Herb Chopper for the magical sorcery troll

 Made a fast herb chopper for the most extremely bestest magical sorcery troll.

File steel,  selective quench and triple temper. 

Repairing an old sheath and progress on the Trollstein knife sheath

Well,  this is a really old and treasured knife I have had since the 1990s,  a Helle Fjellkniven in H3LS steel. I have used this really slicey cutter on and off, really hard,  and it always came back for more. 

Trouble was, the sheath was made without a welt or inlay. Actually this was less of a problem as it might seem at first glance,  because the leather was molded really intelligently to the shape of the knife. But leather gets softer with time, so the mold got loosened up and consequentially,  the blade cut through the stitching. So I removed it altogether, cut a welt and stitched everything back together with pitched twine. 

I also made a concoction to harden the leather and give the handle a bit of love. I took 3 parts spirit alcohol, 1 part spruce resin,  1 part beeswax from old candles, and 1 part turpentine oil. You can see the effect on the handles. 

I also worked on the Trollstein knife sheath. It really IS tricky to convince it to keep the knife in (see my previous post). Maybe this is why that reindeer hunter lost it in the 6th century... I think,  I will have to add some kind of retention device,  maybe some brass sheet or something like that. 

 All in all,  I really like how it all turned out...

Now to the other projects...🤣

The one beginner knife-Opinel

 Well,  folks,  this might be an unpopular opinion post. 

When I got started on blogging,  there was no such thing as a thriving bushcraft community. Of course there were people like Rüdiger Nehberg, Mors Kochanski,  Ray Mears,  Anton Lennartz and the BBQ bear, but it was a bit of a niche activity. And to be honest,  maybe it was a whole lot cooler. You know,  the way mountainbike riding was cooler. It wasn't easy to get started,  there were few people who could tell you the how-dos. And of course we all fell for movies like Rambo or other "survival " shows. On the other hand,  well,  if you used your shit,  it quickly became apparent that reality was a whole different thing. As a kid,  I broke about five Rambo knives,  as we called those hollow handle shrapnels you could get for cheap at the Hardware store. 

I got a knife as a kid that rode in my pocket most of the 45 years since I got it. I had to sharpen,  as in reprofiling the blade, this knife once in 45 years. Of course I had to strop and hone more frequently,  but I had to sharpen once. 

It was a Wenger SAK. With a saw,  nail file,  awl and stuff like that.

I also bought a cheapo Ka-Bar lookalike, which performed admirably until I lost it. Actually the tang was stronger than the original,  but the blade was quite thin. It didn't break,  though. 

Now the world has changed a lot. Survival takes place in entertainment shows and there are a lot of experts on the devil's own web,  some of whom are really great teachers,  but on the other hand those awesome teachers are rarely the ones that go viral. 

The harsh truth about survival is that survival is when you are in a liferaft fleeing a warzone with your kids,  survival is what a Ukrainian mother does when she walks 85km with her little ones on one pot of boiled potatoes in -35° Celsius,  survival is what some indigenous kids do for two weeks in the jungle after their parents died in a plane crash. The truth is that noone in their right mind would ever want to get into a survival situation. My mother walked on the hand of my grandmother all the way from Silesia to the Ruhr region in Germany,  my father survived heavy Bombardement in an air raid without a shelter. They had to survive,  and they did. I am living proof of the fact. They all had in common that they very much appreciated and loved their creature comforts afterwards. 

That is not to say it is not a good thing to know things,  to practice and train. First aid is one of the highest priorities. You don't sneak up on sentinels. And as I have said time and again,  the very notion of a knife fight is absolutely silly. You win a knife fight if you do not get into knife fights. Even combat knives most of the time just prepare food and open boxes. Knives are tools and should be seen as such. 

What most of us do in the woods,  well,  what is it? To me,  it is a lot of woodcarving and foraging, food prepping and cutting cordage and fabric. Snacking,  whittling a stick and fun projects.

The Opinel most certainly is not a heavy duty knife at all.  It is a time-proven design with some shortcomings and a lot of strengths. If it gets wet,  the blade often gets stuck in the handle, because it consists of five parts: Handle,  blade,  collar, rivet and Virobloc looking collar. If the wood of the handle gets wet,  it sponges up, increasing friction. On the other hand,  well,  there are five parts. You might destroy the knife if you abuse it,  but you could repair it forever. That said,  it is not really easy to destroy it if you use it sensibly. The Plus side is that there are few knives that are as sharp out of the box like the Opinel. You can,  for example,  cut wobbly mushrooms freehand. The grind is a very high and thin convex bevel to zero. Making feather sticks isn't easy at first,  because you tend to cut all the way through the stick at first due to the slicey grind. You can use the spine to strike sparks from a ferro rod,  but also as a steel for striking a flint. The knife,  even the biggest ones,  for the 12 and 13 are almost sword-like, are ridiculously light in your pocket.  Food prep is where the knives really excel,  so much in fact that the magical sorcery troll and myself use the 12 in the kitchen instead of our not exactly crappy kitchen lasers. The knives are well balanced and can also be used for delicate carving tasks.  Carving tent pegs,  spoons,  forks and whatever takes next to no time. Herbs and mushrooms simply fall apart. 

