I am a zombie...!

According to the Health Minister Simon burns, an MP (member of Parliament) here in the UK, I, and other people who excercise their rights to ask questions to our MPs, have been called zombies in parliament. After all, the UK is still supposed to be a democracy.

When said governement was hell bent on selling off national woodlands, I added my name to the petition that eventually forced them to climb down, also added my name to questions about the NHS.

So, please add you name to the petition against this sort of behaviour at 38 Degrees.

I hope this will force an apology from him. Not that I believe  politicians apologies are worth the air used to utter them, but it will show the little man that we (the zombies) still have some power and give him a public slap.

Creating a friction folder. Part one.

I have recently been commissioned to create a friction folder. The client has seen my Rustic Oak friction folder on my website and wanted something similar for his owm use.

Rustic Oak

 There are a few differences in what my client wanted for his folder:

A beer bottle opener
A longer tang
A shorter blade
A higher grind line
A 3mm thick blade
Filework on the spine

So  the first thing to do is to produce a drawing, then a simple working model. I tend to use thin ply and/or thin cardboard to make those simple models. Here is the first drawing, along with my Rustic Oak.

First drawing and my own Rustic Oak

Here are a couple of pictures of the working model. At this stage it's the same size as the original, but with the bottle opening tang.

Model of new Rustic Oak, open.

Model of new Rustic Oak, closed.

After a few discussions, I drew the revised version and Emailed it to my client for approval (or otherwise!)

New Rustic Oak, with approximate dimensions.

My client was happy with the sketch and the dimensions. So, the next step now will be to draw the knife again and make another simple working model using  the revised dimensions.