The making of a Viking period Pattern-welded sword.

A buddy and I were consuming spare time surfing the net.  Here's some nifty stuff we came across.
Pattern Welding Process Part 1
Pattern Welding Process Part 2

This guy, Gregory Delaunay is a knifefemaker/artist from France and produces some amazing work.  Here's the website: http://www.elfic.fr/index.htm

A very nice set of videos describing the pattern welding process start to finish.  It pays to watch the second video all the way to the end, as the pattern in the blade is utterly beautiful.  The are set to English music, but the text is  french.  There's another link here that accurately described the process in English here.  Well illustrated.

Armour Projects

 So.  I've decided to start some new armour.  And this time I'll actually document the process.  Yeah, I know I said I would do that with the quiver too, but you know how it is.  A good friend of mine named Darcy, (or Stragin for those of you in the SCA) built himself a set of leather Lorica Segmentata.
 This is what Segmentata looks like:

This is what Darcy's leather lorica looks like:

I have my cardboard pattern constructed, and will update along the way.

Quiver

I am getting tired of leaving my arrows lying about in a box.  To remedy the situation, I'm building myself a quiver, loosely based on and inspired by the Anglo-Saxon quivers I saw on the Reverend's Big Blog of Leather here.  Mine I built slightly differently than his, as I also wanted to have an integral arrow cover, like the Hedeby quiver discussed here.  I will be posting photos of progress shortly.

I am having a slight problem with curvature of the sides.  Because I used a small shoulder from Tandy, I couldn't fit my quiver pattern on the leather following the body of the animal.  I am finding that by having the length of the quiver run perpendicular to the spine of the animal, the curve is not terribly smooth.  I'm going to try to remedy this by NOT dying the leather until after it's sewn, then hopefully when I dye the leather the moisture in the dye will allow the leather to curve more smoothly.

On a related note, another problem I'm having is in finding coad for sewing the leather.  I have found this to be called handwax or shoemaker's wax also.  I have some recipes calling for a 2:1 ration of rosin to beeswax, and others calling for pitch and rosin.  Time to start cooking the stuff myself I guess.  I think my darling wife would have a stroke if I used her stove, so I am now also looking for a portable hot plate...