Mechanical Engineer here. Awesome job. Shad, please listen to me! I used to study and work with composite materials for aeronautics. Dont Rivet carbon fiber. You Don't need custom metal pices you can work with the ones you have: Make holes in the metal blades stripes 1 or 2 inch apart, make the edges of the hole round, so it can't cut what pass trough it, sew kevlar lines in these holes like a shoelace conecting all the metal pices, side to side. Before aplying the resin and placing the other composite materials the base structure should look like a spiderweb holding all the metal with kevlar. It will keep the bades togather. they will never come off the sword. you could hang a Car in it. Then over it you layer the foam, the carbon fiber. Put the resing, aply vacuum and preasure. Also you can Sew the carbon mesh with kevlar so it will never delaminate.
Looking at this sword feels like glimpsing into an alternate universe where gunpowder was never invented and so ultra modern materials were used to make swords instead.
@@JohnDoe-vm5rb Mithril is similar to titanium, isn’t it? I saw Men at Arms make Blade’s sword, which was made of titanium. Man, MCU Blade is gonna suck ass without Wesley Snipes.
Don't forget, it took many centuries for people to figure out how to make good steel swords. From the earliest swords in ancient times, up through the medieval period, and into today with modern materials and techniques. Now Shad is trying to do something very different, and doesn't have centuries to invest in the process for it to prove itself.
Machinist here. For the new blades you could probably mill a stepped slot lengthwise into some thin bar stock for the carbon fiber to insert into and then grind the edge onto it once it's fastened onto the sword itself. You could even use shorter pieces of steel (150mm or so)since the gaps where they butt together wouldn't be as much of an issue since they'd be blended in by the grinding. If you can get the mold of the carbon fiber to account for it (if it would be strong enough) you might even be able to get away with cutting the slot in with a band saw with a relatively wide blade. In that case it might be easier to go with shorter segments (50mm or so). The length of the individual segments might not matter that much if you can butt them together and blend them with grinding. Even short enough for just 2 rivets each. Tyranth could probably rig up a jig for that. It'd be like a hypermodern Macahuitl with no gaps between the blades. you could also cut into a slot mostly into the bar stock as above so that only a thin bit of metal is left on either side and pound the two sides with a wedge or round bar so that it's shaped into a "V" terminating in a square section at the bottom that you could grind your edge into. feel free to message me if it helps and I can elaborate.
Half bump, half I have somethign to add, the carbon fibre failed along the the matrix. It would probably make it a bunch more expensive, but it would make it significantly stronger to rotate the carbon fibre by 45 degrees
Why even smaller pieces? Cut the whole blade profile out of a single stock. With big cut outs for the foam core and crossbars in between to spread the impact load. And holes along the inside for the epoxy to bite into and hold the blade in shape. And I would use "forged carbon" maybe even without the foam core. Maybe would be a bit weaker, but its a sword and swords are forged.
@@neondemon5137 Edison didn't "steal" any inventions. He took existing technology and made them viable for commercial use by tirelessly improving on said ideas. Without Edison's tireless work on fluorescent lightbulbs, who knows how long it would have taken to get a functional one for commercial use. We could have been using gas and oil lights for several decades longer without his work. He wasn't perfect, and has several flaws, but he was a good contributor to human life overall.
I work for a small steel fabrication company in the US and I can't 100% guarantee we can make what you need as I'm just a floor worker, but I have personally done the bending on small, one off orders several times so I'm reasonably confident we could help you.
@@MeGaDwarf2008 I'd guess it will be hellish as much as transporting anything over such a long distance is usually. Not so much in terms of how "dangerous" the item can be perceived as. They merely need to send a thin piece of steel in a funny shape, doubt any eyebrows are going to be raised.
@Akira-Aerins mostly sheet steel and pipes for tractor bodies and structural components. I'm just in production so I don't really know the grades off hand exactly. I do know that a lot of it gets sent for hardening. I'd guess we can get whatever type is needed.
I am someone who works with composites quite a bit, I can say the reason that laminating steel in this way will not work is because the composite and steel have different rates of expansion and contraction, when you take a long piece of steel and sandwich it in composite like that, just the difference in night and day is creating great internal stress in the structure of the blade. What works against you even further here is carbon fiber composite has a NEGATIVE coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning it grows as it gets cold and shrinks as it warms. Because of this as the temperature fluctuates the sword is tearing it's self apart internally simply as the temperature fluctuates through the day. I would strongly consider starting with a steel blank that is 1mm thick, then cut it to the profile of the blade, then add a ton of lightening holes to it, then put composite pucks in those holes and epoxy them in place, once that has cured scuff the entire surface and then laminate the sides on to the blade. This would give an incredibly light but strong blade.
Ah very similar thinking to mine - I was suggesting welding more of the blade material or some wires between the edges, functionally similar though I think your method would be easier to order in from a water/laser cutter while mine is more make in the workshop.
@@phenjaws569 oh you can easily tell. Shad is super energetic and really tries to downplay the faults of the new technology while tyranth is much more sceptical of the whole ordeal.
Hello from the Netherlands Shad. To keep the blades from being disloged or compressed you could try to place metal ribs trough the core of the sword. This way the blades on both sides of the sword would be connected. Using this would also allow you to place rivits through these ribs in the centre line of the sword instead of on the edge. In theory this method could also be used in you decide to go with the v shaped cap blades. If your interested I could draw it out. I am not a material engineer so do ask your carbon fiber expert if you can make a strong laminate if there is a piece of metal going through the centre core. Apologies for spelling errors this is not my first language.
Yeah, I'm thinking a 'skeleton' sword with the carbon fibre to give rigidity/structure to the sword. It will never be as strong as a 'true' sword though because it's simply not solid steel.
You could weave some long strands of carbon filament through the ribs; over-under-over-under, and back the other way. That should give the core some rigidity, and help in bonding with the laminations.
I'm no expert on carbon fiber but I do know if you score the ribs (put small groves in the rib) the fiber could easily hold onto it, the skeletonized blade ribs shouldn't affect it at all, and to maximize the strength and keep the blade thin and light the ribs would need to be trianglized, so Nick your idea and theory is sound, and in theory it could easily apply to the Titan Blade as well
@@JohnDoe-vm5rb i have an idea to move foreward You have to design it like an old safety razor, you should do one ultra thin core where you make the general profile of the blade with flat spring steel Then you need 2 sort of razorz the length of the blade, Alternatively you could do this with many razors sort of like an old native american macuahuitl, but regardless next you use 2 carbon fiber layers to clasp the blades in place That way the construction can be dissassembled and repaired like something from attack on titan, but a little more practical because it will have actual structure and rigidity necessary to be a real weapon I know technically that would mean the blade itself would still just be steel, but i imagine using composite materials to get the best of all benefits involves thinking outside the box, and the typical approach to composite material of making a layered composites won't tend to serve well under the particular types of stresses that swords deal with, particularly the torque of a strike I believe thisbsafety rezor design will help resolve the torque stress and supply sufficient structure that other stresses should be handled quite well dispite having less flexibility
You guys are answering the question everyone has always wondered. Keep going! your channel is the greatest sword channel on TH-cam now. a single piece blade that slides over the whole thing then rivets on would work best i feel. if you don't make it one piece it wont have any strength. you may need to be willing to add another pound or a pound and a half at least for this method.
If they're doing that, it might as well be made of a single piece of flat stock and have some connecting steel lattice structure. Water jet or laser cutting the steel would work imo.
Not a bad idea. as long as the new blade lays over the top of the carbon fiber one and has good overlap for the rivets in it i dont think it would break. water jet would be great because it would heat and mess up any temper. I know i could weld up something that would fit it for sure but blacksmithing techniques would also be effective.
I manufacture circuit boards, and those are usually copper cores stuck together with fiberglass and resin. In order to keep the copper from delaminating, it is oxidized with a chemical to roughen up the surface. It might be worth exploring if you haven't already.
Hum, while watching this I was thinking, you could make an entire sword out of rather thin steel, all one piece with very large cut-out in the center. It would be far too flimsy to work as a sword, but you THEN add the carbon fiber over the blade, all but the edges. This way all the steel reinforces itself as it is all one piece, and should only marginally increase weight.
What I've been saying elsewhere in the comments is that some sort of lattice in-fill would work best, laser or water cut into a piece of flat stock. That way the steel is helping with the impacts, since carbon fiber is really best in tension, and doesn't perform so well with impacts. IMO this is probably the only way to do this successfully.
I work at a fab shop that could laser cut something like that 15 seconds after you finish loading the file. We'd probably charge about $300 plus the cost of material though.
As a Product Designer BSc (hons) and an experienced custom motorcycle builder and gunsmith I recommend you use a skeletal structure as part of the blades for support, i.e. cut from a single sheet of high carbon steel the shape of the entire sword including the blades, then remove portions of the central mass in geometric sections to act as 'girders' in the form of a frame support system. Have no sharp angles in any of the connecting points (i.e. tips of a triangular cut out section etc..) but make sure they are rounded to reduce stress points. This can then sit as the centre of a 'sandwich' between all the composite layers you use and will greatly increase the structural support to both blades (now being one) and keep it light. I know Tyranth has a milling machine so it can be done cheaply that way or laser cut, plasma cut, a grinder even just watch the temperature and so on. I'm enjoying this build very much but wish I could include diagrams in responses! lol.
