Get A Handle On - Restoration

I always think of myself as being 'not all that' at handy crafts so it was a pleasant surprise to see how easy some of them can be. On Friday The Fat Controller gave me a shed he'd found while hiking in the highlands of Scotland. Regular readers will know that BoB brought round a whole box full of knives and assorted kit from our folks place.Lying unloved at the bottom of the box was the knife pictured above. It's handle a particularly unconvincing piece of faux antler (note the 'charming' depiction of a stag!). The blade had several different grinds, in parts flat,and convex, is also pretty soft steel. It was the kind of knife given to lads as a first sheath knife. The sheath itself was pretty cruddy, the leather un-nourished and the stitching failing or failed.
A few hours later and it a whole new story!
Antler is much easier to work than it looks at first sight. I cut off the bottom left tine with a hacksaw, used the side of an angle grinder blade to sand the surface that meets the finger guard, trued it with an orbital sander. It stinks! Like burning fingernails!! Drilled the first hole with 4mm wood bit in a powered screw driver. Making the hole into a slot to take the blades tang looked difficult, but once I'd convex'd the point of a pig-sticker (you know a spike on a handle - don't know its real name) into a mini blade - it was surprisingly easy to get the recess the right size and shape.
I used two-part glue to set the blade to the tine.
The sheath wasn't in good shape so I roughed off any remaining finish and stained it blue, did some lacklustre back stitching, stained it again to cover up the crappy stitching, and using the cooker hob as a heat source melted four coats of boot wax into the leather.I left the retaining strap in the original colour, took out two rivets from the top of the sheath and replaced them with hollow rivets so the knife can be worn dangling as a 'necker'. All it needs now is a boot lace to hang it from.
Now if I could just get on with that Kuksa.

Hope your weekend was as productive for you
Thanks for reading
SBW

Easily Forage-able Resources. Online And In The Suburban Bush.

Every tribe or social grouping has its rituals and catchphrases, which let members identify each other, and let outsiders know they are outsiders. Sometimes these mantras set a frame of context, making sense of a situation and sometimes they serve to remind you how to do the business in challenging circumstances.

For as long as there’s been a fireside to return to at night, there’s been bush-lore passed on verbally by the light of the campfire, and now there’s the Bushcraft-Blog-Law. The law that dictates how a new tradition develops its tried and tested formulas, conventions and clichés. Leaving aside (for the moment), the obligatory pictures of knives, axes and hats that most of has used as symbols for our adventures. Every bushcraft blog must also pass on some timeless wisdom:
‘The-more-you-know-the-less-you-carry’.
Usually attributed to that wise old man of the hills Mors Kochanski.
Or if you wanted to ‘freshen up’ your pitch (or create your own trademark) it could
‘Make-up-for-what-you-don’t-have-with-what-you-do-know.’

As a culture develops there are also powerful totems which when invoked through stories and songs will provide insight and inspiration. Some people will find themselves wondering what Ray Mears would do. The wit and whiles of the coyote have served as a signpost to thinking beyond the expected in many North American cultures. In South Dakota I often wondered how BoB would have approached the task in hand and by emulating him was able to pass myself off as competent camper rather than reveal myself as a tubby desk jockey from the ‘burbs. But if I were to choose a guardian deity for suburban bushcraft it would have to be Wimbledon’s most famous residents…

I used to spend a lot of time with a really clever management consultant, who ran mind-bending workshops. A sort of Tobermory of consultancy, fixing up (and super charging) broken projects with stuff he found lying around. One of the really cool things that he taught us to do was, to see familiar behaviours (individual and organisational) as processes. Then to look at the process we’d uncovered in new and unexpected ways, until we could see other examples of when and where the behaviour or system attribute could perform another purpose. A bit like bushcraft and survival skills and of course just like the Wombles….

‘Making good use of the things that we find,
Things that the everyday folks leave behind.’

I really was starting to think that I’d seen all the bushcraft blogs of note, when I saw that a guy who posts on one of the bushcraft sites as Fenlander had started one, and its the best I’ve seen in ages. While most bloggers are enthusiastic amateurs afield (or incompetents-a-couch in the case of your pal the bushwacker) – This guy is skilled AND enthusiastic, what the Kiwis call ' a good keen man', check out the post where he and a pal test out the insulation provided by some woolen clothes. Brrrrr!!

As Fenlander demonstrates when the really skilled bushcrafters are out in the backcountry they find new uses for the thing that they find, stuff everyday folks would leave behind. Sadly my backcountry is more, well, suburban back-yard and it’s not so much things left behind, as crap folks throw over my back fence (everyday).

Look everyone SBW’s made a lantern!
(Without spilling any blood or severing a finger!!)

Meanwhile at the other end of the performance curve - Fenlander’s made a distress whistle that, ‘in a pinch’, could save your life.

Thanks for reading
Bushwacker

Why Weight?

The morphic resonances of the bloggersphere never cease to amaze me. Just as the American Bushman was posting ‘unloading superfluous gear’ BoB and I were having a conversation along similar lines. As well as using his visit as an opportunity to give me the Opinels he told me the location of a long-time-no-see Trangia stove that he didn’t have a need for. As things do, the conversation rambled round to talking about the lightening the load, travelling with as little kit as possible, while still having everything you need to look after yourself. I showed BoB the amazing Anti Gravity Gear site and the caldera stove system, which is basically a Trangia that’s been seriously slimmed down.
BoB said he’d seen an article from the 1950’s where guys going on a climbing expedition carrying framed rucksacks had wielded up the holes in the frames, enabling them to use their frames as fuel bottles.

As even the most cursory look at the scouting and hunting technologies of the first nations shows, the need-for-speed in backcountry travel is as old as backcountry travel itself. Saxton Pope took instruction from Ishi’s in the art and science of travelling light.

‘In our early training with Ishi, the Indian, he taught us to look before he taught us to shoot. "Little bit walk, too much look," was his motto. The roving eye and the light step are the signs of the forest voyageur.
The ideal way for an archer to travel is to carry on his shoulders a knapsack containing a light sleeping bag and enough food to last him a week.....This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than twenty pounds, an easy load...... If you have a dog, make him carry his own dry meal in little saddle-bags on his back...

Nessmuk was also an early devotee, taking it as a focus in the classic Woodcraft and Camping.

While I was looking for a downloadable copy Nessmuks book for you I found Nessmuking, a site about super lightweight canoeing with this interesting ‘gear list’ challenge.
How light can you get a 35-day pack?

Last word goes to Mors Kochanski
"The more you know, the less you carry."
Bushwacker.