I was looking for an alternative to e.g. fixing knife handles, and it is a bit of a recurring question over the years: How would people have set handles to their knives? As for the iron age, and even in early 20th century Finland still, knife handles might have been set into fresh wood, with as good a fitting as would possibly go, and let the wood shrink around the tang and sometimes peen or bend the protruding tang over. But handles had been fixed with glue since the Palaeolitic age. One method for sure is using birch tar glue with a bit of animal fat and something fibrous, such as plant fibres, or fur fibres from animal hide. This here is a recipe inspired by a mentioning by T. Sirelius: Ethnographia Laponia. I used some fur I found in the woods and cut them short.
I added 1 pt beeswax for 9 pts spruce resin and about two spoonfuls of wood ashes.
Boiling the pitch is something you take good care of. Use a small tuna can and a small amount. Most probably your concoction will catch fire. That is not desireable, but don't panic, and for chrissakes don't try to extinguish the flames with water, for it would explode. Best do it outside, keep some sort of lid handy (a small dish will work). Most of the time, you can simply blow out the flames. It is crucial that you actually do boil the resin.
The glue will cool to a really hard surface. You will need to heat it in order to use it.
I hope that was helpful 😉.
Take good care, thanks for dropping in, and until next time!