This is fairly close to how I've been making knives since 2006. It drives me kinda nuts to watch their approach because this is largely a solved problem, if you just ask or listen to the right people...
@@Voidrunner01 Ah well they're learning... I would have expected Tyranth to be a bit ahead of the game but then again designers and engineers always butt heads over imaginative and unorthodox solutions! LOL.
I wonder if a thin metal "skeleton frame" that contains the edges, a spine and some cross beams for stability that is then covered with the carbon fiber would be feasible... Still this is a fun concept of yours and I wish you the best of luck going forwards ;-)
I wonder about that too... You can reinforce the whole blade from delamination with pins through the frame. With how light this sword is thin frame wouldn't add so much weight it would be hard to use.
Get it laser cut out of a single sheet. Skeletonize it and pur the carbon fiber in/over/around it. Single piece blade edge, keeps cost down, only adds a little weight. If you leave ribs crossing the center it will also take the brunt of the local impact.
It seems like I and many other people in the comments have had very similar ideas, but are coming at it from different directions. Pulling ideas from what other people have commented here is a list of what I think are the best ideas. 1 Laser/plasma/water jet a sword blank from 1mm carbon steel sheet. 2 Cut structural (circular honeycomb etc) lightening holes leaving approximately 1/2" of steel around edge of blank and a rib down the center and into the handle. 3 Cut a row of small holes all the way around the the 1/2" edge and down the center rib for carbon fiber stitching. 4 layer foam and carbon fiber on blade and stitch the whole thing together. 5 Clamp and cure in vacuum chamber. No need for costly and hard to get custom machined parts. This would be relatively cheap and easy to manufacture while fixing the edge alignment, blade shifting, delaminating, and handle breaking problems.
One thing for consideration for the next iteration is that you could cut the steel edges out of sheet steel as one piece, making a sword blank. You could then skeletonize the sword blank, removing most of the inner material for reduced weight. That skeletonization can be very aggressive since the inner supports would mostly be providing rigidity between the two sides of the sword. With the blank minimalized, you could then start layering your composite materials on top of that. The main advantage you get out of this is that cutting blanks out of sheet steel is a very cheap process, and you get all of the steel in one connected piece. The hard part is getting sheet steel of an appropriate composition. Also, cutting the steel would require heat treating the blank afterwards, which can be tricky due to the size of the blank. If the size of the blank prevents heat treatment due to lack of large enough tools, you could still use this general concept and instead cut the finished blank into several segments, each still connecting the two sides of the sword, and heat treat each segment individually.
@@shanent5793 Those methods usually generate a lot of heat and break the existing heat treatment, so it needs to be retreated after the cut. You might be able to go extremely slowly and avoid building up too much heat, but I personally wouldn't want to risk that.
@@Trafulgoth Literally every blade is ground after quenching and tempering. Hard machining is done at such high speed that almost all of the heat goes into the chips, and not the workpiece.
@@shanent5793 Weird, I've never made blades that way. After shaping, I'll grind the edge, then heat treat. Final step is sharpening, but that is fast and usually doesn't require grinding.
Hope you guys get the backing you need to create a more finished product, and thanks for all the work and love you put into this niche little hobby, that I enjoy so much
I mentioned before what I think would be the optimal solution would be to basically laser cut (or water jet cut; collab 👀) the entire outline (including tang) from steel and then build the carbon fiber onto it for rigidity. But that way the entire outside edge would be one piece of steel. Ofc cost will be an issue (where a channel collab might help). And rivers in addition to that would probably help. Just my thoughts 😊
Have you guys considered wire running inside the sword from edge to edge to keep the blades under tension while you apply the carbon fiber? Could prevent them from falling out and no longer require the riveting from the outside. Personally, if budget wasn't an issue, I would waterjet cut the edges and tang of the sword out of some kind of hard sheet steel with a honeycomb or trusses from edge to edge to give it the rigidity blade to blade and then fill the honeycomb or trusses with foam and sandwich your carbon fiber on top of that to give its flats the rigidity you would want. This way the blades would have that internal structure to absorb more shock and prevent delamination's while the whole blade would still be much stronger as a whole. I hope that made sense.
I'm sure someone already posted on it but for testing purposes to test the V steel edge you could build/borrow/rent a metal break (a tool for bending flat stock into specific angles).
What about connecting the metal bars/ strips with a wire frame / skeleton sandwiched in the carbon fiber / fiber gas and mabye have a spin of metal with the wire connected to or just have the wire alternating the between the different layers so if one area delaminats it won't all come out and Anchoring mor firmly in the blade. And maybe twist the wire so it gets more rigidity and possibly make the resin grip more to the wire
Maybe you should put a carbon fibre cross guard on the sword & test if a carbon fibre cross guard is viable for weight reduction & catching blades on other blade?
My suggestion would be to get inspiration with the macahuitl and put holes on the blades and stitch them to the carbon fiber with a carbon fiber or similar material cord before the epoxy
I love your channel shad I practice sword fighting in my yard and your channel had really made me realize that it's not wierd and that I am doing something I love
If you're looking for v-shaped metal edges, you might be able to use some type of standard 90 degree steel edging trim and shape it to fit? I'm unsure how suitable the range of steel types are but it would be readily available and very reasonably priced if it was usable.
MilCon and Master Gunsmith here- instead of riveting, what about a single piece of flat spring steel, skeletonized to be supported by the edge on the opposite side with minimal material? If you wanted to get fancy, modern tools for optimal voronoi calculations can give you an ideal strength to weight ratio. The use of water jet over plasma cutting can preserve your spring temper on very thin sheet stock. For handle material I would look at laminated sheets of UHMWPE- every time I play with hot laminated UHMWPE it’s practically magical- very low weight and insane performance. It’s also very cheap. In fact here in the states a lot of grocery bags are made of UHMWPE and it’s practically the right thickness for laminating.
Steel Fabricator based in SEQld here, I would definitely suggest having a skeletal steel structure. You wouldn't increase weight by that much if you design it well (honestly would take 30mins max to design in autodesk) and it's easy to manufacture. CAD, send to laser cutter, then presto, you have your skeleton that you can then layer the carbon fibre and kevlar to. Happy to do the CAD work for you if you need someone
@@RiverRockRecordsit “failed” but that’s a sword like object that would cut “it works …it works yeah! one way or another” Shad and jazzas chainmail crossover
for the V edge cladding that you guys would like to have, instead of having 2 pieces of steel join at the edge, you could bend steel sheets (at heat ofc) or even better but more expensive mill segments of the blade then weld or rivet them to the carbon fibre flat, leaving a little more material at the edge so that the inner taper doesnt reach the very edge, there is also the option of metal 3d printing the parts although it would be significantly weaker. I asked chat GPT for some ideas and it gave me some pretty obvious material choices like steel alloys, titanium, aluminium alloys but then there were some interesting ones. polyether ether ketone is a plastic resin material that can be composited with carbon fibre instead of standard resin and could improve the bond with the various materials although it has a melting point of 343*c which would make it slightly harder to composite and work with. Dyneema is a plastic material that could be used instead of kevlar with it having a higher strength to weight ratio than kevlar and used frequently as strong rope material although more expensive. A quite funny idea it had was to ceramic coat the blade to reduce abrasion and wear resistance.
While I love this project Shad, you're doing it wrong. You don't want to build a "carbon fibre sword" - you need to build a COMPOSITE STRUCTURE. In which multiple materials are used to best advantage. You need a steel tang in the lower section so that the blade doesn't snap at the hilt. You need a cutting edge that fits OVER the carbon blade, not inside it. And when it comes to the Titansword, you will need a honeycomb layer within the blade to give rigidity without adding impractical weight. I used to work in aircraft maintenance, I know more about this than you do. And from the comments, there are people here who know a lot more than me. So FFS, READ THE DAMN COMMENTS and reach out to those who can actually make this work. Otherwise you're just wasting your time and money.
Got an idea: 1. Get a steel rectangle for the blade (preferably wider than the ones you are using). 2. Make cuts perpendicular to the longer edge. Length of the cuts should be rather small. 2/3 the planned thickness of the base's (the composite laminate's) should be good length. The blade should resemble a hair comb. 3. Orient the blade so your line of sight goes along the edge (sorry, I have no better words to describe it). 4. Bend every other "fin"/"fishbone" to the left, and the rest to the right. Dont make the bend too agressive. 5. Heat treat. 5. Embed it into the base, with the fins going through the layers of carbon fiber etc. The fins should lock the blades securely, probably more securely than rivets. Preparing the blades and getting the fins to go through the fiberous layers will be a hassle though.
Two ways to get the V shaped cap, you can bend a flat piece to the angle you need or you can mill down an existing piece essentially cutting the groove needed to slot the sword in. If you know anyone who has the tools at home they can easily do it for you, or you can try hitting up a college or school if there are no places that let you rent machines or maker spaces.
