Gingerbread Bird Feeder

My mother has tried her hand on something a bit different this year. She has made “ordinary” gingerbread houses too (I will post them later), but she also made this.

Birch Bark Handles

When I was flatterooning birch bark, I have got some sheets big enuff to make handle scales on smaller knives, so I did.

This one badger knife has one handle scale significantly darker than the other, and the lighter one has a distinct camo-look. I am not sure what to make of that, but the knife looks nice and functional.

On the second knife I had better luck finding more similar pieces of bark, but I was also experimenting with making ornamental pins and those were not entirely perfect. But I will probably continue making them, I think they do have kind of charm.

There is still a lot of blades to outfit before I can seclude to warm cozy indoors and make the leatherworks. In the meantime, I am thinking a bit about what kind of sheath would fit these knives best.

Two Bobbin Lace Doilies

My mother was busy over the summer and today I finally could take pictures of these two big doilies – just under 40 cm in diameter.

Simple Finish Knives

I have made twoo puukko. To be honest, I was not a fan of this type of knife at all. I have only decided to make them just as a part of my ongoing knifemaking education. But now I am totally a convert.

The first one has a handle made from birch bark, cow bone, and white brass. It looks a bit like a stacked leather handle but it feels different in the hand. Birchbark can be flattened by boiling it in hot water and pressing it between two boards to cool and dry off, making it into flat hard sheets. They are slightly more brittle than wood, but they do not have any preferred failure direction, so they do not split and break easily.

The second one has a handle from birch wood with a small burl in it. It is not proper burlwood, it was just a piece of firewood that I thought will be interesting. I think I was correct in that surmise. The endcap and bolster are from pakfong.

Both of these knives have just a simple finish to them. The blades’ primary bevels were ground only up to 120 grit and then tumbled after quenching in sand as long as it took to take all the scale off. Bolsters and end caps are not highly polished, as well as the handles. In fact, I took a steel brush to them to roughen the surfaces a bit. And the finish is just several layers of ordinary boiled linseed oil.

I was aiming for a simple, rough-looking sturdy knife as well as a simple, easy-ish manufacturing process. I think I have managed both. I really like these knives and I will make at least somewhat fancy sheaths for them. And I will definitively make more puukko in the future. I also think that this design is ideal for recycling old files into knives, so I will probably do some of that too.

I Made a Shoe Rack

I took a break from making knives and the last three days I have spent testing my new circular saw by the means of making something with it. My mother has requested a small shoe rack that would fit between a wall, an open bedroom door, and a washing machine. That meant the rack has to have a bit funny shape, as you can see.

It was made mostly from recycled materials. All the shelves and the sides are made from old kitchen cabinet doors. The sides are covered with adhesive wallpaper and the tops of the shelves themselves are covered with pieces of PVC flooring leftovers from house renovations. The upper one has a different color in the photo due to additional light from the window, they are all the same IRL.

Doing this kind of work with my new table saw was a joy, but the saw has one design feature that I think is done extremely poorly in comparison to my previous one (and in fact even in comparison with my home-built belt grinder and tumbler) – the design of the on/off switch. The old one had an extra emergency switch that could be easily pressed with an open palm, or a knee or whatever body part is near. This one only has an elevated red off button that is not very big and not readily accessible, it requires a bit of fumbling about under the table edge to find and a firm and relatively precise push is needed. I must say that as much as I love the tool, this particular feature would earn the designing engineer a clip around the earhole from me because it is very, very daftaroony. Everything else – the dust collection exhaust, the folding legs, the extendable table supports, the adjustable cut depth/angle works very well and easily, the ergonomy of all those parts is great. But for that bloody daft on/off switch alone, I would take it one and a half star out of five if I were writing an official review. A beast of a machine like this just must have an emergency off-switch that even a panic-stricken and/or injured person can immediately find.

I may be overly strict in my expectations, but this one is a real bummer for me. If it did not violate the warranty, I would change it for something more suitable straight away. I might build something with an extension cable that would allow me to have an easily accessible emergency switch without compromising the integrity of the machine.

TNET 46: In a Highlander’s Shoes

I do not know why the algorithm recommended the Fandabidozis channel to me, but it did. I think (although I am not sure) that it first recommended one of the videos in which he shows the crafting of some of his historically accurate-ish equipment.

I have enjoyed his videos in which he explores 17th-century equipment of the Scottish highlanders and this one is probably his biggest and best video project.

Open thread, you can talk whatever you want, just do not be an a-hole.

Previous thread -click-.

Accidentally Tacticool?

I have designed this knife with a focus on ease of manufacture. It is meant to be a simple design that would allow me to utilize micarta made when impregnating wooden handles with epoxy. The metal bolsters are not exactly easy to make, but micarta would allow me to forgo them completely if I ever decide to do so. I do not like knives without bolsters, thou.

The ornamental pins came out more asymmetrical than I hoped for, I will have to use another method to get them more consistent. And the black micarta, made from old jeans, looks tacticool, which is not entirely intended. The knife is a small outdoor knife, suitable for example for mushroom picking. In fact, my father immediately said it would be a knife ideal for mushroom picking upon seeing it, which made me happy because that was my intent.

Then I have also made a badger knife with a handle from micarta. But this time it was not micarta made from stacked layers of fabric but from smaller cuts of different colors crumpled together in the resin.

It is hard to take a photo of, but the crumpled fabric does give the micarta a black&grey camo look, which is again more tacticool than I intended. I will probably start making micarta with bright colors because those are more suitable for a forest walk IMO – if you lose them, you have better chances of finding them than these. Although the stainless steel would, of course, gleam like a naked bum amongst the undergrowth.

I will probably furnish both of these with simple black sheaths. These knives are meant to be simple.

