Cow horn !

My daughter found a pair of large cow horns at a car boot sale. She asked me to make one into a blowing horn, the other I can have!

So here it is. I have only just started on this project, so I'll update when I do some more work on it.

The raw horn Scrapped and the tip cut off



The (big!) mouth. 4" The mouthpiece

Leather hunting pouch

I am interested in the whole Mountain man/ Coureur de Bois era of American history. This short phrase obviously covers all sorts of sins and is a very big area of study...

I haven't got a muzzleloader but I think that will be coming soon hopefully.

In the meanwhile I have made leather bags in the style of the mountain men. This is one example.

This one is made of pigskin, the flap is double layer of leather. The bag is lined with linen and hand sewn with waxed linen thread and fully welted.

Posing with my first forged blade Nessie.



I used a brass buckle and brass rings to start with, but I didn't like the factory made look and shininess, It didn't go with the idea of being an old, hand made hunting pouch. So I removed them and made some forged mild steel rings and a buckle.

My take on a Woodsman knife

I had an odd shape off cut of 5mm 01 tool steel and thought of making a knife with it, as you do of course. What else!

This is what I came up with. It's still a work in progress, the blade is not fixed or hardened yet. It's actually really comfortable knife to hold, in various ways and it's comfortable in all of them. The blade is only 4" long, 2" wide, scandi grind with the same angle as my knives.

My idea is that is will be a sort of all purpose woodsman/mountaiman knife.

The first friction folders

Following in the wake from the hysteria in the press regarding knives, I have become interested in making small "legal" size pocket knives. Ie, sub 3" long blades non locking blades. There is quite a bit od scope as far as designing something like that.

Those little folders are what I came up with. They are really quite nice little knives to make and use. This is the first one I made.

One piece Teak handle, not so easy to make, the slot has got to be sligthly wider than the blade is thick, ( in this case the blade is 3 mm) straight, and the sides of the slot parallel to each other.
The blade is 01 tool steel, with some filework on the spine. The pins are brass and the washers are flattened copper roves. Decorated with a home made mosaic pin.



In the wake of this first model, I went a bit overboard and made some other friction folders, including this little one: 2" long, stabilised Burr Elm handle, hard work to make the slot!

Autumn update!

I have been a bit lazy lately with keeping my blog up, haven't I! Yes, but also quite busy. Anyway...That's my excuse and I'll stick to it!!

My biggest knife making project so has been this set of two knives :





The Nessie has a 4", 100 mm, blade. The handle is made of stabilised Burr Elm, as is the handle on the large "chopper". The blade on this one is nearly 9", 225 mm, long, and 2", 50 mm at its widest. Again, the handle is made of stabilised Burr Elm.

The cutting edge is a bit unusual in that 2/3 of it is scandi grind and the last 1/3 is convex grind. The idea is that this knife will be able to cope in hardwood forests, in the same way a Puuko can cope with soft wood.

The sheath is a piggy-back style. Both sheaths can be used separately, but also can be joined together and has various carry options, including under arm, on your back, and on the belt.