While I'm sure it'd be possible to mill such a thing ... I wouldn't want to. It is very long and very thin. These are not the conditions you want when milling things.
Both of your ideas are not good. A blade stamped from plate steel, then holes drilled periodically through it to lighten it and allow the resins to penetrate through it will be your cheapest and strongest method.
Can you run thin steel cable from each side of the blades to hold them towards the center of the blade so they can't delaminate, like a steel cable skeleton holding the blades in place on the outside
Perhaps you could make it easy for yourselves and more durable by sandwiching a 1mm spring steel sheet to use as both blade and core between the carbon fibre, kevlar, etc. Then rivet (or whatever) the carbon fibre to and through the steel. So the carbon fibre is more of a body/exoskeleton to give a bit of mass and rigidity to, what is essentially, the razorblade inside 😄 To reduce weight you could strategically honeycomb the steel with holes, which would also allow resin, rivets or whatever to exchange between halves. Cheers guys. Great as always.
Outside thoughts. 1. A solid single piece of sheet metal ( spring steel ) With holes drilled in it to allow the liquid to solidify in and through the metal core. This would keep the edge centered during the setting process and you can have a pseudo full tang. This could help with edge alignment and overall stability. 2. Doing a thin second 3-4 mm wide strip from tip to pommel on each side. ( not 100% on where in the layering it would work best but ) this would help avoid the flappy edge and overall structure.
Shad, you need to cast the steel blade INTO the lay-up, meaning using evenly spaced holes along its length, the carbon-fiber itself becomes the rivet material. This also has the advantage of potentially incorporating steel into the tang to reinforce it. Using a pre-shaped mould and pressing it, while also pulling a vacuum on the mould itself, will mostly eliminate the need for shaping bevels manually, needing only minor work to clean up, meaning a smooth continuous surface which will be less susceptible to delamination. Try a shape like an over-size falchion to start, as being single edged its far easier to prototype.
I think you should probably leave out some weight savings and just make inside edge span whole sword (maybe have inside parts of it have some cutouts so the resin can connect both sides). That would give a ton more surface area to bond with rest of the sword compared to just having edge
For the edge retention within the sword try doing a skeletonized edge that connects both sides and is being held in via the lamination and the slabs that are retaining the handle.
As a mechanical engineer, here's an approach I'd consider. * Design the blade as a "skeleton" structure using sheet steel (laser or waterjet cut) where the entire blade is a single piece with voids between the cross bracing. * Then, use pieces of foam core material and laser cut them into the exact shapes that fit into the voids. * Overlay that with carbon fiber. One challenge with this design would be keeping the carbon bonded to the sides. My experience with carbon fiber is minimal, but I wonder if it would be possible to have holes along the blades that could be used to actually weave some of the fibers through the blade from either side. It might be very tricky to manipulate while constructing the sword, but if the holes are somewhat coarse it might be achievable. A couple more things: * If you use this, the "depth" of the blade section is less important since the adhesion isn't what's holding it in. The cross bracing provides that. You could probably get away with using slightly thicker stock (1.5mm or 2mm) so the core can be thicker. * Instead of foam core, there are panels which are basically honeycomb structures bonded to backing sheets, sometimes called "honeycomb core" or similar. If you can get it to bond well enough, these could be dramatically stronger than simple foam core. They can be very expensive though.
It would require one hell of a breaker but you can fold a strip of spring steel along its length to create the edge. There would also be the benefit of further hardening that single aspect through work stress
That fix right there looks nice and is the best way to solve the problem of the handle breaking off again, minus the bulky bit. In short, the next iteration of the blade gets the strip of metal going from pommel into the blade.
I appreciate the commitment to try and upgrade swords. It also makes me appreciate the amount of knowledge and technology that went into making swords in the first place.
It has been a joy to see this journey for the past year culminate in this destruction test. I truly want to see a genuine functional giant sword, and I sincerely hope y'all are the ones to create such a beast. Thanks for all the hard work!
I'll mention it again: I'd try to sew the layers together with kevlar or maybe dyneema or something similar, to avoid delamination. (before the resin) Loved the video!
Shad, greetings from the USA. I am a hobbiest blacksmith and I would suggest finding one of us where you're at. (I would but I am moving and my forge is in a storage unit at the moment.) Another suggestion, in place of the foam core I'd like to suggest a honey combing of the carbon fiber and baking it as a solid piece.
Hello shad I have an idea to improve your sword I’m not an expert on engineering or sword making but from my experience as a pole vaulter I think a way to make a very durable and light sword you could use carbon fiber as the base but instead of how you had, it make the base by wrapping many layers of carbon fiber around something of a similar design like they do for pole vault poles while the sword would be hallow the believe the many layers would make it very strong and then cap the sword with a steel edge
If you want a capped blade (from how I understand it) you could essentially have 2 blade sections welded along the edges in a V and then have those hydraulically pressed onto the carbon fiber blade frame to shape them, then drilling your rivets. I do also support the idea of a separate handle section and only using carbon fiber for the blade and no tang. I have seen some very high precision fine welding machines come out recently so the thinness of the blade should not be an issue for the proper welders. A capped blade would also provide additional support against delaminating as it would have evenly spaced rivets folding the sheets together along with the blades.
Watched most of this series from the beginning. The thing that I'm kicking myself about right now is realizing just how much this process sounds like building carbon fiber skis. Didn't even think about it until seeing how the blade delaminated from that final strike. I've seen skis do the same thing hitting a rock on a sketchy day on the slopes.
For bonding metal edges into composites, look at an industry that already does it--skis. They use a metal edge with a series of dovetail-shaped tabs that extend into the composite. It might be possible to buy some, though whether their geometry is suitable for this is another question.
I'm impressed. It did not take you guys long to repair and upgrade the handle/hilt. Kudos. It wouldn't be cheating to use a wider one piece blade strip as long as it was only the edge, and the structural part of the blade is carbon fiber. But I get you. It would be expensive to get a solid one piece edge piece cut from one solid thin sheet of steel.
you have a single piece of steel cut for the blade part with a few braces through out the structure to keep it from separating. you can even weave the carbon fiber through it as you build it.
Idea, spring steel sheet with the edges on the outside of course. The inner part you could make look like chain link then reinforced with the composite, that would keep it light but way easier than the v edge you're talking about. If you have 2 to 3 mill link between both edges it'll give it some more mass but not that much. Especially it the sheet is 2 mill thick
I would try starting with a metal blank or cutting it out of a sheet of steel, say 2mm thick (if you want to make it thicker) in the shape of the sword. Then mill out or otherwise remove most of the interior save for some braces from edge to edge spaced about 10 cm apart. Drill or otherwise put holes in the interior and texturize the parts of the blade that need to bond with the epoxy, even hitting it with something like a dremal might work if you needed to save money. Then build your layers and see what you get. I'm not a phd in material science or anything, but it struck me that the epoxy would have had a hard time bonding the carbon fiber to the steel without a rougher surface to adhere to. Also having braces across the edge should keep the blade from dislodging like it did in testing. Hoping for the next one, which should be named BTW! 😁
I find your accent endearing and it actually does make me think and reevaluate my own life. I have been watching your channel for a bit and when I realise it truely is hard work for you to live the passion of looking at historical castles compared to me here in England but I havent been to a castle in... geeesh we are talking years. And honestly I love castles, but life you know... it hasn't led me that way. But I am going to reevaluate my position. Love your channel mate. Found it by accident actually. Keep it up! Edit: I love castles but you REALLY love castles. And I can respect that. Much love from merry old England.
So, idea for affixing the blade to this that comes from the knife world. Nibble the back of the blade insert, such that it is hooking its self to the carbon fiber. This may sound daunting, but with a sheet metal nibbler this may be easier than you think, just time consuming. As long as you have alternating directions taken out of the back of the insert, it should have pretty good adhesion.
If you have someone that can cut the steel for you, you could cut the edges to include triangular truss sections through the whole width of the sword. This would eliminate the need for rivets. You can also change up some of the length, width, direction and resin fill of the carbon fiber until you get the mechanical properties you need for each section of the blade and handle.
To keep the blades in a bit better, you could try cutting both blades and a web or truss of reinforcement between them (think of a normal sword with large cutouts) out of a single thin sheet of steel using laser or plasma cutting, or maybe even electric discharge machining. That way, the blades can rely on their own tensile strength rather than just the adhesion of the epoxy to the blades.
you don't need pins or rivets, just use spring steel with a bunch of holes trough it that way the resin can act like a pin, it's going to hold on to the steel better and also makes the edge itself hold together better
You could try getting a piece of spring steel the entire width, then have large portions of the center milled out, leaving the occasional bracing structure to both keep it from separating, and also from collapsing inward. You could even use triangular angles, like in bridge design. I'm not sure how that would work with getting the carbon fiber and core perfectly flat, but its an idea. You could also use a file to rough up the surface of the steel to give it more bite.
