Building a Roman Gladius (January 2015)

I took three years of Latin in school and soon got sick of the endless conjugating verbs and declining nouns. I found drawing giant stick figure battle scenes and daydreaming about gladiators or Caesar laying waste to some hapless Gallic village much more interesting.

I've always thought the gladius was a pretty cool sword, so recently I decided to make one. I drew the design in CAD and cut a template out of 11 gauge stainless on a CNC plasma cutter at work. Mainly I wanted to get an idea of how big it would be. It's way too thin though and stainless isn't a good sword material.

There's 3 general types of gladius, and this one is a Mainz pattern. It has a long flowing point and what's called a "wasp waisted" midsection. The Pompeii style was shorter, had parallel sides, and a short triangular tip. The Fulham style is thought to be a transition between the two.

Anyway, this one is inspired by the Tiberius Gladius.



Next I bought some proper sword making steel. It's called 1075 and it's 1/4" thick and 3" wide.

The 75 in the name of the steel means it is .75% carbon and thus it can be hardened with heat treatment. Right now it's in the annealed state, so it's soft and easy to work (as far as working steel is concerned). Once I've heat treated it, it'll be much harder and tough.

This stuff is over a dollar an inch and I only bought enough for one sword, so I can't mess up.



Next I used my thin template to scribe the outline on the 1075. The blue stuff is layout dye so I can see the scribe lines.



Next it was over to the bandsaw to cut it out. I'm using one of those cheap horizontal/vertical bandsaws. It would have been easier to cut it out on the plasma cutter, but the intense heat would affect the carbon in the steel.



Cutting down the side. It only took 10-15 minutes to cut the whole thing out. The blade is a 14-18 TPI bimetal blade.



My bandsaw is pretty old and was missing the table when I bought it, so I had to make a replacement from a hunk of 12 gauge.



All cut out. The blade is 20.25" long and 2.75" wide. It's based off some plans I found for the Sword of Tiberius.



I've added the centerline and ground the edges down to about 1/16" thick with an angle grinder. Now I can grind away as long as I make sure the bevel stays between the centerline and the edge.



Lots of 4-1/2" angle grinder work with grinding stones and 36 grit flap disks. It's a good idea not to overheat the blade because that can introduce stress to the metal which can cause it to warp or crack.

I put the Sharpie lines on there so I can tell how much material I'm removing as I go. As they say, it's easier to remove metal than it is to put it back on.



After angle grinding I added more Sharpie lines and drawfiled the flats. It's a ton of work, but it takes out the inevitable ripples you get from the grinder and makes the flats truly flat.



Next up is heat treating! Heating the steel until it's 1650º and dunking it in oil makes the steel really hard so it'll hold an edge. I made a quick furnace out in the driveway out of bricks. Underneath is a piece of 1-1/4" pipe with 1/8" holes every inch or so. That's hooked to a shop vac that blows air through the charcoal making it burn a lot hotter.



Looking into the furnace you can see the blade is bright red in places, and dull red in others. It was hard getting it a uniform orange which is what it should be when it's quenched.

I didn't take any pictures of actually quenching it because that was a near disaster. As soon as I started putting the blade into a tank of old motor oil, it caught on fire. Then my hand started getting burnt so I dropped the blade into the tank. The oil started boiling and bubbled over leaving me with a flaming oil slick in the middle of the driveway. At least the blade did get hard enough a file doesn't bite in.



The blade is really hard after quenching, but it's also brittle. Tempering removes some hardness but greatly increases the toughness of the steel. I tempered at 450º for two hours twice. I let the sword cool down to room temperature between tempering cycles.



After tempering, the blade has a nice blue color to it which the sciency types will have you believe is a thin layer of oxidation. But it's really because there are goblins nearby.



It's a good idea to do the heat treating before fully sharpening the blade so the edge doesn't warp, or "potato chip" as some called it. I used some 36, 60, and 120 grit flap disks to remove most of the remaining metal on the flats and then draw filed again. After that I used some stones and diamond hones to fully sharpen the sword.



Next I made the handle from walnut, ivory colored micarta, and brass. I made the grip octagonal on the table saw and used a half round wood rasp and file to make the finger grooves. The needle files were used to make the holes in the brass pieces. The walnut is covered in three coats of spar varnish.



I filled the pieces up with West System 105 epoxy, 206 slow hardner, and 403 microfibers before sticking them on the tang. That way no slop should ever develop in the handle. The tang stuck out 1/8" so I peened it over the brass washer which locked everything together. I rested the tip of the sword in a big block of lead while I peened over the tang.