Not exactly knives but historicly inspired :)

[sjaqua]

Well they are not exacly knives. But they are made using the same skill sets at least. For a local chapter of the SCA my wife Sandra and I created these coronets.

The bands are 50 layers and have the ladder pattern on just the one side. I did the one sided pattern to leave intact layers runing round the back side of the bands to support the whole while forming to fit the head.

The towers on the frount are lost wax cast jewlers bronze, with reconsituted lapis.

A not so fun project because the deadline was moved up twice for a total of two months. I made the dealine but had to take them back after the event to finish them to my satifaction (sigh!)

[J.Arthur Loose]

Nice. Are they heavy? There's a broken but famous set of crowns in the East which my Lady thinks would be funny to repair... as whoever was reigning at the time would be pretty obliged to wear them. They weight a ton.

[sjaqua]

Not as heavy as some. And not as heavy as I thought they would be. But heavier then I would like. And I may have to rework one of them because it's slightly heavier on one side (Her excelency ends up with a list to starboard, due the the uneven weight and her very smooth hair).

I ground them down pretty well. And just after the front piece the bands are slightly rounded to take away more weight. But the front piece is still a fair amount of steel. And add to that the cast bronze tower.

[Don Halter]

Nice!
Of course...you're screwed now. You made coronets...and even hit a deadline. The rest of your life will now be dedicated to fulfilling coronet orders!

[sjaqua]

not!

[Roger Gregory]

Originally Posted by sjaqua

not!

Yes, so!

Roger

[Roger Gregory]

Those look pretty ####ed good to me.

The steel looks excellent, the idea of using pattern-welded steal for a coronet wouldn't have occurred to me at all. They must be unique. Which is why everyone will want them until they are common and you are sick of making them

Roger

[sjaqua]

They were fun, sort of, but not something I want to do a whole lot of.

I volunteered to make these when the old coronets where stolen from the equipment trailer after a major event (The Poppy Festival. Lancaster CA) in 2004.

If someone where to....oh lets say..... want to maybe.... order some.... well lets just say they would need a sizable budget.

Of all the things it's not the pattern weld or drawing the billet down (however that takes it's share of time). And it's not grinding (and grinding the inside is a pain). It's making the bloody wood head form and then cladding it in metal and then forming and sizing the stupid things. Even with kelvar high heat gloves, that's a lot of metal radiating heat. And it's not a easy shape to handle while bending it around a form (and it never does bend exactly the way you wnat it to). Add to that something that when finaly bent to shape just barely fits in my forge (and it doesn't actually fit until then).

[sjaqua]

Roger,

I have actually seen three other examples of pattern welded coronets here locally in Southern California. So I can hardly claim they are an original idea.

The only truly original aspect was combining the lost wax casting to the front piece. And only because lost wax casting is a skill my father taught me long before I took up hammer and anvil. The other local smiths may not have that skill set as well.

And they may not have a talented carving artist like my wife either. Sandra does all the carving for our wax originals. And in this case she also carved and fitted the reconstituted lapis.