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.  

Máandevvos es báren!

 This is a project that has taken quite some time and energy to make-and was great fun to accomplish. It is a kind of talisman to me, for there is another unlikely Fimbulmyrk tale involved. Some of my faithful readers already know that some years ago I was strolling home through a moonlit forest, when I came across a fox on its prowl, and this fox was quite certainly not acting as a fox should do. Seeing my headlamp, he actually came over to me. At first I thought he was being rabid, and was very cautious, of course, but he did not show any symptoms apart from that and after a closer scrutiny appeared cautious himself. He approached me with some kind of cautious interest. So I went into a crouch and greeted him. He sniffed at my hand, and when I got up again, he looked up and walked beside me. And then I saw an old chisel embedded in the trail. Of course I took it home.

The fox left me at the edge of the woods and went back on its merry way. And the moon shone bright.

So, after quite a while, I decided to make a knife from the piece of scrap.

Let me refer to that talisman thing. It´s far more simple, of course, and I am not quite sure if I should call it that name in the first. For there is a weird and wonderful thing that had happened to me, a plain wonder, and I cherish the memory, even the imminent danger in it. I am full aware of the fact that the fox COULD have had rabies and that I might be dead by now. I might also have been dead after riding through a lightning storm and lightning strike, but, fact is, I am still alive. And do not get me wrong, I am not fond of danger at all, but fact is also, life is a constant imminent lethal danger we face. And I am not seeking the brush of death. It is always there, that´s the one certainity we all have.

As is, it is a weird, wonderful and fond memory of sharing in with a wild, wild animal, an animal known for its stealth and cautiousness. And that chisel just was a piece of scrap metal.

I made a knife from it. Period. Nothing more... but nothing less.

There is this local legend about a wanderer who was given a fox as a guide through the darkness of the underground dwarven realms. It is a story. Nothing more... but nothing less.

The chisel and the knife are of no significance.

But they make a wonderful kind of sense to me. The knife is a story, my life is a story, and I live it. Nothing more, and nothing less. Life is sometimes a shitty mess. A good knife can help you out of a lot of fixes (and I am talking cutting cord, preparing meals, whittling little helpful things and opening boxes :-)) And when I look at this knife, I know that life actually has a stronger, deeper sense than a world of significance and matter wants to sell to you. When I remember the story, I am full of hope, because I do not have to have to make-believe (no offence meant), for I KNOW. When I look at the "talisman", therefore I hope. And it helps me out in a very concrete manner. The blade cuts like a razor, being a high carbon crucible steel with tungsten and a carbon content of roundabout 0,9%.

 Keeping the story of the dwarven guide in mind, I choose bog oak for a handle, that lay submerged in iron oxide water for some 100 years in an old coal mine in the Muttental.

 I already made a dangler sheath for it with a handforged swan´s neck dangler.

 Lousy picture, I freely admit ;-)...

Overall, it is a new story in my life that helps me keeping up my work... I like it.

Progress on Maandevos-Maandevos wiärd báren!

In the thicket, under the crescent moon... the fox is hiding on its prowl.

In the dark soil, rich and of musky scent, a bar of steel did hide for decades...

Steel it is of skillful provenience, ardent and valiant, and yet pitted deeply by the ravaging rust; once it was smelted to achieve true temper... and the smiths laboured with all their might to produce a bar from the ingot, a chisel from the bar of steel. It was used to near extinction, beaten and battered and ground anew until little did remain of it... decades of hard use and pounding it saw... and then it hid in the tracks of deer and the wild boar. The owl flew above the soil where it was hidden, and the fox trod over it on its hunt.

And the crescent moon shone.

And in the tracks of fox and boar, of deer and hare I saw it, submerged in the musky earth, where death and life reign supreme. The forge was lit with roaring fire, and again a smith did labour long and carefully to pound the metal and forge into it the fangs of the fox, the light of the crescent moon, the graceful and lithe roebuck and the furious boar.

