New sheath for my bushcraft knife-and thoughts on Tribal knifemaking

 

So it has been a while coming, and I went for it rather carefully... I had found an old chisel in the woods, which eventually became that bushcraft knife. In the process I had learned it was apparently crucible steel, to be precise, which shows a "Wootz" pattern. To be quite honest, I am not quite sure what to make of that "Wootz" pattern. Petr had looked at some variants of that steel and just said it was due to "uneven carbon distribution". Now that´s a bit of a redundancy, because the dendrite structures in Wootz that are responsible for the pattern also could be called that name.

 

 

Now, it is my personal knife, and I don´t want to sell it. It´s hair-splitting sharp and keeps an edge very well. The shape makes it rather dexterous, and the pattern looks cool to me, so there really is no need to tell.

 

 

Nonetheless, I love this kind of knifemaking a lot. The steel is somewhat "arcane" to me, and the resulting knife more than just a piece of steel with an edge on it. There is an adventure involved in making these things. Chance is, you get crap when you hunt for crap, but sometimes, and more often than not, you can find some right treasures if you look carefully. It is like a hunt.

Now I thought a lot about the sheath, doing some dangler rings and mountings and fittings and putting in a firesteel. But fact is, I have made sheaths like that, and I realized only but recently that there is one real bummer: I just tend not to wear them. So I made a simple sheath that can be worn quite discretely, feels comfy and does not feel like a bag of screws hanging from your belt ;-).

The sheath is quenched in a soda solution in spirit, wet-formed and hot-waxed and treated with violin veneer and then cold-waxed and oil-polished. It feels nearly as firm as Kydex and has a right snap to it. It was somewhat of an experiment, but it worked out fine.

I am still thinking about adding some carving to the handle´s end, or fitting in some silver intarsia, but I am not really sure if it would not foul up a design that´s good as is. But I am still thinking about it. Maybe a little later....;-)

In any case I will keep you posted!

On the bench and no philosophy-promise;-)!

These are my current projects for a change. Above there´s a knife project I really like these days. I have done  a lot of research on German knife culture recently. I like studying different bladesmithing cultures but found I knew too little about our own traditions. Plus, I like the German hunting knife, the so - called "Jagdnicker" as an all round companion for the woods- simply out of practical reasons. It has been a design that has been around for centuries and used for bushcraft and hunting chores as long as it has evolved. I plan on writing something about this style of knife soon. In the meantime you can have a look at my pinterest pinboard : German knife culture, where I put together everything I found concerning the topic.

Anyway, the Jagdnicker is made from an old lathe chisel I found in the woods, presumeably HSS or refined steel. Handle will be Sambar stag. The blade is 95mm long, and 6mm at the base with a convex bevel and a selective temper.  

Below is the bushcraft knife that has been around for quite a while. Wootz with elk antler scales fitted with mosaic pins. The quench line shows quite nicely. The blade is 115 mmx5mm and has a balance point on the index finger.

I also made some file work for the tang... I like it and it´s now waiting for a sheath.

More details on the Jagdnicker design.

As is, I look forward to those two knives, and I will keep you posted!

Getting born from the forest´s twilight-Úlenkláwe wiärd báren...

 Slowly rising from the depth of my thoughts, from the deeper regions of my soul and the deep of the rich, black soil, from a wood contaminated with waste and poison, steel rose to the surface, neglected by all but me. A chisel I found and lit my forge. I assumed it was a modern HSS steel...

...but it is not. For the first time being, a really distinct Wootz pattern showed. I forged a Sica from it.

In the Roman empire, a lot of styles of blades were imported from all over the empire. The Sica, hailing from the Dacian people´s realm, and the sickle knife of the cisalpine Celtic people, and some Semitic styles blended into each other to form a knife that saw a lot of use as an everyday knife.

But as empires as totalitarian regimes always have enemies within, there was a group of people named the "Sicarii", back alley cut-throats and murderers who set out on Roman executive. The Sica thus was getting a somewhat sinister reputation. Roman knife - laws banned non-native inhabitants of Rome from using knives longer than one "palmus" (roundabout 76 mm blade length). Suffice to say that back-alley murderers just hid their sicae in their flowing tunics and cloaks. Assassination of Roman executives reached a soaring height afterwards. So much for the efficiency of knife-laws.

