Another mythological knife-from junk

This is a knife I forged quite some time ago at a really lovely friend's place. It is exclusively made from material I found in the woods.  The blade is made from a three-layer laminate from a really old file and 150 year old leaf spring. The leaf spring had a carbon content of about 0.7 %. 

That file, though...

With the first blows from the hammer, it crumbled like old cake, so I had it checked. It has a carbon content of about 1,5% and a weird dendritic structure.  So, grinding away all the rust marks and structure, and gently tapping at a relatively low temperature with a really small temperature window it was. Used a wooden mallet for that. It took me two days to get it to move at all, and a break of three month to recover from the inflammation in my elbow to weld it in between the leaf spring sandwich construction. And at first it didn't want to weld. Drove me fecking mad.  But it eventually worked out, after I messed up the first piece. Forged some kind of animal head to the handle. 

The handle is wrapped with some rawhide of a rotting fox cadaver I took with permission and which was salted and smoked and wet-wrapped after soaking in a concoction of soda and denatured alcohol, then heat-treated with resin, beeswax, mastix, mistle berries, dragon's blood resin in denatured alcohol. 

  

The grind is a high convex bevel to almost zero. Almost flat, to be precise, and polished in the edge. The blade is really resilient, and selectively triple-tempered. The edge is really hard, I estimate it at some 62HRC, the middle is soft, the spine is also tempered to an estimated 52HRC. It throws sparks off a flint and a ferrocerium rod.  It is rather thin at 2.8 mm, but can be bent to almost 50 degrees. 

Length is some 102mm, the CoB is on the index finger. 

The fascinating thing is that I learned a lot in the process (and as I said, I failed first), and that it is a bit of a playing with undereutectoid and eutectoid steels. It does look like any old ren fair knife, but it is not.  

There actually was a huge learning curve involved. Also, the knife is a part of my own story. I intimately knew that fox relative, I found the steel in nocturnal woods under a sickle moon, and I bled and suffered for the knife. I made my sacrifices for it.  

It is the sharpest knife I ever made, and you guys know that I am my own worst critic normally.  I am almost a bit scared of it, even though one can always do better.  That is not my point.  It is not perfect, it is not better than my Casström.  Well, maybe it is far more slicey. 

But it is a myth in itself. A piece of magic, maybe.  

As a kid, I wanted to find the magic sword, as a lot of kids do. And as an adult, I asked the forest.  I have shown you some of its answers on the blog over the years. It has been a weird, but interesting journey, and about some of its answers I would not talk.  No offence meant, but most people simply could not understand.  

Thing is, the magic sword will no longer smite the dragon.  The symbol of the time is not a symbol of chivalry or heroism.  The symbols of our time are the tank, the whip, the Credit Card- and the extermination robot.  All introduced by the dragons of our world, cursing mankind every single day. 

The forests are dwindling. Wildfires rage. 

But deep below, from the mycelium, magic sprouts.  It lingers eternal. It is patient and alien. It sometimes looks really profane.  Like a harsh, hard truth, sometimes. 

But never forget: It is invincible, because it is infathomeable, because it is indomiteable.  

I will die sooner or later. I will rot.  But I am a part of the magic.  

I am indomiteable.  

Become magic.  

Cookies, tea, and steel ;-9

 A shitty day at work. An extremely shitty day at work. One of these days when you start to believe what your "fellow humans" tell you that you are. So, what to do? Off with me to the bus that´s bound for the countryside, bound for the woods. Walking through the green, feeling the earth underneath my feet, my disgust was immediately replaced by a sense of puzzlement. What the f*** do we think we are up to? What is it that is truly better than nature? Why do we still assume we are the crown of creation? Everything was like it always were, but there, in the ground, I immediately found this heart-shaped piece of bloomery steel that had waited there for hundreds of years, weathered and worn by the soil, rusted, pitted and torn. It told a tale to me.