As of yet, it has seen no temper and no quench - but soon the time will come when it will be lying in the roaring embers to incorporate the mighty fire, too.

Thus it will sing.

Thus it will bite.

OTB-new project knife

 This my latest conceptual work. I found another chisel in the woods, and on the detour, I met a fox in the moonlight... so I came up with an idea for a byknife for Úlenklawe named Maandevos (Monn-Fox)

The chisel had a carbon content of...yeah... that´s not that easy to say... for it contains a lot of Tungsten. I can tell you: Forging was not exactly easy. It´s a fully integral design that shall be engraved and inlaid... but engraving proves to be a bit arduous...;-) even if it is thoroughly annealed now...

I am a bit proud of my forging... seems I got something right.:-)

Skogsrunar iak minni.

Rummaging through my chaotic drawers and the scrap heaps in my attic-turned-home:-) I came across this relic of a bygone past. This is an old knife I made long ago in my old home in the woods (Alas! This time will never come back:-/), in a happier time when life still made some more sense (might be I was young then and had tiny sorrows and now I am not and have not:-)).

I forged this blade under a starlit winter sky, with the sound of owls hooting and wild deer and pigs rustling in the underbrush. The fox was watching the roaring forge in the twilight, and hare and porcupine and the humble mice and the birds of the night were looking on. I forged this blade as a three-layer laminate out of rebar and file steel, and it was one of my first attempts. Thence there were still pine and spruce and pinion trees swaying in a gentle breeze, before the storm "Kyril" laid them low. The blade was mounted several years ago, however, when I had already left my home near the lake, and I made a handle out of reindeer antler with a simple dragon head carving, a copper ferrule, and a runic inscription with a somewhat "pidgin";-) Old Norse motto: "Skogsrunaminni" should mean: "(I) remember (the) forest´s runes". It should be a talisman against the hellish noise and circumstances I now live in, and so far it has succeeded to keep the memory alive, and always will. Other than that, being selectively tempered in an urine concoction after the "Wein artzt" (17something), it´s a mean cutter, too. I still like it, and I will make a new sheath for it. The knife and its message deserve it.

A wonderful bimble with the magic troll;-)

I visited the magic troll last weekend. It has been quite some time, and I deeply regret that, but life is not always good to us. It felt simply good to spend time with the person I love most in the world, but that is private;-). Anyway, we went for a bimble in the sunny hills above her home and simply enjoyed each other´s company and the weather and nature which is slowly awakening from a long winter´s slumber.

A pale winter sun still, but a sun it was, and it warmed our souls. We silently, smilingly wandered through this wonderful light and into the forest.

This ancient spruce stood beside the trail,

... and in the hedge there was this abandoned bird´s nest.

The sun went lower, and over MUDDY;-) puddles and leftover snow we came to a bench beside the trail...

And the magic troll was so excited to take a break she had to dance out of joy!!!!*ggg*

We sat there snuggled together, had a cuppa tea from our wooden pints;-) and enjoyed a beautiful sunset. As we sat there, we observed a fox strolling by on his own business, seemingly completely ignorant to the fact that there were a lot of people around. My favourite person made some photos, and watch her blog for ´em!

As the light drew to a close, we observed a herd of roe deer in the distance, grazing there unscathed by our presence, too. It was a very energizing outing again.

We have to do that again soon!;-)

Fox´s head pendant

 I made a fox´s head pendant as an amulet. If you´ve read my posts, you know that the fox as an animal means something to me, and I made it from a piece of birchwood I found near the Hünenpforte cave.

 

 That´s the knife that did it;-). Zwissler damascus, with a leather wrapping and a Kopis blade.

I then simply cut it from the stick I carved it from, drilled a hole and dyed it with linseed oil, spruce resin, and ritual paint consisting mainly out of incense, pitch, linseed oil, beeswax and soil;-).

