Those are the adventures of Mr. Fimbulmyrk, in bushcraft and blacksmithing, mountainbiking and hiking, reenactment, writing, singing, dancing, stargazing and having a piece of cake and a coffee. Pray have a seat and look around you, but be warned - the forest´s twilight is ferocious at times.
This is another beginner-friendly crafts project. All you need is a Swiss Army knife again. For wood, I choose hazel, because it is easy to carve when fresh and dries out to be tough and resilient, due to the long, dense grain. You want to take a piece that is as straight as possible and with no twigs or branches. At a right angle, drill a hole with the awl of the SAK. Widen the hole with your little blade or by using the saw.
I made a little Video about it on the YouTube channel:
The hole acts as a stress relief hole.
Using your little blade, carve a recession, Equalizer on both sides, towards the end of stick. Use the big blade to split the wood towards the relief hole. Do not forget to lock your elbows to your sides. Lightly work the blade into the end grain. As soon as you feel the resistance of the wood go down, your stick is split.
Now carve a tear-shaped hole towards the end of the stick. Be careful not to remove too much material from the end.
With a scooping cut, remove the thickness at the middle of the clamp. What this does is reducing the spring resistance of the clamp.
Add a V- or stop cut for decoration or for fixing the pin to the washing line with twine. Add another at the end to cut the clothespin from the branch.
And just like that, you have a little helper that can also come in handy for re-closing packages. You can carve these as a beginner in just half an hour.
With more experience, however, you can carve one in less than ten minutes.
For me, that is a quick and satisfying project, especially when you have little time.
So, I hope that was halfway helpful. Thanks for dropping by, and take good care!
The other day, a little lady came to the Slöjd meetup and asked whether I could carve a mouse. I had never done so, but we worked it out together. And I thought I would share it with you. You start by cutting with the saw of your SAK, one rectangular and the second diagonal to the first, but only half of the depth of the first.
These serve as a stop cut. You can also use the blade, but the saw is a tad faster and maybe a bit safer. Take note that I left some length to the branch, the better to handle your carving.
At the first stop cut, reduce the diametre of the stick.
Carve a tip on that side of the cut. That will be the snout of the mouse. Reduce the diametre of the branch behind the diagonal cut. This will become the ears and the body.
With your saw, cut out a notch between the ears. Be careful, because you are cutting with the grain, and the wood splits easily. Refine the cut with the help of the little whittling blade.
Carve the back of the body. Refine the snout and back and saw the mouse off the branch. Refine the cut with your little whittler blade.
Carve the eyes and refine the snout and body.
It is a really nice and fast project, satisfying also for kiddos. You can of course refine the carving more, by working out the legs, or give it a more abstract form. Make it your own!
Shoutout to little Nele, who provided the inspiration for me to think about it!
Well, you know, politicians happen again in Germany. At the moment there is a bit of hope we might keep the sorry mess that is left of our democracy for a bit longer (but I wager, not for long) due to massive democratic and judicial protest, but who knows.
Since I wanted a pocket knife that is capable of carving and didn't look threatening to the Karens or our Slytheen that rule us, I came across the Helle Raud S. Normally, I would not have thought twice about a knife that small. Actually, the Vics are awesome and those are actually rarely incapable of doing things, but the proposal for the novelty offensive weapon act would have banned a Swiss Army knife, because it would be too long. Actually, the new proposal, which still is not aborted, would ban all things not Teletubby from the public, including all kind of tools, knives, bottles or anything heavy or sharp.
I spare you the rant. It is pathetic, and we all know.
Anyway, I was asking myself, could one find a capable knife with a tiny blade that were still able to do some of the things I want or need to do in the woods? Forget tactical neckknives, those are toys for people who will open boxes at the most. And I thought, well, my Mora carving knives are actually pretty decent for a lot of things I do. But them being fixed blade knives, they still look too threatening to the Karen Teletubbies. So, a folding knife it had to be. Originally, I thought about the Helle Kletten, but dismissed it because it would not work with a ferro rod, because of its three layer laminate steel, so it had to be the cheaper Raud S. To be honest, I wasn't too fond of spending 120€ on a knife I normally would never have bought.
Well, the little knife arrived. There was a rather silly #nancysapplechallenge going on in the interwebs where you tried to demonstrate that you could not cut an apple with a short knife, which is a logical fallacy, because you cannot prove a negative claim. But, anyway, apple harvest was on the way and I had to make and conserve apple sauce from 5kg of crap apples anyway, so I put it through its paces. It obviously needed some adaptation, but it proved really not as inadequate as I expected.
Also, it actually did not work too bad prepping potatoes for soup and slicing up sausage and spring onions.
It had its shortcomings, but it is possible to use it for food prepping in a pinch.