 It was sometimes raining, sometimes the sun came out... but in the halls of the forest it mattered little. There was a serenity again under the stems and trunks of trees, that simply soothed my soul. Then it is that thought subsides; then it is my soul is soothed.

Vibrant was the light that fell through leaves still green; still it is summer, but all too soon it will all be gone. The season is rising in the heart of the soul. Not the season we mark in a calendar, a season well marked out and calculated, but something deeper and wilder than thought, something that is rising now with the mist, silently, and somewhat eerily. It is autumn, and it flourishes and blooms in the mycel of mushrooms and the reddening of leaves.

 It prospers in a quality of light and a musky scent...

 It moves like the ripples in a root; like the grain in the wood. Damascus steel knows it; it sings of autumn.

 Silence; solitude...

There it is I grow. There it is I must not grow.

 ...

 Over old hills the clouds drove by like flocks of wicked dragons; wind was singing loudly in the treetops.

 And layer upon layer of the world of man was peeled off of my soul revealing that, what I really am and always will be.

 Not the mushroom, rotting and pitted...

 Not even the path through the woods.

 But all and everything.

 More profanely spoken, I got myself some ´shrooms for stew.

 And then, by an old cabin, I sat down and had a cuppa tea and a coconut cookie. It was a feast all for myself, in the silence and the solitude of my beloved woods, cradled by the song of the wind and the water.

 Sometimes I find it hard to tell, and feel like I would not care to bother anymore; the wind has no words, but tells every secret there is. The water murmurs in the stream and sings all the songs one could dream up. Why then should I still talk to humans? Even friends and lovers cannot understand me. Noone can, but still I keep talking gibberish that does not fill the bill, does not hit the mark, as one might want to say - but still I keep talking. I sometimes ask myself if this is depression... but on the other hand, I sleep most sound and well, and I do not feel sad apart from the usual sadness everyone has. As long as I am in the woods, I am even happy as one can possibly be. It is not that, it is something else. It is at the same time far more complicated and far more simple than we humans think. Our human world is a laughing matter for it. We are definitely not the crown of creation, we are weird, a shaved ape playing at being god. But I do not want to evangelize anyone. I would not bother. No human being, including myself, is worth a fuss.  

 For words like value and worth are just that: Words. It is not what there really is. There is a language behind any language, a language without words. The trees know it, the sun, the wind, the rain. The squirrell, the hare, the fox and the wolf. All of them still know it.

 I followed the whispers through the thicket, along trails seldom trodden....

 Over hill and dale I walked.

 And found some spring steel, lying ancient and forgotten in the soil.

Yeah, it is junk lying in the forest, but to me it conveys meaning. Sometimes, when I read "Game of Thrones" and the author talks about "valyrian steel" or "dragon glass" someone finds in the woods I am absolutely laughing my head off. For things like these happen to me in actual. The average reader of this novel would not even be able to recognize it. It´s junk to them. It does not convey meaning to them. They buy pink fluffy unicorns and GoT merchandise in order to compensate for their loss; the loss of magic and meaning and a connection to the world. But without the loss of words you cannot feel the magic... without magic, steel or even tea and cookies in the woods will not convey meaning to anyone.

Without meaning, our world will die.

New steakhouse tanto finished

This is a knife I like a lot these days... made from magical sorcery steel I found in the woods and which contains more than just a bit of tungsten- it is frighteningly sharp. The blade is quite thick, but cuts well enough for a constant taper. Scales are bog oak from an iron mine in the #Muttental fitted with hollow pins. The sheath is vegetable tanned top grain leather with a dangler from mild steel, hand forged of course. I have come to just fit a long leather thong to the dangler and carry it under my shirt under the armpit... quite comfortable to carry, and you do not freak anybody out and it does not tug your pants down if you wear the light and loose-fit trousers I have come to like for the woods. For EDC you can just shorten it and stick the knife into your pocket with the same effect.