An Triskell - DÄRÄRDDE!!!!

I just started this spontaneous painting. It was almost in an act of Zen. Nothing fancy, just a Triskell, if it were made with ordinary paint, but it is made from ritual paint I made from soil taken from the stronghold of the giant´s gate. I don´t know what will become of it, I just felt like doing so. To me, it symbolizes the virile power, and my inspiration at the moment is testament to that.

Following the fox-a spiritual bimble to the Hünenpforte (giant´s gate)

 I was feeling a bit queasy*ggg* all day and thought of foxes.... erm, WE thought of foxes all the time*ggg*.

 So I remembered the local legend of the "giant´s gate" (Hünenpforte):


"Ein armer Wanderer war vom Rheine hergekommen und wollte nach Limburg an der Lenne. Ein Stündchen hinter Schwelm, nicht weit von Voerde. fragte er nach dem nächsten Wege. Der Gefragte war ein Zwerg und gab zur Antwort:„Der kürzeste Weg geht durch den Berg. Hier ist der Eingang. Doch damit du nicht irregehst, so nimm diesen Fuchs mit dir! Du brauchst dich nur an seinem Schwanze festzuhalten, so bringt er dich sicher ans Ziel." Unser Wandersmann befolgte den Rat und kam in die Klutert, eine Höhle mit vielen Gängen, die sich stundenweit ins Gebirge erstreckt.
Nicht immer konnte er aufrecht gehen; manchmal musste er auf allen Vieren kriechen; immer hielt er jedoch den Fuchsschwanz fest. So sah er endlich den Ausgang schimmern. Da hörte er plötzlich ein sonderbares Geräusch. Vorsichtig streckte er seinen Kopf heraus. Wie erschrak er, als er dicht vor sich auf dem Rasen einen gewaltigen Riesen sah, der sich im Schlafe geschüttelt hatte!
Rasch versteckte er sich in den Felsspalten der Höhle. doch so, dass er den Riesen immer im Auge behielt. Der erwachte mit großem Geschnarche, richtete sich auf er war wohl sieben Ellen hoch - reckte sich und stöhnte, dass die Felsen widerhallten. Dann schritt er zur nahen Quelle, füllte sein mächtiges Horn und nahm seinen Mittagstrunk. Endlich aber wendete er die Nase nach allen vier Winden. „Es muss ein Mensch in der Nähe sein“, sprach er bei sich, doch so, dass der arme Wicht in der Höhle jedes Wort verstehen konnte.„ „Wie gut sollte er mir schmecken, wenn ich ihn nur hätte! Hungrig bin ich ja noch; die drei Häschen, die ich heute erst gespeist, haben mich noch nicht satt gemacht!“ Er fing an zu fluchen und stöberte zwischen allen Felsen umher; nur dachte nicht daran, in die Höhle zu blicken. Denn dass der Mensch da zu finden sein könne, fiel ihm nicht ein. So entging ihm die Beute. Er wusste sich endlich vor Zorn und Wut nicht mehr zu fassen, riss Bäume aus mit ihren Wurzeln und wälzte sie den Berg hinab; auch mächtige Steinblöcke riss er los und schleuderte sie ins Tal. Bis dahin hatte der arme Hans immer noch seinen Fuchs festgehalten. Als er aber das grässliche Getöse vernahm, erschrak er so, dass er den Fuchsschwanz fahren ließ. Der Fuchs ließ sich`s nicht zweimal sagen, dass er nun frei sein sollte. Voller Freude sprang er aus der Höhle heraus und an dem Riesen vorbei in den Wald. Der Riese lief mit großen Schritten hinter ihm her und erhob sein Jagdgebrüll, das wie Donner rollte. Aber es ward immer schwächer, je mehr sich der Riese von der Höhle entfernte, und unserem Reisenden kam die alte Munterkeit wieder. Er eilte aus seinem Versteck hervor und lief spornstreichs hinunter nach Limburg, das vor ihm im Sonnenstrahl erglänzte. Aber es dauerte noch einige Zeit, bis er sein fröhliches Lied wieder anstimmen konnte. Seit der Zeit wird die Öffnung der Höhle, vor der der Wandersmann den Riesen getroffen hat, das Hünentor genannt." From:http://kudg-holthausen.de/holthausen/interessantes/huenenpforte/sage-huenenpforte.htm