The knives are light enough not to notice them in your pocket. They look civilized,  and are so socially acceptable that the name is held synonymous with folding knives in French dictionaries. It is perfectly legal in Germany and even in the UK,  the smaller ones will normally be acceptable in legal reason contexts, say,  gardening or hiking and foraging.  It is a survival knife because it is more probable that you have something like that on you when you get into a less than agreeable situation.  

And the simplicity is inviting your creative impulses. Opinel even offers chunkier handles for you to carve. It can be truly yours afterwards.  

The culprit,  however,  is that price. The simple carbon models cost up to 25€ today. So,  if you want to get started,  get yourself one. It is not perfect,  but actually you could change that with very simple tools. Maybe I can walk you through the process in a future post,  so stay tuned! 

Thank you for reading,  cheers!

A sheath for the Trollstein knife

Made a simple sheath for the new Trollstein knife trial piece. Just quick and dirty is all, but I already found out something. 

 These are the first trial pieces. The one on the right is closer to the original shape. It is made from 80CrV2 steel with a selective temper (see previous post). As you can see,  it follows a leaf shape,  making it quite wide at the blade,  wider than the blade.  

The handle,  however,  gets significally thinner towards the blade. 

Period sheaths were a bit like the one I made (the ones that did survive,  that is), but,  for the most part,  even more simple,  lacking a welt and not following the contour as much.  

They also lacked any kind of securing device,  of course. With a sheath like that,  both the broad blade and thin handle will make it quite tricky to achieve a good retention in the sheath.

I will achieve this with the use of spirit alcohol and secret processes and hot-waxing making it almost as snappy as a kydex sheath. Maybe even a clip made from copper or bronze or bone,  but most of the period pieces lacked that. 

So I want to propose that maybe the properties of the sheath, which are quite certain, might have contributed to the owner losing it. As I said,  mine will stay in, but it is a really tricky thing to make a sheath for the blade shape. 

Anyway,  really looking forward to using this knife. 

Thoughts on the Trollstein knife

 So I am in a really fascinating process of recreating the Trollstein knife,  a knife that had been found in the glacier melt near Trollsteinen in Norway in March 2023 by Secrets Of The Ice archaeology. 

Now people who know me know that while I have a strong fascination with all things historical and archaeological,  I also want to know how those things worked and whether or not they would still work. I believe in check, check and doublecheck whether a technological Innovation really benefits our everyday- or not. We have been sold a lot of BS (and that is getting worse), nuff said. 

What we have here is a real knife used for a kind of bushcraft we cannot even imagine. For while,  to be quite honest,  for most people including myself,  it might be a leisure activity or maybe even a lifestyle,  they most certainly not even called it any special name at all then, because it was simply life reality in those days. 

In our time we have very specific things we want from a knife. And while it is a good thing we are able just to walk inside a shop and buy the latest tool with a steel of precise specifications, we tend to dismiss anything that the industry doesn't hype. 

The original (see my previous post) is roundabout 1400-1600 years old. You can bet that it saw some pretty hard use before the owner lost the tool,  and it suffered a huge load and immense force and pressure from the ice drift. The tang and handle are bent. That's the damage it suffered. And it is pretty much good to go. Put an edge on it,  and it will cut again. 

We like to put knives to extreme tests and even destruction. That is pretty okay and understandeable. 

The test this knife has been through is the most extreme I could think of and it is neigh on impossible to duplicate it. Not that it would make any sense at all,  but it is a fact.  

Thing is,  if I posted the knife in a lot of bushcraft groups,  I can imagine the kind of arguments that would arise instantly. You know,  "but batoning " and "survival " and "tactical settings". Hard use,  you know. Not that sissy reindeer hunting,  woodcarving,  building traps, butchering and processing firewood and what have you. The knife doesn't even have a full tang,  mind you! 

Fact is,  I have built these two first knives to see what they are capable of. Or better yet,  what I can do with these knives. They are not as close as I would like them to be,  but about as close as I can get without handling and measuring the original. The first one is made from file steel and quite close to the original as far as the blade is concerned and the general shape and layout of the handle  are concerned. On the second I stuck more to the shape of blade and handle cross section,  but added bronze bolster and peening disc and a bit of a finger notch. That blade is made from 80CrV2 with a selective temper,  an awesome steel that I am just coming to terms with. Balance point on both knives is on the index finger. 

Using the knives I can safely say that I cannot say much,  and in the best of ways. Everything simply falls into place. And this is not due to a special achievement on my part. The design simply does everything. It is awesome for food prepping,  cutting meat and Slöjd. No,  it is not the next hyped survival knife. But if you know what you are doing,  it really COULD be a one-tool-option.

It almost certainly was for the hunter who lost it in presumeably the 6th century. That is humbling.