Can I ask someone who knows? The carbon fiber cures with the resin in a really durable way, right? Here's what i'm thinking: how about making the steelpieces a little bit wider. Then you perforate them in a straight line running along the length of the blade material. Then you cut a strip of carbon fiber and basically braid it through the perforations in the steel. You make sure to saturate the strip in resin first though. Then you sandwich the blade steel in between the rest of the CF layers. In my minds eye at least, the exposed pieces of CF braided through the steel piece would bond with the other CF layers in a much more durable way this way. But I haven't worked with CF myself so I could be wrong.
I'm unsure if the V-shaped metal pieces would work (I would just try wider metal pieces): We've seen that the de-lamination is caused by the metal getting pushed to further down in between the carbon fiber layers. In fact, the cut through the carbon fiber layers being about twice as deep as the cut through the metal tells the story of the de-lamination happening at or before the katana reached that half-depth point. The "slipping through" part of the problem would be solved with a V-shaped blade piece - because the blade piece would sit on top of the carbon fiber, and any force on it would need to crush the resin to dust in order for the blade piece to budge. But the way how the whole blade piece completely pops out after 2-4 strikes tells a different story. There just isn't enough adhesion between the metal and the resin (or not enough contact area). And the V-shaped piece of metal would have the same amount of contact area (carbon fiber sandwiched between two contact faces of metal instead of metal sandwiched between two contact faces of carbon fiber). I think you need *neither thicker* metal pieces (after all, Tyranth only got 1/4 the way through them) *nor differently shaped* metal pieces. I would just use *wider* metal pieces, at least double of what you have, taking you from - what's that? half an inch to one inch / from 1cm to 2-2½. That would not only increase the adhesion area, but also give the metal more resistance against the type of bending that we see at 11:01. Doubling the _thickness_ would only increase the stiffness by a factor of 2 (with no change in adhesion area), while doubling the _width_ would increase the stiffness by a factor of 2³=8. And both increase the resistance of the metal against being gauged/split by other blades by a factor of 2. And finally, against bending in the other direction and twisting only doubling the thickness would significantly help. But we see almost none of that in these tests. The metal is well supported by the carbon fiber (the support against bending is obvious; twisting is something that experiments would need to confirm). 11:06 No wait, this actually does look twisted there... 16:23 And that seemed to just have twisted the composite blade to lay flat on the wooden beam there... (Which is a macroscopic twist, not a twist in the local area of the metal blade, but still...) You know, with the test at 18:59, I would go to twice as tick (so you _hopefully_ limit gauges to less than 1cm in depth) AND twice as wide.
Not sure how you get 'doubling the width = 8x stiffness'. You've doubled the material, and moved it closer to the axis of bending. So it'll be a less than 2x increase. But onto your idea about adhesion ... I think you might be onto something there. And it gives me an idea: Extend the v-shaped cap with two extra bits parallel to each other. Sort of in a crude house-like shape. You put the cap on over the core of the blade, and then laminate more carbon fibre on top of that, making for 4 interfacing surfaces, not just 2
@@dgthe3 The 8x is because I'm talking about the metal piece bending in it's channel, not the sword bending as a whole. If you look at the half-sticking-out piece after Tyranth has done the first chop into the sword, you see that the blade piece is bent more than the whole sword would have ever been bent. (Although I don't know if we should assume that the de-lamination *won't* occur, in which case the twisting mode is the one we should be concerned about.)
instead of long strips you could have the 2 sides connected together like an H and since the plan is to eventually make cutouts and hand holds those H parts could also double as the hand holds but for the current sword it might be possible to find offcuts to bring down the price
11:01 What was the surface prep for that blade? It doesn't look like it was prepped for epoxy, the bond failure shows no remaining adhesive. > Adhesive bonding is a chemical process. Bond strength AND longevity depends totally on the chemical bonds (mainly covalent) that are formed that the interface at the time the bond is formed. THERE IS NO MAGIC PRIMER OR ADHESIVE. Every part of the process requires that the process addresses three things: > 1. The surface must be clean and free of contaminants that will inhibit the formation of chemical bonds. Please do not use detergents because surfactants wet the surface well enough to displace the contaminants but they leave a layer of well attached detergent that prevents adequate reaction. > 2. The surface must be chemically active. It is no use applying a primer to a fully oxidized surface. You must remove the existing oxide layer. > 3. you must IMMEDIATELY apply a primer to stabilize the surface. Of fundamental importance that the primer develops a chemical structure that is resistant to hydration. The most common form of bond failure is because the surface of the metal hydrates, for example titanium oxides hydrate to form hydrated oxides and in the process the chemical bonds between the oxides formed during original bonding processes dissociate leading to interfacial failure. The resulting separation at the surface will exhibit a total absence of adhesive… Wearing gloves, sand the area to be bonded with fine sandpaper (or bead blast, but that'll destroy the blade). Then clean in an ultrasonic cleaner with MEK. Then apply primer, *then* glue. Don't just try to glue straight to metal. Even though steel doesn't form oxides as readily as Aluminium or Titanium, it still needs to be thoroughly cleaned with all oxidation removed immediately before glue-up.
The guys didn’t elect to use bonding agent, only the resin in the original design. There is only 8mm of surface area in contact, and although heavily etched and cleaned, it was only epoxy holding it, to answer the question.
There's an epoxy used in carbon fiber driveshafts. The metal u joint ends are literally held in by this glue. no rivets no pins no splines. Highly recommend this for your metal edges. Also carbon laid over Kevlar works as panel but not a structure. There is carbon Kevlar or carbon aluminum weave out there.
I wouldn't go with a V shape but with a T shape like the rune Tyr. Montanstahl from Switzerland could be able to produce what you need. It's basically their daily business.
I think the best option would be to do a very skeltonised but otherwise full-size one-piece core of very thin water jet cut steel, kind of like a butterfly knife trainer but with carbon fibre slabs.
Try a sheet of 1 mil steel shaped to the full size of the blade. Perforated like a sieve everywhere except the final 3/4 inch on the edges. When you lay up the composit construction,the resin will fill in the holes and bind the fibers to the thin steel core. So long as you manage to avoid voids/dry spots in the in the layup, you should be able to mitigate delamination.
you can keep the imbedded blades, double or triple the thickness and have one or 2 cross bars go from edge to edge to improve the bracing and adhesive contact
You could put a metal spine along the centre of the sword to stop it from delaminating and for the edge having a pieces of metal connecting the two edges together in side the blade running through the blade
Mechanical Engineer here. Awesome job. Shad, please listen to me! I used to study and work with composite materials for aeronautics.
Dont Rivet carbon fiber. You Don't need custom metal pices you can work with the ones you have:
Make holes in the metal blades stripes 1 or 2 inch apart, make the edges of the hole round, so it can't cut what pass trough it, sew kevlar lines in these holes like a shoelace conecting all the metal pices, side to side. Before aplying the resin and placing the other composite materials the base structure should look like a spiderweb holding all the metal with kevlar. It will keep the bades togather. they will never come off the sword. you could hang a Car in it.
Then over it you layer the foam, the carbon fiber. Put the resing, aply vacuum and preasure.
Also you can Sew the carbon mesh with kevlar so it will never delaminate.
This!
Bump ❤❤
Wow, that actually sounds so cool. I bet someone could jump start a youtube career with this idea lol.
This sounds like a good option
I hope Shad sees this.
Looking at this sword feels like glimpsing into an alternate universe where gunpowder was never invented and so ultra modern materials were used to make swords instead.
so what you are telling me is that we should travel to the past and stop gunpowder from being invented?
Or if gunpowder becomes scarce/used up, would be an interesting future where technology went backwards but production methods have improved.
Never mind that, it shows a glimpse of what a mithril sword would be.
@@JohnDoe-vm5rb Mithril is similar to titanium, isn’t it? I saw Men at Arms make Blade’s sword, which was made of titanium.
Man, MCU Blade is gonna suck ass without Wesley Snipes.
@@gameragodzilla There are actors who could do it. Just depends on direction and if they can cast right.
As much as it hurts, breaking it tells us how to make an even better one.
Just a little expensive lol
just like Doomsday!
"Failure is always an option" - Mythbusters
Yeah, maybe orient the weave of the CF at 45 degrees to the long axis of the sword instead of 90 degrees.
Don't forget, it took many centuries for people to figure out how to make good steel swords. From the earliest swords in ancient times, up through the medieval period, and into today with modern materials and techniques. Now Shad is trying to do something very different, and doesn't have centuries to invest in the process for it to prove itself.
RnD is always expensive, that's just the reality of RnD
Machinist here. For the new blades you could probably mill a stepped slot lengthwise into some thin bar stock for the carbon fiber to insert into and then grind the edge onto it once it's fastened onto the sword itself. You could even use shorter pieces of steel (150mm or so)since the gaps where they butt together wouldn't be as much of an issue since they'd be blended in by the grinding.
If you can get the mold of the carbon fiber to account for it (if it would be strong enough) you might even be able to get away with cutting the slot in with a band saw with a relatively wide blade. In that case it might be easier to go with shorter segments (50mm or so). The length of the individual segments might not matter that much if you can butt them together and blend them with grinding. Even short enough for just 2 rivets each. Tyranth could probably rig up a jig for that.
