I was out fishing again last weekend with our neighours
On Saturday I caught a Rainbow trout using my “Pocket fishing kit” and on Sunday I caught an Arctic Char.
I have also completed another knife.
The knife handle is made from Reindeer and Moose horn, Sallow root bur and leather. The sheath is made from leather and Sallow root bur.
Here is a larger knife that I have made to order.
The blade is 15cms long. The knife handle is made from pieces Moose antler, Birch bur and Sallow root bur, with sheath leather between each piece.
The sheath is made from Sallow root bur, half-tanned reindeer leather and I have used pieces of Moose antler (glued on both the front and back) to secure the leather to the root bur.
I have just completed a new knife to go with my new kåsa
I have used the same wood in the middle section as I made the kåsa from. I makings are caused by a tree fungus that was in the tree
The darker wood is from a Sallow root bur
I have used sheath leather and3 pieces of Moose horn to make the end of the knife
We have a lot more snow now and another 20cms is forecast to come tomorrow.
I haven’t been out and about much recently, but I have been busy making items to sell at a Christmas market this weekend.
I have used pig intestine to stitch the birch bark containers. I wrote about processing pig intestine here.
I am using the mystery braid a lot now in the leather armbands I make
Unfortunately I did not make it to my parents for Christmas and now fly there on 29th.
My neighbour has given me a beautiful oil painting he has done for me, of a Common Crane or Trana på svenska.
In return I have made this kåsa/kuksa for him
I have also just completed a knife using Reindeer horn, water buffalo horn and Birch bur.
James…. I have been selling my knives on my website but I only have these two left now. If you are interested in either drop me an email and we can agree a price.
I have now completed my new website. Learning to work with html code hasn’t been easy, but I am now happy with the look and content of the site.
I also have the first item for sale in our shop.
http://naturallore.com/shop.html
It’s a knife hand-made by me using my favorite blade
which is 8cms long and made by Leif Carlsson. Here is the knife and sheath.
I have made the knife handle from Reindeer horn and Birch bur, with Lapp leather between each piece. The sheath is also made from Lapp leather (half tanned Reindeer leather) and has my Natural Lore design on it.
The cabin repairs continued last week with work on the kitchen. As we arrived there were a large number of Waxwings feeding on Mountain Ash/Rowan berries
I had purchased some wood paneling to put on the walls.
It was much more work than I had expected because some of the wood needed to be planed and shaped with a knife
Here are some before and after pictures
and one extra of the new kitchen
When I have more money we will replace the ceiling so I cannot complete the work just now.
I have made a new, rather primitive looking knife, which I will be using next week when working with Reindeer in the mountains (I’m not so worried if it gets lost or damaged).
The two pieces of horn I used form the perfect shape to fit into my hand
The sheath I have made enables the knife to be withdrawn easily with one hand and it holds a firesteel in the front
The sheath also proved useful for holding my pencil while working on the kitchen
I have also now purchased a chainsaw from the local petrol station at a very good price and while at the cabin we collected some Birch nearby, which had been damaged by a snowplough during the winter
We carried the wood the trailer
and it was not long before we had a load to take back to the cabin, cut up and split
Hopefully my next post will be about working with Reindeer….
I have not had time for staying over t the cabin recently, but have been there for some days.
The clothes drier is now completed
The mosquito’s are out in force now and we use many different methods to try and keep them away (the beer isn’t one of them!)
I have put a metal kitchen sink in the cabin so that it is easier to wash clothes and do the dishes.
I have seen pictures of Russian Birch bark craftsmen using a tool called a “sochalka” to remove complete cylinders of bark from the tree to make seamless containers. I purchased a cheap, stainless steel, long-bladed fish filleting knife from the Dollar Store to experiment with
It was surprisingly easy to cut around the inside of the bark, but I found impossible to remove the piece of wood from the centre. I will let you know if I succeed with this method.
The Black Spruce Picea mariana look fantastic in bright sunlight now with bright red new cones forming on the ends of the branches.
Labrador Tea (Skvattrum in Swedish) is now in bloom on the floor of the forest
and last week a pair of Swallows appeared and commenced building a nest in my boat house. And yesterday their presents proved very rewarding to me as their alarm calls alerted me to a Northern Hawk Owl Surnia ulula flying low over the cabin. Unfortunately it disappeared over the forest and dispite searching I was unable to locate.
Here is a small knife I have just finished
It is very similar to the previous one I made but the sheath is made from only Lapp leather
Someone has translated all the Saami symbols into English for me but I did not think it would be right for me to use them in a knife sheath design so I decided to design my own, based around some of the symbols I have seen.
The star in the centre represents the stars and constellations. The circle around the star represents the sun and the moon. From the circle come trees representing the forest with its trees and flowers. The outer diamond shape represents the mountains and the land and the four areas inside represent the seasons and the elements; fire, air, earth and water.
For the first time I have lost a series of pictures I took while making this knife
but I do have pictures of making the design on the handle and constructing the sheath.
Teres designed a scene for me and I drew it onto the knife in pencil. I then used a small craft knife to cut into the horn following the pencil design
I used a pencil eraser to remove the drawing and then rubbed a small amount of charcoal into the cuts to reveal the pattern.
To make the sheath I first cut the piece of horn in half
I drew around the blade and then used a small file to remove horn on both halves, until the knife blade sat comfortably inside. I glued the two halves together and then shaped.
After soaking the Lapp leather I wrapped foil around the knife handle to prevent the leather colour running into the handle and then wrapped the leather around and stitched the two edges together
Here is the completed sheath
I will explain about the design on the sheath next time.