While I am not at all agreed with any assassin and believe that violence can never be a solution, but in fact poses a problem, the very shape of the blade is an expression of all things wild. Following the line of a golden ratio spiral, it exemplifies one of the ways life is sprouting from the forest´s soil that is so rich with secrets and life. And like a fern´s sprouting sapling rises from the dark, steel that has long been lying submerged under scales of flaking rust, is reborn into the light. It reaps the herbs and due to its very origin, it is a talisman to me. It speaks of life and death, and its ambivalence is that of the forest´s sic et non. While the line of the edge points forward like a whiplash, the triskell points into the other direction to calm the dynamics; the phallic line on the blade itself goes back into the notch that serves the same function as the cho on a Khukhuri. The meanders on the handle again work into the other direction of the triskell.

While things do not fall against gravity, so to say, there is a way magic works. It works its way from root and grain and soil and soul-into the world.

On the bench these days - a viking shrubbery lore;-) knife from steel I found in the woods

 Now this was a most interesting find. On a recent stroll through my backdoor woods;-) (NO!PUN!INTENDED!*ggg*) I found a piece of steel, somewhat crescent-shaped with something like a tang protruding from it. It looked as if someone had disposed of a knife in the middle of the forging process. It was rotten with rust, and a strange blooming sort of rust characteristical for high-carbon steels and had some strange jingling, ringing sound when I hit it to a stone so I thought I would rescue it and do something with it. I had called Willy and offended him (sorry, dude, again!) if I could book a smithing tutorial with him to take care of the judicial problems I was faced with at the smithy at Volker´s. To make double sure, I also called Volker, and I was surprised, for he offered me some conditions I still have to contemplate. Bad ones, but still, it´s a smithy...

So off to Witten after a long time again. It wasn´t easy for me to swallow my pride again (and again, and again, and again), but flesh will not last, but steel is eternal. I had this piece of steel that had waited for me for a long, long time, and that wanted to be a knife, no, it screamed to be one. It was not easy to forge, being a high-carbon (spark analysis was like a fireworks...) one and me not wanting to ruin it all;-). But, following the pre-form that long - forgotten anonymous smith had given it, I made a knife from it. The steel is somewhat strange, in that it showed a distinctive pattern after quenching. At first I heat-treated it quite conservatively resulting in a less than ideal temper. Testing it, I realized it had an abnormal amount of flexibility so I pushed the envelope a bit. Still it felt soft in the edge... until I chopped brass and antler with it. Weird. 

 

 The blade tapers towards the tip... The handle will see quite a lot of work still of course. It´s made from reindeer antler and a brass bolster plate.

If you look closely you can see a hint of the pattern that showed. The blade measures in at a "highly illegal" ;-) 14 cm, but I will make a sheath and a case for it that locks. It will come in handy, for it is well balanced and without any stropping whatsoever is already bitingly sharp. It will make a good bushcraft and re-enactment knife, I guess.

My thanks go to Willy without whom this knife would not have been possible, and to Volker, even if I still have my grave reservations.

I will keep you posted on the progress and of the name-finding process...

Most interesting flea market find from way back then

 I had been in a cleaning up and tidying frenzy, and in the progress came across this knife I had had lying around in some forgotten drawer for ages. I remember once having purchased it years ago from "Khalil", one of my favourite liars;-) on the Schwelm flea market. It is presumeably of Kurdish, Turkish, Greek or Syrian provenience. The shape is common to Crete or Greece. I got it cheap, can´t exactly say for how much now, I remember 15€, but maybe even less. It had been dulled. Now, when I was tidying up I took it out and thought, okay, where´s the harm, gotta do something different to refresh, and took out the old diamond hone and the strop. It apparently was very hard in the edge, but the first real eye-opener came, when I took it to the strop and heard a very high ringing sound. It took, if that´s at all possible, a sharpness higher than razor-sharpness. I have never seen a knife split a hair that easily, and when I tested it against the hair of the back of my head, it cut right through them. I was surprised by its flexibility, though. I bent it full circle, and it came out straight.

 Its blade is very thin, and I was cooking some stew and diced some onions, and it made short terms with them. It built up oxide fast, though. It was then that I realized the oxidation showed a strange pattern...

 Like this, see? Readers of my blog might be accustomed to this pattern. It is not your average common welded damascus.

 If you look closely, you can discover something like darker areas, just like carbon islands.

