Sheath for a very old and very weird knife

 Some of my older readers might recognize the knife. 

It has been in use in the kitchen for ages now and it is of course kinda weird. So I thought I would share the story first with you. 

In 'em days in the Bethaus smithy I forged it from junk spring steel I found near the roadside when mountainbike riding to the trailhead. Long story short,  I forged it,  annealed it,  and when it came to quenching,  the lard bosh was nowhere to be found. Volker simply had disposed of it. 

He had some delicious chicken soup in the larder of the Restaurant,  though,  so I used the steel to heat it up and the soup to quench the steel. I have never had to actually sharpen it,  although it has seen at least ten years of hard kitchen work and cut a lot of hard sausage and bacon,  nuts and what have you. 

So I looked it up why this mad prank did work. 

It finally turned out that the fat on top of the soup was solid and served the purpose of a first quench. The salt in the soup created sort of a bainite temper. Of course I just hardened the edge up to two thirds of the blade,  with two different zones of hardness. Of course I was being a bit over the top and it was sort of a mad prank,  but it turned out surprisingly well.

Now I am actually quite fond of the knife, so I just made a sheath for it. Really dirty technique,  but I think it will still be durable as anything. The dangler I had forged from mild steel. 

Looking forward to carrying it into the woods! 

Birchwood sheath for my little hadseax

The sheath I made for my trusty little hadseax does not keep the knife in as well. Now it´s a great knife and I want to carry it, so i decided upon making one out of birchwood burl. Nothing unusual, I just made the outer form with axe and knife and some sanding paper, split it in two by batoning, hollowed out one side, glued the mess together and riveted it with a hollow pin (not on the photo). Now I will make a leather upper with a flap or something more fancy;-)...

Three more knives, one old and two new ones...;-)

 This is another example of my lack of patience. Fitted the scales raw to file down to tang size when mounted. Hacksawed the remaining scale off and cut deep into the tang. I was close to a fit of hysteria! So, okay, I thought, it´s a sign, why not try something new. So I filed the whole mess down to a kind of rattail tang at the end and fitted a kind of bolster from reindeer antler. The blade is leaf spring steel with a razor convex grind. It bites like your little sister, but I have to warm up to it, what with all the mess going on.

This once was a Puma skinmaster blade from 1.4116 steel (Cold Steel uses this steel on some of their blades also). The blade was a bit off temper when I found it in the garage of Rudolph Broch at Solingen. On this guy I have to do a little feature sometime soon. He is the former owner of the last smithy in Solingen still working, and it has been producing knives, spears and hatchets for Hirschkrone, Hubertus knives, Puma, Anton Wingen, even Martiini puukkos were made there, and I even found some Iisakki Järvenpää blades there! Rudolph Broch himselfhelped me with tempering the stainless steel. The handle is birchwood burl with a red dragon carving Celtic style. The red dragon of fury swims through the golden light of poetry. This refers to the "dragon´s tale" I wrote some years ago. The carving was inspired by the animal on a Celtic chalice find at Dürrnberg, Hallein.

This one is the one where I messed up the drilling, so the hollow copper

pins are a bit off center. No harm done, really.It´s one of my faves these days. It´s made from leaf spring steel, 83 mm long in the blade, edge quenched, and there must have  gone something right with the heat treatment, for  I have used it very hard for some time now. It can carve a Roselli hunter blade and stood up to the bending test. And, there´s the culprit, it´s tempered in chicken soup. Had no oil at the smithy, so Jochen, the cook, provided us with an excellent chicken soup (had a bowl beforehand to reduce the water content). Lots of fat on top, and smelled great when tempering. I know you propably think I am horsing around, or am now completely gone off my rocker, but it really was!;-)

Some good honest work;-)

From my springtime hike and hug-a-tree endeavour;-) I went to Kai´s. he had some 3 to ;-) of wood to be chopped, a good excuse to bring out the blades and doing some exercise. By the pic you can estimate the dimension of the logs to be chopped. Kai, the absolute madman, did that with a hatchet, for his axe was utter crap. I messed up making a photo of mine, but it was good fun splitting the wood. We had a great time and some mad jokes, and I got myself a piece of birch wood that wants to be a kuksa or a BIG spoon. It was some three hours of muscle burning, and some really quality food and quality time with quality people.

Think we´ll do that again, eh?;-)