It'd be like a hypermodern Macahuitl with no gaps between the blades.
you could also cut into a slot mostly into the bar stock as above so that only a thin bit of metal is left on either side and pound the two sides with a wedge or round bar so that it's shaped into a "V" terminating in a square section at the bottom that you could grind your edge into.
feel free to message me if it helps and I can elaborate.
then you could sound with it
Bump
Half bump, half I have somethign to add, the carbon fibre failed along the the matrix. It would probably make it a bunch more expensive, but it would make it significantly stronger to rotate the carbon fibre by 45 degrees
Would probably also help adhesion to mill small cleats into the inner faces of the slot.
Why even smaller pieces?
Cut the whole blade profile out of a single stock. With big cut outs for the foam core and crossbars in between to spread the impact load. And holes along the inside for the epoxy to bite into and hold the blade in shape.
And I would use "forged carbon" maybe even without the foam core. Maybe would be a bit weaker, but its a sword and swords are forged.
A quote attributed to Edison, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
lemme just steal some more inventions haha aren't I clever?
Tesla was a real one Edison was a fraudster and a thief
That's some next level cope.
@@neondemon5137 Edison didn't "steal" any inventions. He took existing technology and made them viable for commercial use by tirelessly improving on said ideas. Without Edison's tireless work on fluorescent lightbulbs, who knows how long it would have taken to get a functional one for commercial use. We could have been using gas and oil lights for several decades longer without his work.
He wasn't perfect, and has several flaws, but he was a good contributor to human life overall.
@@orga7777 well he abused the fact that alot of brilliant mind were to poor to live so he bought their ideas cheap and manufactured them to be richer
I work for a small steel fabrication company in the US and I can't 100% guarantee we can make what you need as I'm just a floor worker, but I have personally done the bending on small, one off orders several times so I'm reasonably confident we could help you.
hmmmm... What kinds of steel do you work with? I'm very curious if its a resource I could also make use of.
Shad is in the Australia though, so shipping is going to be hellish
@@MeGaDwarf2008 It it doesn't need to be sharpened pre-shipping, then I'd assume it'd be fine?
@@MeGaDwarf2008 I'd guess it will be hellish as much as transporting anything over such a long distance is usually.
Not so much in terms of how "dangerous" the item can be perceived as.
They merely need to send a thin piece of steel in a funny shape, doubt any eyebrows are going to be raised.
@Akira-Aerins mostly sheet steel and pipes for tractor bodies and structural components. I'm just in production so I don't really know the grades off hand exactly. I do know that a lot of it gets sent for hardening. I'd guess we can get whatever type is needed.
I am someone who works with composites quite a bit, I can say the reason that laminating steel in this way will not work is because the composite and steel have different rates of expansion and contraction, when you take a long piece of steel and sandwich it in composite like that, just the difference in night and day is creating great internal stress in the structure of the blade. What works against you even further here is carbon fiber composite has a NEGATIVE coefficient of thermal expansion, meaning it grows as it gets cold and shrinks as it warms.
Because of this as the temperature fluctuates the sword is tearing it's self apart internally simply as the temperature fluctuates through the day.
I would strongly consider starting with a steel blank that is 1mm thick, then cut it to the profile of the blade, then add a ton of lightening holes to it, then put composite pucks in those holes and epoxy them in place, once that has cured scuff the entire surface and then laminate the sides on to the blade.
This would give an incredibly light but strong blade.
Id's say thisd, but I would make a few larger holes rather than many small ones.
LOL, I think I just recommended a similar build but from a metal structural point of view to reinforce the blade geometry with the same result.
Ah very similar thinking to mine - I was suggesting welding more of the blade material or some wires between the edges, functionally similar though I think your method would be easier to order in from a water/laser cutter while mine is more make in the workshop.
@@jakobrosenqvist4691 exactly, small hoes are not your friend.
@@foldionepapyrus3441 would be a pretty inexpensive part to produce. If they were not on the wrong continent I would give them a hand.
Tyranth and Shad look like a medieval swordsman and a crazy scientist who brought him to our times by a time machine
I love how I can't tell which one you think is which
@@phenjaws569 Shad and Tyranth are the mediaeval swordsman, James behind the scenes is the crazy scientist
@@phenjaws569 oh you can easily tell. Shad is super energetic and really tries to downplay the faults of the new technology while tyranth is much more sceptical of the whole ordeal.
@@anderoo9260 well, there is that, but Tyranth is also the one making the things
Hello from the Netherlands Shad. To keep the blades from being disloged or compressed you could try to place metal ribs trough the core of the sword. This way the blades on both sides of the sword would be connected. Using this would also allow you to place rivits through these ribs in the centre line of the sword instead of on the edge. In theory this method could also be used in you decide to go with the v shaped cap blades. If your interested I could draw it out. I am not a material engineer so do ask your carbon fiber expert if you can make a strong laminate if there is a piece of metal going through the centre core. Apologies for spelling errors this is not my first language.
Yeah, I'm thinking a 'skeleton' sword with the carbon fibre to give rigidity/structure to the sword. It will never be as strong as a 'true' sword though because it's simply not solid steel.
You could weave some long strands of carbon filament through the ribs; over-under-over-under, and back the other way. That should give the core some rigidity, and help in bonding with the laminations.
I'm no expert on carbon fiber but I do know if you score the ribs (put small groves in the rib) the fiber could easily hold onto it, the skeletonized blade ribs shouldn't affect it at all, and to maximize the strength and keep the blade thin and light the ribs would need to be trianglized, so Nick your idea and theory is sound, and in theory it could easily apply to the Titan Blade as well
@@JohnDoe-vm5rb i have an idea to move foreward
You have to design it like an old safety razor,
you should do one ultra thin core where you make the general profile of the blade with flat spring steel
Then you need 2 sort of razorz the length of the blade, Alternatively you could do this with many razors sort of like an old native american macuahuitl, but regardless next you use 2 carbon fiber layers to clasp the blades in place
That way the construction can be dissassembled and repaired like something from attack on titan, but a little more practical because it will have actual structure and rigidity necessary to be a real weapon
I know technically that would mean the blade itself would still just be steel, but i imagine using composite materials to get the best of all benefits involves thinking outside the box, and the typical approach to composite material of making a layered composites won't tend to serve well under the particular types of stresses that swords deal with, particularly the torque of a strike
I believe thisbsafety rezor design will help resolve the torque stress and supply sufficient structure that other stresses should be handled quite well dispite having less flexibility
You guys are answering the question everyone has always wondered. Keep going! your channel is the greatest sword channel on TH-cam now. a single piece blade that slides over the whole thing then rivets on would work best i feel. if you don't make it one piece it wont have any strength. you may need to be willing to add another pound or a pound and a half at least for this method.
If they're doing that, it might as well be made of a single piece of flat stock and have some connecting steel lattice structure. Water jet or laser cutting the steel would work imo.
Not a bad idea. as long as the new blade lays over the top of the carbon fiber one and has good overlap for the rivets in it i dont think it would break. water jet would be great because it would heat and mess up any temper. I know i could weld up something that would fit it for sure but blacksmithing techniques would also be effective.
I manufacture circuit boards, and those are usually copper cores stuck together with fiberglass and resin. In order to keep the copper from delaminating, it is oxidized with a chemical to roughen up the surface. It might be worth exploring if you haven't already.
That's a neat idea.
Hum, while watching this I was thinking, you could make an entire sword out of rather thin steel, all one piece with very large cut-out in the center. It would be far too flimsy to work as a sword, but you THEN add the carbon fiber over the blade, all but the edges. This way all the steel reinforces itself as it is all one piece, and should only marginally increase weight.
This is the only reasonable way to make the carbon fiber sword functional. But I would still prefer titanium core with steel edges.
Honeycomb center would be stronger than completely hallow
What I've been saying elsewhere in the comments is that some sort of lattice in-fill would work best, laser or water cut into a piece of flat stock. That way the steel is helping with the impacts, since carbon fiber is really best in tension, and doesn't perform so well with impacts.
IMO this is probably the only way to do this successfully.
I work at a fab shop that could laser cut something like that 15 seconds after you finish loading the file.
We'd probably charge about $300 plus the cost of material though.
Came to the comment section to say this.
As a Product Designer BSc (hons) and an experienced custom motorcycle builder and gunsmith I recommend you use a skeletal structure as part of the blades for support, i.e. cut from a single sheet of high carbon steel the shape of the entire sword including the blades, then remove portions of the central mass in geometric sections to act as 'girders' in the form of a frame support system. Have no sharp angles in any of the connecting points (i.e. tips of a triangular cut out section etc..) but make sure they are rounded to reduce stress points. This can then sit as the centre of a 'sandwich' between all the composite layers you use and will greatly increase the structural support to both blades (now being one) and keep it light. I know Tyranth has a milling machine so it can be done cheaply that way or laser cut, plasma cut, a grinder even just watch the temperature and so on. I'm enjoying this build very much but wish I could include diagrams in responses! lol.
This is fairly close to how I've been making knives since 2006. It drives me kinda nuts to watch their approach because this is largely a solved problem, if you just ask or listen to the right people...
@@Voidrunner01 Ah well they're learning... I would have expected Tyranth to be a bit ahead of the game but then again designers and engineers always butt heads over imaginative and unorthodox solutions! LOL.