Of course, I cannot say for sure, but overall I have the strong suspicion that this is a genuine Wootz / Pulad blade. And even if it´s not, it is as fierce a cutter as anyone could wish for in a kitchen. Due to its ruggedness it would make an excellent bushcraft knife, too, but alas, it is no legal carry at 190 mm blade length. Maybe I´ll just make a sheath for it no less, maybe with a possibility to put on some locking device to hinder immediate access. Do I love this knife? It´s becoming more of an obsession than a love;-).

And, let me mention this: This is a genuine tribal knife at its best. In its home country, it might have been made by a village smith of the highest skill level. Even if it has ebony scales and a beautiful brass inlay, its finish would not draw any attention to a potential Western collector at all (it escaped mine for years). But its ruggedness is up to par, if not superior to knives four times thicker in the spine. Knives like this are used in their respective home countries for everything, from kitchen tasks to whittling to butchering, cutting food and wood and meat alike. They are a tool for everything, loved, but loved no less for the fact that they see some pretty hard use.

It requires an extraorbitant skill to make. I am only just learning how to quench blades that thin without damage and then having the patience to grind them down even more without overheating the blade. Blades that can do feats like this one does have received the highest concentration in every step of the fabrication process. They are made at the absolute limit of the material properties and stand for a highly developed manufacturing culture. They are not fancy, but great.

On the bench - a variety of ancient crucible steel blades and some thoughts on steel and mythology

 I have altogether too much projects going on to date, but I am always afraid I will not be able to use the smithy in winter, so, better too much lying around than nothing at all. This is a most current project I am very fond of. I forged this "Iscian" knife on Samhain eve out of steel I found in the woods. The pattern does not show yet, but I guess it´s a very high carbon steel at least, maybe Pulad. I found this ingot in the woods near my home, and it was very hard to process. It had to be forged at a temperature of about 950 degrees Celsius, give or take 20-50 degrees, and you had to go very light on it. So it was a light hammer and much patience that even made the material for this blade. But it paid off. This blade sings, I can´t tell it any other way. I edge - quenched it with a very conservative tempering, and still the edge has an estimated hardness of 62 HRC, while remaining springy enough to emanate a faint ringing sound even when you just take it up. In bad fantasy novels swords sound like that;-). I love that.

 I forged a double scroll that did not quite turn out too well, but I guess, you still need room for improvement;-).

 I have to work on the grind still. The blade is still thicker towards the tip. As is, I will either fit yew, blackthorn, stag or bog oak scales to it, and I am thinking of inlaying three thorns of blackthorn into the handle... but we´ll see.

 Out of the same steel I have forged a set of knives which I find ideal as a backwoods kit. Top to bottom: Nessmuk, 115 mm long blade, Kopis, 160 mm long, and a whittling knife with a 90 mm blade.

 Top: Spine thickness at 4 mm.

 The Kopis has a thickness with a taper from 6 mm at the handle to 2 mm at the tip.

 The whittling knife is rather thin at 3mm.

 Below the knife blade you can see some of the material, and if you look closely, you can see a certain structure or even layers in it.

Like this, see? I know, I can rant on endlessly about steel and carbon contents. This ingot has an estimated carbon content of about 1,3%, which made it difficult to forge at best. I look forward to these knives, and is a very intense experience. The objects made from this steel emanate a strange energy. It is an almost mystical experience finding and seeking this material in the backwoods, cleaning and processing it and turning the scrap metal into a knife that is more than just a tool or even an object of the arts. It is like telling and living a story, and is more than just metallurgy. I find it very hard to explain, but the singing of that Iscian on top of this post is more than just a result of the quenching and tempering process. It is a violent song that the trees have found for the torture of the woods, for the pollution and waste that has been done to the forest. It is not altogether a positve energy. It is dark and vibrant like the dark side of the woods, like death and decay and the opening of gates better left alone. But open they do, and Samhain is the very essence of this. This Iscian will be the "opener of the gates", the guardian at the gate of the turning wheel.

But, mythology set aside, I hope that these knives, or rather objects, will be poetry for me in the years to come, and they have opened up a new path for me. Not the path of the sword, which I always believed I was on, but that of a more sublime symbol.

"Knife, and chain, and bow- cauldron, speech and goblet, too. Staff and jewel, ring and mask."

And I look forward to complete them this winter.;-)