ChopChop!

This weekend I finally got around to making a new choppingblock out of a part of the chestnut log I posted about a while back. A kind soul with a chainsaw helped me out and cut it in half for me. Now I finally have a block that doesn`t move when I use it. It`ll be a joy chopping out blanks and kuksas on this beast! Here it is with my wildlife hatchet and one of my previous little blocks for scale.

The girlfriend has also taken a liking to it, and uses it as a table. It is very functional, but the crudest bit of furniture I`ve seen in a while!

New old tools.

The first local carboot sale of the season was today, and I popped over to see if I could score some old tools. I was in need of a balpeen hammer to peen the tang of the next knife I want to build. Luckily I brought my girlfriend along. She has a sharp eye and spotted one nearly right away. At the same seller I got a large auger. Quite a nice score for a sunday morning! I was planning on making a footstool for under my desk out of a bit of the chestnut log I posted about earlier. The auger will come in handy to drill the holes for the legs.

Also, the other week I helped a good friend clear out a house. In the basement was a box of tools that were about to be thrown away, and I was told I could go through it and see if I could use anything. Besides some files and a hammer there were these two gems: a vice and a grinding wheel, both in a good state. The wheel needs to be trued, but isn`t all that wonky. I`ve ground some deep dings out of some old chisels on it, and it works very well indeed. It is nice, all these new old tools!

Gift for a friend.

A friend of mine wants to get more into wood carving, but lacked a proper knife. For his birthday I got him a shiney new mora 106, and this manly box with band-aids. There is a tradition that says you should always give a coin back when someone gives you a knife This prevents the bonds of friendship to be severed. I therefore included a coin within the giftpackage so that he could return it to me. I like funny old traditions like this one. I could not find where or how it first began, but the same tradition is found in many different countries and I guess it is quite old. The coin-exchange ritual makes giving or receiving a knife to or from a friend just that bit more special.

A night out.

Last weekend my girlfriend and I went on the first camping trip of the year. We packed our bags and our bikes and did an overnighter in a small bit of nature-reserve in a place called "Hardinxveld-Giessendam". Unfortunately wildcamping as it is seen in other countries is not really possible in the Netherlands. There are places, however, where our governmental forest management (Staatsbosbeheer) has placed a pole in the ground, and in a proximity of 10 or 20 meters of this pole you are allowed to camp for 72 hours. I think that in terms of legal overnighters in nature, these places are as good as it gets in the Netherlands. For our night out we picked an area that has large areas of wet lands that are planted with willow for the production of willow-shoots. These fields are called "grienden", and a few of them are still coppiced every 3 of 4 years. Since the demand for "griend"-wood went down years ago, many of these areas became nature reserves and are now the home of many bird and animal species. The area that we camped in even houses some beavers!

The site we went to is accesible by bike, but it does mean biking through fields and mud for a good while. If the weather would have been less dry for the past days it would have been more tricky.

Me entering the nature reserve.

 Here is the pole indicating the campsite. Unfortunately people had made quite a mess of it, and there was ash from fires and glass shards about. We therefore had to set up just outside the indicated zone.

Here is how we set up our tiny camp. Our tent kept out of the wind with a 3x3 tarp folded in half as a windscreen. If it would have rained we could unfold it and use the other half to create a dry area outside of the tent.

I couldn`t have spend a night in an area with so much willow in it without trying some basketry. Unfortunately I had no idea what I  was doing so I was very unsuccesful. I`ll have to find out how to do this properly once.

Dinner is always welcome, but especially so after spending hours having fun outside. The girlfriend prepared a lovely porkstew with red wine that we cooked on a pop can stove.

While dinner was cooking I gathered some branches and prepared firewood for the hobo-stove. We were in need of a small fire to keep the mosquitos at bey that started popping up.

The next morning I went for an early walk around to explore the area. I found this willow that was surprised to see me. I also saw many birds, and at one point got startled by a hare that followed my path in the opposite direction.

A path trought one of the large willow fields.

 Here are some trees that are gnawed down by beavers in the area. I didn`t get great shots of the burrow that was close to these trees, but on the picture you can see an entrance and a canal going towards it.

After some tea and breakfast in the morning sun it was time to pack up and go home again. Here is our camping spot after the clean up.

I had a great time camping. It was my first time camping at one of these pole-camping sites and I enjoyed it. I hope to explore a couple of different ones in the future.

Lauri #2 finished.

Last wednesday I finished up the second knife, and today I managed to go and take some pictures of what I think has become a nice little set of knives.

The new knife.

#1 is the upper one, the newly finished #2 is the lower one. 

It has become a nice set. Initially I was worried that these tiny blades would not be of much use but it turns out that they make very functional and comfortable blades. Two down, Three to go! I`m excited to start on the other blades now. I need to get some new epoxy and then I can start on number 3. I have an idea of what I want to do with it but I`ll need to sit down with a sheet of paper and a pencil. It`ll be my first try in peening the tang.

On the walk I took through a local bit of woods I found some interesting things that I cannot resist to post some pictures of here. First up is a carcass of a bird that was hanging from a tree. All the meat had pretty much rotten away, but the bones and tendons of the wings were there, attached. I really wonder how it ended up there. Do birds of prey devour their lunch in treetops and then drop the remains when they had enough? This bird has been hanging there for quite a while already, and in some way I thought it was quite pretty with the sun shining through.

Another thing that scored very high on the "weird things to find in the woods"-list is this benchgrinder I found in the middle of nowhere. Mounted on a heavy steel pole the whole thing weighs a ton. It is a large powerful grinder as well, not your average small one. Who dragged this here, and why? I`ll probably never know...

Lauri #2. A matching pair?

Last weeks "Normal life" has been in the way of my hobbies a bit. Due to an exam and an important presentation I didn`t have the time nor the rest to really do things I wanted to. This weekend I picked up the 5-blades project again though, by glueing together knife #2. The blade is the same as on the last one, so I figured I`d try my hand on a matching pair. The dimensions are a bit different but I think it`ll end up being a nice pair eventually. I only started shaping the handle today, and it is not done yet. I will hopefully finish it tomorrow, but if not at least this week. Here are a few images of my process.

Make holes in all the bits that are to go on the tang. This is the bolster piece.

Test-fit all the bits together before glueing.

This is how I "clamp" the knife. I have not made a good jig yet so I put it in the workmate with a weight pulling the blade down into the handle.

Rough shaping started once the epoxy dried.  I hope it`ll be a nice pair of unidentical twins.