1:54 Yeah that looks amazing. Even if it doesn’t have a crossguard lol
It looks so good
There gonna design the pure nail + mark of pride
@@FellowInconsistent be really cool to see a hollow knight blade.
Oh my god we got a sponsor, its happening, we are SO BACK
I mean it looks pretty fricken awesome for a not fully designed weapon. Cant wait for all future versions.
I wonder if a thin metal "skeleton frame" that contains the edges, a spine and some cross beams for stability that is then covered with the carbon fiber would be feasible...
Still this is a fun concept of yours and I wish you the best of luck going forwards ;-)
That would certainly be an improvement, although I'd still worry about delamination.
Thought the same, that would also help with the handle
other way around. carbon fiber core with electroplated edges with a few cross beams elctroplated on the sides.
@@Haimgard That'd be interesting.
I have no idea how long it would take to electroplate on enough steel for a good blade
I wonder about that too... You can reinforce the whole blade from delamination with pins through the frame. With how light this sword is thin frame wouldn't add so much weight it would be hard to use.
Get it laser cut out of a single sheet. Skeletonize it and pur the carbon fiber in/over/around it. Single piece blade edge, keeps cost down, only adds a little weight. If you leave ribs crossing the center it will also take the brunt of the local impact.
Shad's answer to the AK50
AK50 squad…MOUNT UP! And save the carbon fiber!!!!
Someone needs to travel between Texas and Australia to get a team up between them so they can build a oversize carbon fiber bayonet for the AK50
Ak... 50? Is it what I think it is...?
If so that's fucking crazy.
It is what you think it is. Go check out the AK50guy
AK50 Bayonet
The reinforcements actually look really good on it
It seems like I and many other people in the comments have had very similar ideas, but are coming at it from different directions. Pulling ideas from what other people have commented here is a list of what I think are the best ideas.
1 Laser/plasma/water jet a sword blank from 1mm carbon steel sheet.
2 Cut structural (circular honeycomb etc) lightening holes leaving approximately 1/2" of steel around edge of blank and a rib down the center and into the handle.
3 Cut a row of small holes all the way around the the 1/2" edge and down the center rib for carbon fiber stitching.
4 layer foam and carbon fiber on blade and stitch the whole thing together.
5 Clamp and cure in vacuum chamber.
No need for costly and hard to get custom machined parts. This would be relatively cheap and easy to manufacture while fixing the edge alignment, blade shifting, delaminating, and handle breaking problems.
This sword plus the bullet proof wood are the keys to our sci Fi sword future
Brandon herrera's ak50 +
Shad's carbon fiber titan sword +
And nileRed's wood bullet proof armour and you get the ultimate Future's Past soldier
Bullet proof wood?
Now this is cuttting Edge content, always love to see the CF sword videos
You were a good sword. You will be missed. o7
o7
07
o/
The sword is from Rome.
It can be repaired........... I think
o7
One thing for consideration for the next iteration is that you could cut the steel edges out of sheet steel as one piece, making a sword blank. You could then skeletonize the sword blank, removing most of the inner material for reduced weight. That skeletonization can be very aggressive since the inner supports would mostly be providing rigidity between the two sides of the sword. With the blank minimalized, you could then start layering your composite materials on top of that.
The main advantage you get out of this is that cutting blanks out of sheet steel is a very cheap process, and you get all of the steel in one connected piece. The hard part is getting sheet steel of an appropriate composition. Also, cutting the steel would require heat treating the blank afterwards, which can be tricky due to the size of the blank. If the size of the blank prevents heat treatment due to lack of large enough tools, you could still use this general concept and instead cut the finished blank into several segments, each still connecting the two sides of the sword, and heat treat each segment individually.
Why does it need to be heat-treated? Hardened steel can be cut with a water jet, carbide/CBN tools or by grinding
@@shanent5793 Those methods usually generate a lot of heat and break the existing heat treatment, so it needs to be retreated after the cut. You might be able to go extremely slowly and avoid building up too much heat, but I personally wouldn't want to risk that.
@@Trafulgoth Literally every blade is ground after quenching and tempering. Hard machining is done at such high speed that almost all of the heat goes into the chips, and not the workpiece.
@@shanent5793 Weird, I've never made blades that way. After shaping, I'll grind the edge, then heat treat. Final step is sharpening, but that is fast and usually doesn't require grinding.
Bye bye carbon fiber greatsword, i'll miss you, you beautiful beast of a blade
You are not saying goodbye... It will be back in a stronger form.
I loved the banter halfway through, sounded like two brothers fighting to prove one is right, and in a way I guess it was.
Not our baby! 😭
Yes... yes.. mwahahhhahaha
Hope you guys get the backing you need to create a more finished product, and thanks for all the work and love you put into this niche little hobby, that I enjoy so much
Finally a video notification when the video is uploaded and not 9 hours later!
Great job! Love the banter. Very interesting results...
I mentioned before what I think would be the optimal solution would be to basically laser cut (or water jet cut; collab 👀) the entire outline (including tang) from steel and then build the carbon fiber onto it for rigidity.
But that way the entire outside edge would be one piece of steel.
Ofc cost will be an issue (where a channel collab might help). And rivers in addition to that would probably help.
Just my thoughts 😊
Have you guys considered wire running inside the sword from edge to edge to keep the blades under tension while you apply the carbon fiber? Could prevent them from falling out and no longer require the riveting from the outside.
Personally, if budget wasn't an issue, I would waterjet cut the edges and tang of the sword out of some kind of hard sheet steel with a honeycomb or trusses from edge to edge to give it the rigidity blade to blade and then fill the honeycomb or trusses with foam and sandwich your carbon fiber on top of that to give its flats the rigidity you would want. This way the blades would have that internal structure to absorb more shock and prevent delamination's while the whole blade would still be much stronger as a whole.
I hope that made sense.
I'm sure someone already posted on it but for testing purposes to test the V steel edge you could build/borrow/rent a metal break (a tool for bending flat stock into specific angles).
A moment of silence for our beautiful boy...
It's for your own good buddy...
awesome more on the titain sword project lets gOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
right then. thank you Shad, I'll be stepping in shortly.
What about connecting the metal bars/ strips with a wire frame / skeleton sandwiched in the carbon fiber / fiber gas and mabye have a spin of metal with the wire connected to or just have the wire alternating the between the different layers so if one area delaminats it won't all come out and Anchoring mor firmly in the blade. And maybe twist the wire so it gets more rigidity and possibly make the resin grip more to the wire
Maybe you should put a carbon fibre cross guard on the sword & test if a carbon fibre cross guard is viable for weight reduction & catching blades on other blade?
My suggestion would be to get inspiration with the macahuitl and put holes on the blades and stitch them to the carbon fiber with a carbon fiber or similar material cord before the epoxy
Oh boy, another video!
Sounds sarcastic.. but fully isn't haha
I love your channel shad I practice sword fighting in my yard and your channel had really made me realize that it's not wierd and that I am doing something I love
Someday we will have one of this but on graphene.
If you guys ever have the chance it would be amazing to see you guys test the swammer
sword-hammer
bellwright is awesome. I own it should for sure give it a try
If you're looking for v-shaped metal edges, you might be able to use some type of standard 90 degree steel edging trim and shape it to fit? I'm unsure how suitable the range of steel types are but it would be readily available and very reasonably priced if it was usable.
MilCon and Master Gunsmith here- instead of riveting, what about a single piece of flat spring steel, skeletonized to be supported by the edge on the opposite side with minimal material? If you wanted to get fancy, modern tools for optimal voronoi calculations can give you an ideal strength to weight ratio. The use of water jet over plasma cutting can preserve your spring temper on very thin sheet stock.
For handle material I would look at laminated sheets of UHMWPE- every time I play with hot laminated UHMWPE it’s practically magical- very low weight and insane performance. It’s also very cheap. In fact here in the states a lot of grocery bags are made of UHMWPE and it’s practically the right thickness for laminating.
Steel Fabricator based in SEQld here, I would definitely suggest having a skeletal steel structure. You wouldn't increase weight by that much if you design it well (honestly would take 30mins max to design in autodesk) and it's easy to manufacture. CAD, send to laser cutter, then presto, you have your skeleton that you can then layer the carbon fibre and kevlar to. Happy to do the CAD work for you if you need someone
Basically what I’m getting at is this things is realy strong
Yes!.. but no? Lol.. but yes.
@@RiverRockRecordsit “failed” but that’s a sword like object that would cut “it works …it works yeah! one way or another”
Shad and jazzas chainmail crossover
for the V edge cladding that you guys would like to have, instead of having 2 pieces of steel join at the edge, you could bend steel sheets (at heat ofc) or even better but more expensive mill segments of the blade then weld or rivet them to the carbon fibre flat, leaving a little more material at the edge so that the inner taper doesnt reach the very edge, there is also the option of metal 3d printing the parts although it would be significantly weaker.
I asked chat GPT for some ideas and it gave me some pretty obvious material choices like steel alloys, titanium, aluminium alloys but then there were some interesting ones.
polyether ether ketone is a plastic resin material that can be composited with carbon fibre instead of standard resin and could improve the bond with the various materials although it has a melting point of 343*c which would make it slightly harder to composite and work with.
