On the bench these days... load of work

 First and foremostly, and most important: The Sgian Dhú I forged for Craig for his appearance at the Bethaus smithy! The blade is 3 mm thick and very slicey, made from spring steel. The handle, after I had the weird idea of heat-colouring a stag antler handle after it was mounted and cracked it in the process, is made from very rare reddish bog oak from the Muttental mines, some 150-200 years old.

Then there is a seax, spring steel, and a deer bone handle, yet to be finely ground.










...and a spoon carving knife, a right-handed one, spring steel.

Watch this space!

One man´s trash...

 ... is another man´s treasure;-). I went for a stroll on Wednesday and found this coil of spring steel by the roadside someone had disposed of... some 120 knives in it, value 35,00-250,00€ per piece. So this coil could have a value of at least 4.200,00 €, for you Mammonist arseholes out there. Get the clue that you could use your crap or get them to be properly recycled and spoiling the countryside a little less? I, for one appreciate your crap, but there are few who would dispose of your waste that way. And I have no use whatsoever for all the plastic shreds littering the roadsides, and the forests, too.

 And a nice piece of bone for carvings I found beside the road, presumeably from a pig stilt or soup beef.

I daresay it will make for some interesting colouring....











Those are my treasures, and my coin. Weird indeed;-).

Nessie´s nearly there...

 Soo, Nessie´s nearly finished. The bone handle (filled with epoxy, thanks, Joel) fitted and peened over a piece of brass tube. This one has to see some finishing, though. Saw it on some Moras and figured it would take the stress off the rivet area of the handle. Didn´t want to flatten the end of the bone, to leave it at a ... uuummm... bone appearance?;-) so some problems here. Will peen it down some, as soon I have made a tubular tool for that and do some peening on the tang or maybe I´ll just grind it down with a dremel.

 That´s a feat I like about the design. It makes cutting very controllable. as you can see, there are also some dents left I still have to remove... for they are plain ugly. The blade has some 58 HRC (tested that at a friend´s) at the edge and 42 HRC at the back.


  





I tend to forge ever shorter blades the more I use them. Now I am no stranger to some big brute of a chopper either, and I actually like Khukuris and seaxes a lot. But, as is, I also like to actually use my blades, and there´s some stinking law allowing criminals automatic weapons (by not pursuing thoses cases thoroughly enough) and forbide law abiding citizens the socially adequate use of knives, rant over and out.

But there´s also another reason. It´s quite difficult to make a long knife a compromise between nimble handling and chopping ability. That´s quite a tricky feat, and I am no swordsmith (yet). Also, for heavy chopping tasks an axe or hatchet gets the job done much better than a medium-sized knife (Khukuris and seaxes being exceptions). I am working on that, just for the challenge;-) and to learn swordsmithing. But as an EDC, a shorter blade can do a big job. By batoning it through a piece of wood you could even equal a hatchet, if you look for stright grain.

I tried it out, and I am quite sold on the Nessmuk design. It makes a great knife for snacking, for skinning and producing thin shavings of wood. Carving, a seax or recurve design or one with less of a curve to the edge, does better, because the material to be cut off is gathered up by the straight or recurve edge. Less of a curve would be a good compromise. I am thinking about that.