So… What Are Tomatoes? Exactly?

It looks like vegetables are pretty bigoted antitomatists.

Butbutbut… Aubergines, peppers, gherkins, chillis, cucumbers, and zucchinis are fruits too if one insists on being pedantic!

Poor tomato, its tribulations did not end there. Fruits are prejudiced against it too…

Truth be told, I would definitively not put tomatoes in fruit salad, the technicality of their status notwithstanding. Unless cucumber & tomatoes salad is fruit salad? Then again, cucumber got into both parties without a problem. I is offishully confused.

Serious problems of serious times.

Dinosaur Tracks

We had our first dusting of snow today. And some little birb left these tiny footprints on our pavement.

Frosty Morning Walk – Part 6 – Frosty Leaves

And one cobweb. Frost is very beautiful. It would be more beautiful if it were pleasantly warm, but one cannot have everything.

An Experimental Kitchen Knives Set

This set is numbered, but I won’t be selling it. I have tried several new things whilst making it and it was designed in part with a focus on ease of manufacture, except the experimental dimples in the blades.

The stand is made from three slabs of massive black locust wood and the front of the knife stand, the bolsters, and the end caps on knife handles are made from a coconut shell. Fitting the curved coconut shell perfectly to a piece of wood is of course not possible, and I have solved that problem quite successfully by dyeing the epoxy glue dark brown.

The finish is simply drying oil (commercial “Teak oil” which is a mixture of various oils) applied in several layers daily for over a week. It is still a bit tacky to the touch, but that should solve itself in time and with use. The surfaces are not overly polished – I did not go above 330 grit for both the metal and the wooden parts. Black locust wood has big pores in its growth rings, so polishing it very highly makes little sense anyway. I have, in fact, brushed the wood with a steel brush to accentuate the pores.

I tried to make divots in the blades to make them less sticky to food, but it did not work out, they have too small a diameter to have any noticeable effect (I think). I will either have to build a tool to make these divots wider or to make very shallow fullers reliably and reproducibly. Neither of those two tasks is easy and I do not currently have any ideas.

The handles are not of an overly complicated shape, they have simply hexagonal profiles with some curvature to the facets and smoothed edges. They are reasonably easy to make and comfortable in the hand. The tang is held not only with glue but also with a nut on the end, which is covered by the coconut shell endcap.

I think these three knives should cover just about any task that an ordinary home cook needs to do in their kitchen. I hope. I have given the set now to my mother to test and I have forbidden her to use any other knife for the time being under the serious threat of confiscating her other knives. She has got instructions to use and abuse them to test them thoroughly. If they pass the test, I will make multiple sets (without the divots in the blades) for sale.

I have also been thinking of adding this kind of picture in the future to my blades when I offer them for sale on the interwebs, to save myself the trouble of having to write the sizes in words for each piece. What do you think about that idea?

Frosty Morning Walk – Part 5 – Find the Fly

Avalus has sent this absolutely gorgeous picture of a fly thawing of frost in the early morning sun.

Now try to find the fly in this picture (solution below the fold).

[Read more…]

One Santoku, Two Santoku, Three Santoku…

Today was finishing day – I finished six knives, three of which are Japanese-style santoku kitchen knives.

Japanese knives are not my forte. I know a bit about them, but not much. I do not intend to make them in significant numbers. Not only because I am not Japanese, but also because some of them are highly specialized tools optimized for one specific task and most people here in Europe would have no clue whatsoever how to use them or care for them and those who do would probably prefer to buy them from actual Japanese craftsmen. But I had three offcuts that just lent themselves for this type of blade and I am all for making the most with the least amount of waste.

Where I (afaik) differ most significantly from Japanese blades is the round-heeled ricasso. And the knives are glued together with epoxy.

This one has a handle from olive wood, cow bone, and buffalo horn. The handle is asymmetrical – the bone piece is not flat but rounded. Fitting the wood, bone, and horn together was thus a bit of work, but I have managed to fit them together fairly well, albeit not perfectly. The handle has a D profile, with a flat-ish top and rounded belly.

Olive wood is extremely beautiful and I should have probably saved the piece for a worthier blade. But it stinks to the heavens when worked and is somewhat greasy so it tends to clog up abrasives something awful. Due to the greasiness of the wood, I have finished the handle with tung oil, five layers over two weeks. And when I was at it, I used the same finish for the other two as well.

This is just a simple two-piece handle, bone bolster, and Santos mahogany wood. This wood works reasonably well and is very dry, the exact opposite of Olive. It does not gum up the tools, but it makes a lot of dust that likes to float around. I think it is a neat knife. The handle has a rounded belly and a faceted back.

And last a knife with a handle from my late cherry tree, cow bone, and buffalo horn. The handle is faceted, probably the closest to a true Japanese-style knife.

They are all 160-170 mm long blades, with handles 110-130 mm. I am not planning to make more unless I get suitable offcuts again.,

Affinity

Art, Fun, & Nonsense.

Rebecca Watson spills the tea

This is where we are now

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Guessing the Next Number

Two Weeks

The Great Gardening of 2025 - Part 43 - Picking Potatoes

New on OnlySky: Will China save the world from climate change?

Computer difficulties

Gingerbread Bird Feeder

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Birch Bark Handles

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Two Bobbin Lace Doilies

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Simple Finish Knives

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I Made a Shoe Rack

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Accidentally Tacticool?

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So… What Are Tomatoes? Exactly?

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Dinosaur Tracks

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Frosty Morning Walk – Part 6 – Frosty Leaves

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An Experimental Kitchen Knives Set

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Frosty Morning Walk – Part 5 – Find the Fly

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One Santoku, Two Santoku, Three Santoku…

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