There’s No Tool Like An Old Tool Or BoB Sends Bushwacker Back In Time!

Things that were covetable become mundane, and then, stained with memory become keys to the past.

As regular readers will know, BoB dropped of a few bits of kit that he’d found while clearing out our folks’ attic. While it was great to see the Opinels again, and a Trangia can only be useful, the real prize was to see my old sheath knife again. The keepers of the family legend are divided as to just how long I’ve had this knife for, if it isn’t 30 years its not far off. As you can see the carbon blade has acquired quite a patina. The tip had a little more acute point when it first came out of the workshop.

The Pommel was a fair bit smoother. But boys will be boys. As dads who were lads ‘ll tell you, boys are tough on their stuff.

As lads we used to play a knife game called ‘splits’. You (well not you, you have more sense, but your teenage self), stand toe-to-toe with your opponent. . Each of you takes it in turn to throw their knife into the ground. Wherever it sticks (not lands, it must be sticks. lands is instant forfeit of the game) the other player must put their foot. Both feet remain flat on the ground – no heeling allowed. All forms of psychological jiggery-pokery are legal. Think of the game as being like Twister with attitude.
Even in the 70’s before 'PC' and ‘Health and Safety’ someone would come and put a stop to it when we were playing in bare feet.

The leather slices that make up the handle have been worn slick by use and by time.
I took a chip out of the first inch of the blade, (guess how that got there!) and I started to run a ceramic file over the gnarls in the pommel, but I stopped. Every ding and scrape is the track left by a tale.

The SharpMaker worked its magic, and the blade is once again shaving sharp. The design makes for a great bushcraft knife, the back of the blade is nicely rounded where you’d want to put your thumb and the false edge up front is acute enough to makes some big sparks from the Swedish firesteel.

Thanks BoB.

Sundays Are For Archery

It’s Sunday so its round two of archery lessons or The Bushwacker versus The Paper Targets.

In England Sunday archery practice is a tradition that nearly 800 years old. In the 12th century the longbow was the black rifle of its day, a military technology that’s use was strictly prescribed by law.

As standing armies are notoriously expensive to maintain, in 1252 the 'Assize of Arms' became the first Medieval Archery Law requiring all able-bodied men, from 15 to 60, equip themselves with a bow and sufficient arrows. The law also "forbade, on pain of death, all sport that took up time better spent on war training especially archery practise".
With King Henry the first, later proclaiming that an archer would be not be tried for murder, if he killed a man during his weekly archery practice. The Plantagenet (literally the planting of cover to create hunting grounds) King Edward III took this further and decreed the Archery Law in 1363 which commanded the obligatory practice of archery on Sundays and holidays!

The longbow really was the super gun of its day, launching arrows faster than any previous bow. It’s said that a skilled bowman could shoot between 10 - 12 arrows a minute. The bodkin (a sort of longer sharper fieldpoint) tipped arrows could pierce a knight’s armour at ranges of more than 250 yards. Such was the value placed on this cutting-edge military technology that in 1365 archers were forbidden to leave the shores of England without a royal licence.

There are still quite a few place names in England that include the word Butts (Newington Butts in South London) meaning that they were traditional archery grounds with targets to aim at and embankments to keep the death toll to a respectable minimum.

Sadly practice in our local parks is no longer permitted, and on the other side of the pond, things aren’t any better. News has reached me that in the city of Eau Claire, in Wisconsin a public practice ground called Archery Park has just banned archery practice after a local resident complained of finding an arrow in his back yard.

Things, as they say, are tough all over.
Wish me luck
Bushwacker.