Wilderness shirt

I have designed a new wilderness shirt, which a friend has now made for me.

The material is worsted wool, with leather sewn across the shoulders and around the collar.  I have also sewn leather along the bottom edge of the two breast pockets.  The buttons I have made from Moose horn.

The back of the shirt is longer, so that it covers my backside.

The shirt has a poly-cotton lining to reduce wind penetrating.

There is a leather baffle in the front to also reduce cold air penetrating inside.

I am very pleased with the end result and it is incredibly warm.  A belt warn over the shirt, around the waist helps to hold in warm air.

Reindeer skin camera bag

I have made this bag for my camera and telescope adaptor.

The leather is Birch tanned reindeer hide and I have sewn it together using false sinew.  The strap is a half metre “mystery braid” that I made.

The button on the front I made from Moose horn.

An early Christmas present

Christmas came early for me when Teres bought me a pair of Reindeer skin trousers, something I have wanted for many years.

They are made to my specification by a friend of ours who designs and makes both traditional and modern Sámi clothing.

They are very warm and comfortable but one problem I have found is that keys in my pocket have stretched and discoloured the Reindeer skin, so Teres came up with the idea to make a special leather pouch for my keys which I have now made.

When I do not need my keys, I pull a leather cord which draws the keys up inside the pouch

The pouch is easy to make.  You cut out two bell shaped pieces of leather which are joined together at the top.  Sew both sides together

and make a small hole in the leather at the top, through which you put a leather cord (I used a four-strand round plat to make my leather cord).  Attach the end of the cord inside the pouch to your keys and make a knot or attach a metal ring to the opposite end and the pouch is completed.

Items I have made recently.

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

The Mystery Braid

The Mystery Braid is so called because the leather is braided, but the ends of the braid have not been cut or separated – it’s a mystery how the braid is made without loose ends.

Many times I have tried to do a Mystery Braid, but failed every time.  I was at a craft fair in Lulea last weekend where a man was demonstrating and teaching how to do the Mystery Braid.

You begin with a piece of leather that has been cut two times to give three even strips (connected at each end)

Then you begin to braid, ensuring the braids are tight.

You can see in the above picture that as you braid, the opposite end of the leather also braids up and this must be undone by twisting the tab through the  slits

Continue braiding and then un-braiding the opposite end

When you have braided as much as you can, thread the tab through again to “lock” the braid and loosen the braids to even them out along the length of the piece of leather.

Here are some bracelets I have made using this method

There are other methods of making the Mystery Braid via instruction on YouTube and the internet, so do some searching.

Here’s the best YouTube clip I have found;

Tin thread armbands

Chaffinch started arriving back here yesterday after migrating south in early November.

Many people here wear tin thread armbands traditionally made by the Saami people from Reindeer leather, Reindeer horn and a silver and tin alloy thread.  Here is the first one I made

I began making the bracelet by doing a three strand braid with six strands of tin thread and three strands of cotton thread.

Once completed I stitched the braid to a piece of leather.

I stitched the edges of the leather together to form a tube, incorporating a leather loop and reindeer horn button as fasteners for the bracelet.

I cut small slits at either end of another piece of leather and inserted the leather tube through the slits, so that the loop and button protruded from the ends.

I stitched the edges of the leather together to form another tube.

Here is the completed armband

I have also made one for Emma using black leather and six strands of tin thread.

Sheath design

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.

Reindeer horn knife and sheath

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.

Fiskars hatchet

Another item I recently purchased was a small hatchet to use for carving as I left my Elwell axe at my cabin

Ignore the Wilkinson Sword stamp on the handle because the hatchet is actually made by a Finnish company called Fiskars.  Other companies such as Gerber and Stihl have also put their stamp on Fiskars axes.

Its a very will balanced tool and good for splitting logs (the way the axe head is fitted into the carbon fibre handle means you can use a baton on the back of the head), carving such things as cups and spoons (with a little re-profiling of the cutting edge) and chopping

The axe head produces a really nice shower of sparks when used with a firesteel.

The sheath is rather disappointing and so I set about designing and making a leather belt sheath

Unfortunately I didn’t take a series of pictures during its construction to enable me to produce a tutorial.

The handle of the hatchet is hollow and while initially I considered fitting a survival kit inside, I decided to put a chainsaw file inside instead to remove burs or nicks when sharpening the blade.

I split down a piece of Ash and carved it to the shape of the handle and so that it would fit inside the handle.

I then carved out a groove into which I glued a cut down file.

When I used the hatchet, the file hit against the inside of the handle so I had to carve this piece of Ash to glue halfway up inside the handle to prevent the file moving around.

I paid £17 for this hatchet and think it is worth every penny!!

Lapland autumn 2009 – 24th September part 1

The morning started with me sanding cups and Teres sewing leather bags

The temperature was -2 degrees and it had been -7 in the night but at least it was sunny

After cleaning the cabin (as it would be our last day there) we decided to go walking in the forest, to the peak behind the cabin.

The forest is so quiet for birds at this time of year but is very peaceful listening to the wind in the trees.

and from time to time we could see back across the lake

As we walked further we noticed that the berries and leaves had been stripped from the ground flora which is apparently typical of bear feeding.  A little further on I looked to my left and saw a fallen spruce with the root plate raised vertically

at the base of the root plate was a large hole in the ground which was a bears den (bjorn ide in Swedish).

I got to about 30 metres  from it but could not get a clear photograph and unsure if the occupant was at home I was unwilling to get any closer!!  You can see part of the hole slightly right of centre in the picture below.

You can learn more about the Scandinavian Brown Bear here