Where it excelled, however, was carving.
It performs several classes above its size when carving wood. The blade shape and Scandi grind and short blade all combine to add up to a really great detail knife.
I made wall hooks,
spoons from seasoned oak,
a walking stick from holly,
wallhooks from dry cherry,
And after all that hard use it still made shavings like that.
Using it to help with cordage, foraging, mushroom hunting, it really does a lot of things.
Its biggest advantage is obviously that it goes into the small pocket of your jeans and is so light and nimble that you do not really notice it until you need it. The blade is 55mm long and 2.7 mm thick. It is made from 12C27 steel, tempered to 59HRC. The grind is a medium Scandinavian grind with the tiniest of micro bevels. It locks reliably by a sturdy back lock. There is no radial or side play whatsoever. The liners are made from sturdy tempered steel (almost a millimetre thick). The handle from beautiful curly birch , which is stained red, is 85 mm long. To me, that means, the pinky gets to rest behind the handle. This led to a bit of pain in my joints of that finger after several hours of hard carving. The handle, being rather stubby and chunky, lends itself to powerful cuts, though. Inverse cuts, chest cut, scissor cut and all Slöjd positions need a bit of adaptation, but are perfectly doable.
So, if you are looking for a non-offensive and light carry knife for Slöjd in the woods, and can live with the limits of such a tiny blade, this knife, apart from it being in line with the removal of your civic rights, performs admireably well for little Slöjd projects. It might also be a really great first Slöjd knife for kids.
So, apart from the political shitshow going on, it is a great companion that you do not notice until you need it, but that is amazingly and surprisingly capable. I currently always carry it alongside my SAK, because for carving, it performs really great. If you can afford it, and can live with its limitations, it might be a great addition to your EDC.
(Doris Fischer: Flechten, Färben, Schnitzen, Aarau und München 2017)
Got myself a really cool book, which is rather unusual compared to other works. The systematic approach is centered around plants from the forest.
Centering around plants and their properties and resources, Doris Fischer offers comprehensive botanical knowledge, and describes fun little carving, weaving and dyeing projects, often with really enlightening moments. Learning is fun with this book.
I can really recommend it, especially, but not exclusively if you have kids.
The current move towards an even more strict offensive weapon act in Germany makes me want to reflect upon the topic.
It is, of course, easy to think along the lines of critics like Lemmy Kilmister.
And maybe he was right, and maybe he was not. But this is not my topic here.
I have worked with politicians for twelve years and I retched my guts out every single day before going to work. For several reasons. Some of it my own fault, but also because of, let us call it ...their moral flexibility, to stay polite.
But it is the easy way. We need to reflect ourselves.
You see a lot of knives on this Blog. Also carving, smithing, culture, and recipes, all of which is facilitated by the use of knives. As stated in my disclaimer, the use of knives as a weapon is not part of what I want to propagate, and if so, only in a cultural or historical context.
In the contrary, since 1998 I have worked with kids in difficult social contexts in order to prevent social violence and violence in general. Often voluntarily, often under dire circumstances, most of the time I was poorer than the parents of the kids on social welfare. Only when I started working with politicians I understood that while officially my work was appreciated, that was an outright lie.
But back to the knife as such. Youth associate a knife with a symbol of status. To admit, well, that is the case with a lot of us knife nuts. Few of us older folks, however, actually associate status with violence. Or knives at that.
When we grew up, there was one or the other old conker or lady showing us what to do with a pocket knife. And what not to do. I would spend hours on end helping my grandmother preparing veggies from our garden, fruit from the orchard and mushrooms from the woods while listening to her stories of Yore. My father, grandfather and granduncle taught me how to whittle and carve and show me how to use a knife and a shiteload of other tools. They showed me how to use a scythe, too. I really loved scything, but the downside was that I had to help mowing the fields. And there was neither discussion nor passive aggression about that. From neither side. You just did it. You had to take responsibility. And if you did something wrong, that wasn't the end of the world, but you had to stand up for it.
Of course I also had what many kids had: A wrong idea of knives because of the Rambo movies, which were all the rage in those days. But since we had to use our knives for actual work, that didn't last too long.
When my father bought me a new pocket knife, always some kind of pocket or other utility knife, it always was a right treat for me. I have carried a pocket knife since I was four.
I never, ever used a knife for violence. I never drew a knife in anger. It always was a tool for me, associated with good food and carving and making good-natured things.
Emil of Lönneberga, Ronja Rövardottir, Pettson and Findus, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Goethe and similar idols have made my image of using a knife far more and impressed me far more deeply than the Rambo movies ever did, even if those obviously had an impact on me, too.
When I tried to teach difficult kids to take responsibility, I used carving to excellent effect and with great success. Still have the notes of excellence rotting away in some box in the attic.