Dyneema is a plastic material that could be used instead of kevlar with it having a higher strength to weight ratio than kevlar and used frequently as strong rope material although more expensive.
A quite funny idea it had was to ceramic coat the blade to reduce abrasion and wear resistance.
While I love this project Shad, you're doing it wrong. You don't want to build a "carbon fibre sword" - you need to build a COMPOSITE STRUCTURE. In which multiple materials are used to best advantage. You need a steel tang in the lower section so that the blade doesn't snap at the hilt. You need a cutting edge that fits OVER the carbon blade, not inside it. And when it comes to the Titansword, you will need a honeycomb layer within the blade to give rigidity without adding impractical weight. I used to work in aircraft maintenance, I know more about this than you do. And from the comments, there are people here who know a lot more than me. So FFS, READ THE DAMN COMMENTS and reach out to those who can actually make this work. Otherwise you're just wasting your time and money.
Got an idea:
1. Get a steel rectangle for the blade (preferably wider than the ones you are using).
2. Make cuts perpendicular to the longer edge. Length of the cuts should be rather small. 2/3 the planned thickness of the base's (the composite laminate's) should be good length. The blade should resemble a hair comb.
3. Orient the blade so your line of sight goes along the edge (sorry, I have no better words to describe it).
4. Bend every other "fin"/"fishbone" to the left, and the rest to the right. Dont make the bend too agressive.
5. Heat treat.
5. Embed it into the base, with the fins going through the layers of carbon fiber etc.
The fins should lock the blades securely, probably more securely than rivets.
Preparing the blades and getting the fins to go through the fiberous layers will be a hassle though.
Love this content.
Always good to see a YTer get another sponsor, but especially when the algorithm hates the channel! We love you, Shad!
This will be nice!
Two ways to get the V shaped cap, you can bend a flat piece to the angle you need or you can mill down an existing piece essentially cutting the groove needed to slot the sword in. If you know anyone who has the tools at home they can easily do it for you, or you can try hitting up a college or school if there are no places that let you rent machines or maker spaces.
While I'm sure it'd be possible to mill such a thing ... I wouldn't want to. It is very long and very thin. These are not the conditions you want when milling things.
Both of your ideas are not good. A blade stamped from plate steel, then holes drilled periodically through it to lighten it and allow the resins to penetrate through it will be your cheapest and strongest method.
Can you run thin steel cable from each side of the blades to hold them towards the center of the blade so they can't delaminate, like a steel cable skeleton holding the blades in place on the outside
Perhaps you could make it easy for yourselves and more durable by sandwiching a 1mm spring steel sheet to use as both blade and core between the carbon fibre, kevlar, etc. Then rivet (or whatever) the carbon fibre to and through the steel.
So the carbon fibre is more of a body/exoskeleton to give a bit of mass and rigidity to, what is essentially, the razorblade inside 😄
To reduce weight you could strategically honeycomb the steel with holes, which would also allow resin, rivets or whatever to exchange between halves.
Cheers guys. Great as always.
Outside thoughts.
1. A solid single piece of sheet metal ( spring steel ) With holes drilled in it to allow the liquid to solidify in and through the metal core. This would keep the edge centered during the setting process and you can have a pseudo full tang. This could help with edge alignment and overall stability.
2. Doing a thin second 3-4 mm wide strip from tip to pommel on each side. ( not 100% on where in the layering it would work best but ) this would help avoid the flappy edge and overall structure.
You might want to reach out to a local machine shop they should be able to mill the blade for you. also love the video wish i could support more.
Shad, you need to cast the steel blade INTO the lay-up, meaning using evenly spaced holes along its length, the carbon-fiber itself becomes the rivet material. This also has the advantage of potentially incorporating steel into the tang to reinforce it. Using a pre-shaped mould and pressing it, while also pulling a vacuum on the mould itself, will mostly eliminate the need for shaping bevels manually, needing only minor work to clean up, meaning a smooth continuous surface which will be less susceptible to delamination. Try a shape like an over-size falchion to start, as being single edged its far easier to prototype.
I think you should probably leave out some weight savings and just make inside edge span whole sword (maybe have inside parts of it have some cutouts so the resin can connect both sides).
That would give a ton more surface area to bond with rest of the sword compared to just having edge
For the edge retention within the sword try doing a skeletonized edge that connects both sides and is being held in via the lamination and the slabs that are retaining the handle.
As a mechanical engineer, here's an approach I'd consider.
* Design the blade as a "skeleton" structure using sheet steel (laser or waterjet cut) where the entire blade is a single piece with voids between the cross bracing.
* Then, use pieces of foam core material and laser cut them into the exact shapes that fit into the voids.
* Overlay that with carbon fiber.
One challenge with this design would be keeping the carbon bonded to the sides. My experience with carbon fiber is minimal, but I wonder if it would be possible to have holes along the blades that could be used to actually weave some of the fibers through the blade from either side. It might be very tricky to manipulate while constructing the sword, but if the holes are somewhat coarse it might be achievable.
A couple more things:
* If you use this, the "depth" of the blade section is less important since the adhesion isn't what's holding it in. The cross bracing provides that. You could probably get away with using slightly thicker stock (1.5mm or 2mm) so the core can be thicker.
* Instead of foam core, there are panels which are basically honeycomb structures bonded to backing sheets, sometimes called "honeycomb core" or similar. If you can get it to bond well enough, these could be dramatically stronger than simple foam core. They can be very expensive though.
It would require one hell of a breaker but you can fold a strip of spring steel along its length to create the edge. There would also be the benefit of further hardening that single aspect through work stress
I don't know the full extent of your build process but something to consider would be making sure to degas the epoxy with a negative pressure chamber
In fact, a rubber cement might handle the vibrational stress better. Epoxy tends to form a crystalline structure which is fundamentally brittle
That fix right there looks nice and is the best way to solve the problem of the handle breaking off again, minus the bulky bit. In short, the next iteration of the blade gets the strip of metal going from pommel into the blade.
I appreciate the commitment to try and upgrade swords. It also makes me appreciate the amount of knowledge and technology that went into making swords in the first place.
Great work guys, I'm honestly surprised the carbon sword held up as well as it did with the current design.
It has been a joy to see this journey for the past year culminate in this destruction test. I truly want to see a genuine functional giant sword, and I sincerely hope y'all are the ones to create such a beast. Thanks for all the hard work!
I'll mention it again: I'd try to sew the layers together with kevlar or maybe dyneema or something similar, to avoid delamination. (before the resin)
Loved the video!
Shad, greetings from the USA. I am a hobbiest blacksmith and I would suggest finding one of us where you're at. (I would but I am moving and my forge is in a storage unit at the moment.) Another suggestion, in place of the foam core I'd like to suggest a honey combing of the carbon fiber and baking it as a solid piece.
Hello shad I have an idea to improve your sword I’m not an expert on engineering or sword making but from my experience as a pole vaulter I think a way to make a very durable and light sword you could use carbon fiber as the base but instead of how you had, it make the base by wrapping many layers of carbon fiber around something of a similar design like they do for pole vault poles while the sword would be hallow the believe the many layers would make it very strong and then cap the sword with a steel edge
If you want a capped blade (from how I understand it) you could essentially have 2 blade sections welded along the edges in a V and then have those hydraulically pressed onto the carbon fiber blade frame to shape them, then drilling your rivets. I do also support the idea of a separate handle section and only using carbon fiber for the blade and no tang. I have seen some very high precision fine welding machines come out recently so the thinness of the blade should not be an issue for the proper welders. A capped blade would also provide additional support against delaminating as it would have evenly spaced rivets folding the sheets together along with the blades.
Watched most of this series from the beginning. The thing that I'm kicking myself about right now is realizing just how much this process sounds like building carbon fiber skis. Didn't even think about it until seeing how the blade delaminated from that final strike. I've seen skis do the same thing hitting a rock on a sketchy day on the slopes.
For bonding metal edges into composites, look at an industry that already does it--skis. They use a metal edge with a series of dovetail-shaped tabs that extend into the composite. It might be possible to buy some, though whether their geometry is suitable for this is another question.
I'm impressed. It did not take you guys long to repair and upgrade the handle/hilt. Kudos. It wouldn't be cheating to use a wider one piece blade strip as long as it was only the edge, and the structural part of the blade is carbon fiber. But I get you. It would be expensive to get a solid one piece edge piece cut from one solid thin sheet of steel.
you have a single piece of steel cut for the blade part with a few braces through out the structure to keep it from separating. you can even weave the carbon fiber through it as you build it.
