Another flea market find with a story to tell

 Okay, the recent post was a very good example of a knife that tells a story, and here comes another: This knife I found only but recently on a local flea market. It is a variant of a Solingen classic, but also a knife that has seen use all over the world. It has a carbon steel "Säbelskniep" (clip point) main blade, a stainless steel pen blade, and a corkscrew. The knife obviously has seen some vast reworking. It has one nickel silver and one brass bolster, the pivot is a substitute, and the scales also had seen some reworking.

 The spring bear the engraving "Gerd Sarwatzky", apparently the name of the owner. Of course, the knife is a slipjoint. Note the minimal tolerances between bolster and blade; the gap towards the iron liner came to be because of aging. The owner certainly knew a thing or two about metal working.

 The reverse side of the knife.

And another detail of the engraving.

As I already said in the previous post, this is another example of a lovingly repaired tool, and it is obvious this knife has served the owner long and well, and he was proud of it. He also knew how to repair it. What I want to show is, that doing repairs like these was a commonplace in those times not so long ago.

While it somewhat compromised the clean look of the tool, I daresay the owner loved it even more for it, for by doing so, it became "his" tool even more, which becomes evident in the fact that he engraved it. It was a very personal item. A knife was, and is, in general, a very personal item, and thusly I indicate once more, that it is a very essential part of our culture. It certainly was used for all the little challenges of everyday life, and it was used long and caringly, as evident in the negative, somewhat "recurve" line of the main blade, which hints of a long period of sharpening intervals. Since there are no coarse grinding marks or even heat colour signs on the blade, the negative line cannot be due to unskilled sharpening, but is rather due to avery long time of servicing. So, it became a part of everyday life of the owner, constituting, if not a huge part of his life and interactions with his surroundings, so still an intelligible one.

Get the gist?;-)

Shelf find- a multitool courtesy of my laid father

 I rummaged through the shelves at my mother´s home recently and found this multitool that sat in the pocket of my laid father wherever he went. Philips head and flat head screwdrivers, awl, rasp, file, and I remember a saw and knifeblade also, but those are lost.

 Stored in the hollow handle... the handle is made from translucent yellow plastic, which is ugly, but that was the style in those days...

This is how the tools are being mounted. A bronze holder with two kinds of slots for different tools. The tools have notches that fit in the slots. Simple as that. I dream of making something like that that is more pleasing to the eye and hand, but as is, this tool will find a place on my crane bag.

*φoutanjā-lugra-moros! Progress on my Kopis

 Today I had a rare day competely off, and I worked on my Kopis knife. Here´s a shot of the work in progress.First I did the lineout with a v-shaped wood chisel. Did the contours first and worked from the outside to the inside. Be sure to "charpen your chisel":-) frequently! It was a funny sight but did not surprise me any, that the chisel made perfectly spiral - shaped shavings. Just a coincidence, of course, but nice indeed:-). I worked the transitions by sanding and checking and cutting the knot with a small mini locksmith´s file.

 Then it was the spirals, and some sanding. I will now clean up the incisions, and then it will be a reindeer or stag antler/silver/leather sheath. And I will write the Ogham-inspired poem the knife itself gave to me:-)

New project: Broken back Hadseax

 This is a broken back Hadseax blade I forged some time ago. It´s made from a 300 layer/120 layer/ four bar damascus out of tank bearing and tank cannon steel by Matthias Zwissler. The tang has an angle to it to compensate for one flaw of the design: The cutting ability on flat surfaces. Have to flatten the convex bevel some and rework the fuller a bit, for I used power tools and did it free hand.

The handle will be either carved reindeer antler or a combination of birchwood burl and reindeer, or even a stag antler handle with a copper ferrule. I am still at it.