I was fired, not in spite, but because of it.
Leading authorities of law enforcement criticize the push towards even greater restrictions (https://www.bdk.de/der-bdk/was-wir-tun/aktuelles/brauchen-wir-ein-schaerferes-waffengesetz), because it will most possibly not show the desired effects. It will remove the institutional assumption of innocence by decree. The authorities in question also criticize the lack of funds and law enforcement personnel, and the lack of funding for social welfare, integration and education and hint of the Offensive Weapon act in Germany first being institutional in the Third Reich. Demanding even stronger restrictions has some grave implications. Let us hope for the best. Let us hope that it is not that bad.
As a matter of fact, however, one would be naive not to acknowledge that knives are used for bad things. Knives are also used as weapons. And truth be told, as kids we were fascinated by the Rambo movies because of that aspect. The lone, but PTSD-sick special forces guy taking out the bad guys and putting an injustice more or less right simply appealed to us. We learned soon that this was not necessarily a good thing, even though we used to make fun of German Army forces on manoeuver in our forests, because, well, we were eleven, and, apart from one sniper, we were better than the grown- ups (and yes, we had permission by the unit and our parents). Additionally, my father was a deputy law enforcement officer. I grew up around weapons and law enforcement and military units, hunters and fishers. And we learned that it wasn't fun and games, but a grave responsibility. I actively prevented several hundred crimes, two to five felonies, since I was six years old. It wasn't anything to brag about, and my Dad was sometimes a tad too daft and dangerous. But I am not naive. People do crimes. People also use knives as a weapon. Period.
Now the bushcraft and survival community is a great one, but there are also a lot of people, mostly men, who have or claim a special forces background. If that is so, every serving person had my utmost respect. I in no way do claim such a background.
But there are also the others. Overweight incels claiming to be tough guys, preppers hoarding weapons and little gamer shitheads advocating violence in a crisis situation. Seven vs Wild, Alone, Naked and Afraid, they are all entertainment formats which are perfectly okay in their own right, but in times of permanent crisis they are also projecting a false image. It is always "one tough guy against nature and all odds".
Knives are not weapons. This is what we need to advocate, not only for our own privileges of freedom. Freedom isn't free. We need to fight for it. Sometimes that means to take a firm stand, maybe against one's own peers. But not as one tough guy against all odds, but with friendliness, manners, kindness and cooperation. We need to save a culture and preserve a cultural heritage of the old conker giving his (or her) knowledge to the young ones. Regardless of the outcome of the political shitshow going on. We need to take a democratic, but firm stand against the proposters and ursurpers of our time.
Actually, doing this can be fun. Why always carve tent pegs or war clubs or traps? I mean they have their time and own right and can be fun projects. Never made myself a war club, but want to try out for certain, because it can make you understand a culture. But you are neither allowed to set traps in Germany, as there is no such thing as legal wildcamping in Germany, and if you make a real Native warclub, you would be asked wherefore you need it, and if you are not an experimental archaeologist, you would be hard-pressed to find an answer. Fact is, it is good to be still able to do such a thing, but fact is also, you normally do not need them. If you don't need them, you can also carve a funny little gnome, a flower or a toy. And there are a lot of more utilitarian but no less fun projects. Shuttles, spindles, spoons, kitchen ware, you name it. Knives can be awesome tools. But I find that my survival knives are sitting in drawers and boxes these days more often than not, because my Vics, Grampa knives and Moras and little bushcraft knives simply do a far better job carving and making things. I found that out by using the shite outta them. I learned a lot by doing this. That is not to say that big knives do not have their time and place. If you can use your Bowie for delicate carving tasks, all good and cudos to you. And there is also a time and place for the "one-tool-option"line of thought, and first and foremostly, if you are not some criminal, you should not be made one by law. On the other hand, there are a lot of people completely freaking out if you even take out a Swiss Army knife in public. That is obviously an unfortunately really common mental illness. There is even a diagnosis, named aichmophobia, for it. And of course, kindness should not go as far as you becoming as mentally ill as the ones you want to help with that kindness. But I do not want to make people uncomfortable, especially if they are mentally ill. Not just because of them, but because they tend to do silly things if you rouse them. A SAK or Grampa knife is not that threatening to them, and everyone finds hearts, toys and flowers cute. So I carved a lot of them and left them at the trailside for others to find, and, hopefully, enjoy. Most of them are no longer capable of deducing that they have been carved, but some of them will, and hopefully connect carving with creating things they enjoy. Carving a delicate project really sucks with a Cold Steel SRK, and yes, I tried.
This is a really fun, quick carving project, also great for carving with kids. Carving a mushroom is relatively easy and fast.