I translate:


"Once upon a time, a poor wanderer, coming from Rheine, wanted to get to Limburg at the Lenne. One hour of travel after Schwelm he met a dwarf in Voerde and asked him of the direction. He replied: The shortest passage is the one through the mountain. Here is the entrance. And unto you should not go amiss, I give this fox to you. he knows well where to go. Cling to his tail, and he will guide you." The wanderer took the advice and came into the Klutert cave, which is a  widespread tunnel system reaching for hours deep into the mountains, and always did he cling to the fox´s tail, until he saw daylight. But how frightened was he when he learned that near the entrance slept a giant, well over ten feet high! With a mighty roar he awoke, shuffled over to the nearby well and filled his giant drinking horn and took his lunchtime drink. Finally he sniffed along the four winds and muttered: "There must be a human  around!How well must he taste, for I have but eaten three little hares today, and they could not satisfy me!" He started to curse under his breath and rummaged around the cave, between the rocks, and by the well, but that the wanderer was in hiding in the cave, he could not think of. So he could not find the poor wanderer, who sat there in hiding, utterly frightened, and he was getting more and more furious.And the wanderer cowered ever lower in his hiding, until he let go of the fox´s tail. The fox ran away, and passed the giant. And the giant let go his hunting roar and pursued the animal, and ever farther away from the cave the fox led him. The wanderer, however, escaped and finally arrived at Limburg, but it was a long time until he found his blissful song again."

 The weather was being fine, and the woods were murky... a very special atmosphere lingers around the place, and I took it in in deep breaths. The saga is old. Could it be that the dwarf and the fox might act as psychopomps? Is there a Shamanic background? The Klutert cave has never had a connection to the Hünenpforte geologically. So why has the saga been told that way? Is it a case of simple analogy? Who is this giant? Local legends often have an older saga as  a predecessor, and you can rely on dwarfs, giants, animals, white women and other figures and personae relating back to pagan times. The older versions were corrupted for several reasons:

-folkloristic trading often leads to many things getting lost in the process
-Christian monasterical recording in most cases corrupted local legends by purpose
-Adaptation of graver topics as child-adequate in the enlightment movement
-Romanticism often went to grave libetries with the subject

If you know how it was being made, you get a grammar as to how the subject might have been changed.

 The path is narrow, though, and truth is hard to find;-) and the trail was narrow and difficult indeed, with a good deal of climbing involved.

 Raspberries were blossoming.

 Evergreen covered the ground, thick as a matress. There was this contrast of light and murk everywhere. I passed by the ruins of an ancient tower. 

 Submerged deep in the green, there lies the arch of the giant´s gateway, all but undisturbed by the roaring traffic on the highway below.

 Into the darkness I ventured, deep into the stronghold of the earth.

 At the entrance, at the side with the well, there was this "rock formation";-). Below it someone had heaped roses and wildflowers, draped systematically. There, I offered my respect to the place and the force of the land, and to the Earth mother, and I sat down and meditated.

 It was happening when I was deep in meditation when a pointed nose and two pointed ears, clad in red fur looked around the corner. In broad daylight, a fox came by the place. It was so unreal, I was asking myself if I was dreaming. Of course, I fumbled my camera. And he seemed to grin as he went on his merry way. I wished him a good journey. I was sitting there, quite amazed, but with a deep peace filling my heart and soul.

I left the place.

 Through the giant´s gate I went, into the enchanted sunlight.

And on my way back, a legend was forming in my mind.

Watch this place;-).