Alas, long time, no post again. Not because I had nothing to say or nothing to do, in the contrast... This is one of my latest and most time - consuming projects. On a dark new moon´s (sickle moon´s night, to be exact) I wandered home from a visit at my old mother´s and found a tiny piece of ancient chisel... enough to make this "Jagdnicker" style knife from it. I like the idea of the Drudenmesser (http://www.fuhrmannsmesser.de/html/drudenmesser.html) an apotropaic style of knife that was common in the Alpine regions of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Northern Italy. It served the purpose as a ritual knife to ward off the "Drud", a mythological figure in folk lore which was sometimes a human witch and sometimes a "night-mare", in the sense of the word. Only that the witch is me and the apotropaion I really need has to work against a very special kind of nightmare-some human beings. And I am NOT talking about necessarily sticking a pointy object into other people, not at all, to be precise. But having been a subject of mobbing, deadbashing and other totally socially acceptable demeanour by my fellow human beings has made me feel more at home in moonlit woods than in the neonlight of cities. Humans, generally speaking, are this planet´s nightmare. So the concept is situated in my local mythology. How would the apotropaic knife of the fair folk in my local mythology look like, I ask?
The owl is a nocturnal creature, swift and silent, as are the Dhiudha na nIamparai...
And the fox is a psychopomp in their spirituality. Dhiudha who practice spiritual exercise (magic) and a special kind of "magical" martial art are called "*vautiskibareannai" (borne by the fox/vixen) in the Dhiudha language round these parts... sorry for the blurry pics...
The fox is an ambiguous creature, sometimes cuddly, sometimes cruel, but always wild and striding in the night.
The knife is selectively tempered. I estimate the hardness of the edge to about 58 HRC. Handle is stag antler (flea market find). Blade length is 100 mm, tapering from 4-2 mm. The grind is a convex bevel, 1mm abovethe edge it is 0,3mm thick. The steel offers a very fine grain and a structure of refined steel or crucible damascus (Wootz). It will be in for a buttcap and sheath now... Mine, all mine... :-P
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