Take a longer stick and round the tip. Carve or saw in an incision around the diametre.
Carving towards the incision, form the stem of the shroom.
Carve another incision, this time a V-shaped cut. When you have cut halfway through the wood, do another cut, this time at a right angle. This will be the bottom of the mushroom. Now carve towards the right-angle-cut. You can even form the top of the next mushroom that way. Do not carve all the way through.
Simply snap off the mushroom.
You can add tiny shavings below the head. There you go, a little mushroom.
Course we do. We do it all. And there are a lot of knives on the market designed for exactly that.
Which means that they are, at best a compromise.
I am talking about batoning. Of course, the tool of choice is an axe or hatchet if you want to split wood. Even better, a froe. If you have none, you always risk breaking your belt knife, which really sucks. Or you carry around a froe with a tip and a different handle, aka Survival knife. You can find some which are really great cutters, too, no argument necessary. But fact is, batoning puts a lot of stress on a blade.
This is how I like to do it.
Gently tap the spine of the knife so that a crack opens.
Whittle a glut or wedge.
At first, insert the glut below the edge of the blade. The knife will then be easy to remove.
With a controlled motion, using one hand to keep the wedge in the crack, turn it towards the top.
Split the branch with the wedge.
Now you have two halves, e.g for whittling a spoon.
So folks, finally a new knife post... you have asked for it, and here it is. I am personally growing really fond of some simple Swiss army knives for various reasons. Now there is nothing wrong with a good sturdy bushcraft knife, and for a backwoods outing, it will always be my primary choice. But a Swiss army knife is sort of politically more correct, as much as I hate speaking the word of these controlmongers. But that is not all there is to it. To be quite honest, there is little more you need for a stroll in the woods. I share a documentation with you with the all-famous hero of the Swiss knife, Felix Immler (visit his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/Taschenmesserbuch/videos?view=0&shelf_id=2&sort=p&app=desktop), which might open your eyes. I simply like the atmosphere of the knives. They invoque images of sitting by a creek and whittling away or having a snack with grandpa. They are a really proven design and offer a versatility few other tools can offer, but they are a bit more handy than a multi-tool plier. Also I have grown really fond of the new models with walnut scales and have used them now extensively for several years. For example, the second from right is my own Vic forester, which virtually rides in my pocket every day. The effect on the wood you can see when compared to the knife of the magic troll on the far right, which is a backup and finds its place in her EDC rucksack. The huntsman on the far left is the second knife in my pocket, because it offers some additional shears, a hook, a small blade for detail whittling and more useful tools like the awl and saw, corkscrew caplifter and can opener. My newest addition is the New ranger, which is the successor of the Wenger New Ranger. An interesting fact is that, as Wenger went bankrupt after the 9/11 incidents and the following judicial mayhem, Victorinox took over the Délemont facilities and all employees. Also they have a policy that the management must not get more than six times the salary than the lowest fee. But, fact is fact, and fact is that the New Ranger is one hell of a knife.
The knife offers beautiful walnut scales, which are, to be honest, a bit thick to my liking, but a file and some sandpaper changed that and now it is a really handy user that rolls and rocks in the hand like a cinch. Out of the box the saw and main blade came razor sharp as usual. You can bet on that... I have never encountered a Vic or Wenger knife that did not shave outta the box. A real upgrade towards the old Wenger is the tin can opener, which now cuts in a forward motion. The difference to the forester caplifter, which has a liner block, it has no locking mechanism, which makes it a little less usable as a prybar, but as is, the spring has enough stay to keep you relatively safe.
Also, the awl is now sharpened, which makes it a cinch when drilling or punching holes or repairing leather...
The corkscrew is a nice addition which also makes it a valuable addition for a nice picknick outing with a bottle of wine and some good cheese and suasage... which I admit I am a more than a bit partial to... ;-)
Like that, see? ;-)
That video is in German, but it really transports the spirit of this kind of knife. Enjoy! For some reading into the topic, look here:
On a recent bimble I came across this lovely piece of pine wood and thought to get some whittling practice in. Now many people argue you can´t do delicate stuff with a bushcraft knife... but it´s always the swimming pants if the peasant can´t swim (as we say in Germany...);-). So I thought I´d make a bear´s head. First I removed the bark
Carved a step for the ears and a second for the snout
Thinned out the snout
Made a notch for the ears with the knife´s tip.
Then I flattened the sides of the snout.
Elaborated the snout and carved in some eyes...
...more detailing work
Carved the mouth...
...like this... grrraaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr;-)!!!!
Carved out the hindmost part of the head.
Then I saw there´s an owl at the back of the head of the bear... symbolically interesting, if you ask me...;-), so next time it will be an owl... I´ll keep you posted!
