape on the masking tape. This is for both the tang on the left and the point on the right. And you can see by this picture that I also drew out some sketches.

This picture gives you a good look at the point. For ease I blacked out all the steel that will be cut away. And it was important to draw a centerline on the sword both for the point and the tang.

Now I use a hacksaw to cut away all the excess of both the point and the tang. Take your time with this and do a nice clean cut. The better this is the easier the rest of the job will be. You will have to remove and or shape less steel if this cut is accurate.

Now, before we cut out the tang with the hacksaw we should drill out the radius. Now, we would prefer not to have this angle be a sharp 90 degree angle. that can lead to cracking at this as a weak spot.

It would be better if there were a bit of a curve at that intersection. So, I marked it, center punched it and drilled two holes.

This isn't a mandatory step but it is an improvment. If you can do this then do it!

This picture shows you what I mean by the curved radius where the tang meets the blade. The "good picture" is a really exaggerated version of it. Just using any drill around 1/8 - 1/4 inch will be fine to give us a small but important radius.

And here we are cutting the tang.

And here the tang is cut. I also used a file on it to smooth all the cut edges on the tang and on the point.

Ok , we are done with the shaping of the sword. It looks great. The blade is 28 1/8 inches in length. And the tang makes up the rest which is 7 1/2 inches. We are now ready to do some blacksmithing on this thing!

Ok, continue with the tutorial and lets do some work at the forge

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