Making some folders

I have started making a couple of folders. The smaller one is going tobe a friction folder and will have bone scales on blue steel liners and a 3" scandi grind blade.

The larger one is going to be a copy of a Colonial pocket knife from circa 1650/1790, and will have a external spring lock back. I found the design in Fur Trade Cutlery Sketchbook, by James A Hanson. I am going to make this one as close to the drawings as I can get it. It's a going to be a beast, 10" open, 5 3/4" closed. Maybe they had big pockets! or more likely kept it in a bag. It has a convex grind, again as close to the sketches as I can get it. The handle is going to be horn, just waiting for it to arrive. The spring is going to be a bit more of a challenge to make as I haven't made one yet.

The author says that all the knives sketched in his book are in the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, Nebraska, so should be authentic artifacts rather than "outlandish cheese knives and toad stabbers" people keep showing him as authentic reproductions and exacts copies...His words...!

A carved wood spirit

A few months ago, one of my collegues at work asked me if I could carve something out of a log she brought in. It's softwood, I think, but am not sure, a piece of a Leylandi, the tree people in England love to hate... The was some rot in the mouth/nose area and we wanted to keep as much of the bark growth around the edges of what may have been a large "wound", obviously over the years the bark grew back around the edges of that wound... Keeping this limited the design, and the depth of the carving. So this is what I ended up carving. Looking at it from the side, the nose is quite flat, and the rot around the mouth meant I had to remove quite bit of wood, not damaging the bark also meant the eyes are not as deep as they could have been. His crooked boxer's nose was dictated by the way the bark had grown.

All in all, I am very happy with my carving.





I don't know how long it took to do the carving because it was done at work, whilst my clients are busy with their own projects, when somebody is absent or sick, and also because I work part time there, two days a week. It was done over a period of a couple of months. Also the number of tools were limited because my employers are a charity and their resourses are limited.

Playing with fire

Making a wood fire is something that, no matter how many times I do it, I never get tired of. I love the dancing flames, the warmth, the smoke, the crackling of the burning wood....

I got a new mini fire-lighting kit in a trade with Sticks65. It contains a mini steel striker, some small pieces of flint, some fat wood, a mini tinder tube with some cotton rope, some jute tinder and extra jute twine, a length of waxed thread, all contained in a nice old chromed brass tin. I replaced the pieces of flint for a larger piece because it was a bit on the small size for my fingers. The cotton rope is different, as I have been experimenting with some different small ropes.



I have not used a tinder tube before but I am quickly being converted. I made another one this morning, a bit bigger, I just used a length of bamboo and a piece of oil lamp wick, it took about 5 minutes to make!



Bamboo may not be the most practical to use as it did singe a bit, but that could be because I was trying to take pictures and left the tube in the straw nest a bit too long! It's easy to replace with a piece of coppet tube or a small bone.

I tried to take a couple of pictures of the process, but found I didn't have enough hands...So no pics of the striking of the steel on the flint, or of the glowing ember, it does not show well on the pic I took. It was very easy and took only a few strikes and no more than 10 seconds to get an ember glowing.

A few moments of blowing in the straw and there you have it: fire!!



Then I ran out of batteries for the camera, so no pictures of the fire or of the boiling kettle and the final cuppa!

New tent!

Well, after many years of using a dome tent, we decided it was high time for it to retire. It's done us good for family camping, but it started leaking last time my daughter used it, and looking decidedly tired.

So after loking around we decided to treat ourselves and bought a 4 metre canvas Bell tent.




We haven't had time yet to use it, but here it is in our back garden. Much, much nicer than the old nylon dome! I can stand inside...bliss. The light inside is just beautiful and really restful on the eyes. I also like the fact that we can raise the walls for ventilation. Tents can be a bit stuffy, but with the walls raised, it produced a nice draft and kept it cool.

It's a tent for car camping, it's too heavy to lug around! But that's ok. I am going to have great fun furnishing it. It'll take a while but it's going to be worth it!