Idea, spring steel sheet with the edges on the outside of course. The inner part you could make look like chain link then reinforced with the composite, that would keep it light but way easier than the v edge you're talking about. If you have 2 to 3 mill link between both edges it'll give it some more mass but not that much. Especially it the sheet is 2 mill thick
I would try starting with a metal blank or cutting it out of a sheet of steel, say 2mm thick (if you want to make it thicker) in the shape of the sword. Then mill out or otherwise remove most of the interior save for some braces from edge to edge spaced about 10 cm apart. Drill or otherwise put holes in the interior and texturize the parts of the blade that need to bond with the epoxy, even hitting it with something like a dremal might work if you needed to save money. Then build your layers and see what you get. I'm not a phd in material science or anything, but it struck me that the epoxy would have had a hard time bonding the carbon fiber to the steel without a rougher surface to adhere to. Also having braces across the edge should keep the blade from dislodging like it did in testing. Hoping for the next one, which should be named BTW! 😁
I find your accent endearing and it actually does make me think and reevaluate my own life. I have been watching your channel for a bit and when I realise it truely is hard work for you to live the passion of looking at historical castles compared to me here in England but I havent been to a castle in... geeesh we are talking years. And honestly I love castles, but life you know... it hasn't led me that way. But I am going to reevaluate my position. Love your channel mate. Found it by accident actually. Keep it up!
Edit: I love castles but you REALLY love castles. And I can respect that. Much love from merry old England.
The competitiveness between you two is the best part
So, idea for affixing the blade to this that comes from the knife world. Nibble the back of the blade insert, such that it is hooking its self to the carbon fiber. This may sound daunting, but with a sheet metal nibbler this may be easier than you think, just time consuming. As long as you have alternating directions taken out of the back of the insert, it should have pretty good adhesion.
If you have someone that can cut the steel for you, you could cut the edges to include triangular truss sections through the whole width of the sword. This would eliminate the need for rivets. You can also change up some of the length, width, direction and resin fill of the carbon fiber until you get the mechanical properties you need for each section of the blade and handle.
To keep the blades in a bit better, you could try cutting both blades and a web or truss of reinforcement between them (think of a normal sword with large cutouts) out of a single thin sheet of steel using laser or plasma cutting, or maybe even electric discharge machining. That way, the blades can rely on their own tensile strength rather than just the adhesion of the epoxy to the blades.
you don't need pins or rivets, just use spring steel with a bunch of holes trough it
that way the resin can act like a pin, it's going to hold on to the steel better and also makes the edge itself hold together better
You could try getting a piece of spring steel the entire width, then have large portions of the center milled out, leaving the occasional bracing structure to both keep it from separating, and also from collapsing inward. You could even use triangular angles, like in bridge design. I'm not sure how that would work with getting the carbon fiber and core perfectly flat, but its an idea. You could also use a file to rough up the surface of the steel to give it more bite.
Can I ask someone who knows? The carbon fiber cures with the resin in a really durable way, right?
Here's what i'm thinking: how about making the steelpieces a little bit wider. Then you perforate them in a straight line running along the length of the blade material.
Then you cut a strip of carbon fiber and basically braid it through the perforations in the steel.
You make sure to saturate the strip in resin first though.
Then you sandwich the blade steel in between the rest of the CF layers.
In my minds eye at least, the exposed pieces of CF braided through the steel piece would bond with the other CF layers in a much more durable way this way. But I haven't worked with CF myself so I could be wrong.
I'm unsure if the V-shaped metal pieces would work (I would just try wider metal pieces):
We've seen that the de-lamination is caused by the metal getting pushed to further down in between the carbon fiber layers. In fact, the cut through the carbon fiber layers being about twice as deep as the cut through the metal tells the story of the de-lamination happening at or before the katana reached that half-depth point.
The "slipping through" part of the problem would be solved with a V-shaped blade piece - because the blade piece would sit on top of the carbon fiber, and any force on it would need to crush the resin to dust in order for the blade piece to budge.
But the way how the whole blade piece completely pops out after 2-4 strikes tells a different story. There just isn't enough adhesion between the metal and the resin (or not enough contact area). And the V-shaped piece of metal would have the same amount of contact area (carbon fiber sandwiched between two contact faces of metal instead of metal sandwiched between two contact faces of carbon fiber).
I think you need *neither thicker* metal pieces (after all, Tyranth only got 1/4 the way through them) *nor differently shaped* metal pieces. I would just use *wider* metal pieces, at least double of what you have, taking you from - what's that? half an inch to one inch / from 1cm to 2-2½. That would not only increase the adhesion area, but also give the metal more resistance against the type of bending that we see at 11:01.
Doubling the _thickness_ would only increase the stiffness by a factor of 2 (with no change in adhesion area), while doubling the _width_ would increase the stiffness by a factor of 2³=8.
And both increase the resistance of the metal against being gauged/split by other blades by a factor of 2.
And finally, against bending in the other direction and twisting only doubling the thickness would significantly help. But we see almost none of that in these tests. The metal is well supported by the carbon fiber (the support against bending is obvious; twisting is something that experiments would need to confirm). 11:06 No wait, this actually does look twisted there... 16:23 And that seemed to just have twisted the composite blade to lay flat on the wooden beam there... (Which is a macroscopic twist, not a twist in the local area of the metal blade, but still...)
You know, with the test at 18:59, I would go to twice as tick (so you _hopefully_ limit gauges to less than 1cm in depth) AND twice as wide.
Not sure how you get 'doubling the width = 8x stiffness'. You've doubled the material, and moved it closer to the axis of bending. So it'll be a less than 2x increase.
But onto your idea about adhesion ... I think you might be onto something there. And it gives me an idea:
Extend the v-shaped cap with two extra bits parallel to each other. Sort of in a crude house-like shape. You put the cap on over the core of the blade, and then laminate more carbon fibre on top of that, making for 4 interfacing surfaces, not just 2
@@dgthe3 The 8x is because I'm talking about the metal piece bending in it's channel, not the sword bending as a whole. If you look at the half-sticking-out piece after Tyranth has done the first chop into the sword, you see that the blade piece is bent more than the whole sword would have ever been bent. (Although I don't know if we should assume that the de-lamination *won't* occur, in which case the twisting mode is the one we should be concerned about.)
instead of long strips you could have the 2 sides connected together like an H and since the plan is to eventually make cutouts and hand holds those H parts could also double as the hand holds
but for the current sword it might be possible to find offcuts to bring down the price
you could try putting holes in the flat part of the inserts which would allow the epoxy to more mechanically hold the inserts in better.
11:01 What was the surface prep for that blade? It doesn't look like it was prepped for epoxy, the bond failure shows no remaining adhesive.
> Adhesive bonding is a chemical process. Bond strength AND longevity depends totally on the chemical bonds (mainly covalent) that are formed that the interface at the time the bond is formed. THERE IS NO MAGIC PRIMER OR ADHESIVE. Every part of the process requires that the process addresses three things:
> 1. The surface must be clean and free of contaminants that will inhibit the formation of chemical bonds. Please do not use detergents because surfactants wet the surface well enough to displace the contaminants but they leave a layer of well attached detergent that prevents adequate reaction.
> 2. The surface must be chemically active. It is no use applying a primer to a fully oxidized surface. You must remove the existing oxide layer.
> 3. you must IMMEDIATELY apply a primer to stabilize the surface. Of fundamental importance that the primer develops a chemical structure that is resistant to hydration. The most common form of bond failure is because the surface of the metal hydrates, for example titanium oxides hydrate to form hydrated oxides and in the process the chemical bonds between the oxides formed during original bonding processes dissociate leading to interfacial failure. The resulting separation at the surface will exhibit a total absence of adhesive…
Wearing gloves, sand the area to be bonded with fine sandpaper (or bead blast, but that'll destroy the blade). Then clean in an ultrasonic cleaner with MEK. Then apply primer, *then* glue. Don't just try to glue straight to metal. Even though steel doesn't form oxides as readily as Aluminium or Titanium, it still needs to be thoroughly cleaned with all oxidation removed immediately before glue-up.
The guys didn’t elect to use bonding agent, only the resin in the original design. There is only 8mm of surface area in contact, and although heavily etched and cleaned, it was only epoxy holding it, to answer the question.
Kenshi-style blade design, using advanced space-age materials, science, and design to build a big ass sword. Love it.
There's an epoxy used in carbon fiber driveshafts. The metal u joint ends are literally held in by this glue. no rivets no pins no splines. Highly recommend this for your metal edges. Also carbon laid over Kevlar works as panel but not a structure. There is carbon Kevlar or carbon aluminum weave out there.
I wouldn't go with a V shape but with a T shape like the rune Tyr. Montanstahl from Switzerland could be able to produce what you need. It's basically their daily business.
These testing vids really are surprising a lot of the time. Keep up the great work guys.
I think the best option would be to do a very skeltonised but otherwise full-size one-piece core of very thin water jet cut steel, kind of like a butterfly knife trainer but with carbon fibre slabs.
Try a sheet of 1 mil steel shaped to the full size of the blade. Perforated like a sieve everywhere except the final 3/4 inch on the edges. When you lay up the composit construction,the resin will fill in the holes and bind the fibers to the thin steel core. So long as you manage to avoid voids/dry spots in the in the layup, you should be able to mitigate delamination.
you can keep the imbedded blades, double or triple the thickness and have one or 2 cross bars go from edge to edge to improve the bracing and adhesive contact
You could put a metal spine along the centre of the sword to stop it from delaminating and for the edge having a pieces of metal connecting the two edges together in side the blade running through the blade