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. 

Chip carving and challenging chestnut

This is my first spoon decorated with a simple chipcarving pattern. I have seen many wonderful examples of chip carving on various blogs and on facebook, and wanted to have a go. I took one of the spoons I carved last week and made a little pattern of triangular chips on it. It is a bit uneven, but for a first go I am not unhappy. I find it difficult to decide when a spoon improves from decoration. I often prefer clean lines over lots of decoration, but sometimes some kolrosing or chipcarving just adds to a spoon. 

People in my environment seem to know that I am always on the lookout for new green wood to carve. Last week that led to someone kindly giving me a large stump of chestnut. I was really happy with it. I wanted to make a new choppingblock, a little stool and maybe some cuttingboards. All stuff that requires larger diameter wood then what I am usually able to get. When I had gotten the stump home and out of the car I realized something though: I have no saw that is large enough to cut through it. I am currently figuring out how to cut it in half with the saws I have available. I might need to split bits off before I can do it. Or maybe I can find someone with a chainsaw in the neighbourhood to help me out. For me it is a luxury problem though. I hope to end up with some neat cutting boards and a sturdy chopping block.

Lastly, this week I got my hands on the mora 106. This knife is highly recommended by many carvers for being the best value-for-money straight knife available. For a long time I couldn`t find any place in the Netherlands that had them in stock, so when I finally came across one I had to have it. I have not had much time to try it out properly yet, but I shaved up a scrap of wood and it made lovely curls. I think I`ll be able to get along with this blade very well indeed.

Wooden spoons at work.

For the past year I have been eating lunch at work with a wooden spoon, and the reactions that I get from people around me are interesting. Initially people do not understand why I`d take the effort to wash a spoon that I bring to work myself every day, instead of using the disposable ones from the cafetaria. Secondly they wonder why I would buy myself such a weird non-metal spoon. I usually tell them that I carve them myself, and that  it is nice to use something handmade and durable instead of flimsy and dead plastic disposables. Many people seem to understand that, but few seem to be interested in leaving plastic spoons behind themselves. Even though everyone agrees the plastic spoons are horrible. This got me thinking about a term that I think Barn Carder first came up with, and that has been repeated by some other big names on the spooncarving side of the internet. The term "Wood culture Renaissance". It sounds nice, the comeback or rebirth of wood culture into society. Even if it was only to make people more aware of the ridiculous amounts of disposable things being used, or of the joy that using a good handcrafted product brings. A big part of this supposed renaissance depends on treen being used in the public domain again, instead of standing around in jars in the rooms of carvers.

Here are the spoons I have at work currently, but I change them out frequently to try new ones I made. I keep them in a shrink pot together with some pens. the one on the left is a recent one I carved. The one on the right is the spoon I received in the second international secret spoonswap.

To make up for my little monologue in this post, I`ll add some pictures of recent spoons. I am happy with the crank I get in them. I tried a different way of chopping out the blank and now cranks are a bit easier for me to achieve.

Testrun with Lauri #1

I tested the Lauri-knife today, by making a spoon. I found it comfortable to use, and my fear that the blade would wobble out of the handle because the slot wasn`t fully filled with epoxy didn`t come true this far. I am a bit reluctant to post this spoon since I am not too happy with it. The bowl had some tear out due to a blunt spoon knife, and that resulted in me having to alter the bowl shape. I am pleased with the crank I got into this little one though.

This spoon is carved from my last scraps of the sycamore I have. It is becoming dry and hard to carve. Today I heard that somebody reserved me a large chunk of chestnut though, so that should keep me busy for a while.