December 2015 Crafting Update

[Greg]

]Been up to my elbows in various projects over the last few weeks, and I thought I'd catch myself up a little here. Outside of my Christmas project, which I can't post about yet, and finishing up Taurinor's portmanteau, I've been acquiring and/or working on several bits of functional kit that I'll condense into one post here, to save some time.

First and foremost, I present my finished Icthean Forge knife re-hilt project. This is the first fully peened assembly I've ever attempted (or completed) and it went nicely. I took in progress photos, but they are MIA for the moment. The purpose of re-Hilting Eric C's robust little knife that I've carried now for five years on my sword scabbard was, quite simply, that I wanted the knife to serve a new, first-line function. When I takeoff my sword belt, I don't want to be missing my knife, etc. In short, I ground off the peen, disassembled the back end, and shortened the handle before reassembly. I also have rather small hands, so shortening the original grip was practical. I also removed the bollocks dagger-reminiscent shoulders of the grip to turn the front bolster into a bit of a cross guard, which I think looks great on the piece. Lastly, after doing a rough hot peen which aesthetically charred the handle end a little bit, I polished all the fittings and blade clean, and then aged all the steel in overnight Coca-cola baths, which leaves us here:

image.jpeg (69.41 KiB) Viewed 14359 times

image.jpeg (116.71 KiB) Viewed 14359 times

I'm very pleased. Eric's knife has done me a service for a long time, and will continue to do so in the new format.

Next, you'll see a few natural beeswax candles I hand dipped today with my three year old to carry as emergency lights for trekking. She is in love with them, of course, and believes it is someone's birthday, naturally.

Next, you'll notice s beautifully hand-drawn map of middle earth I commissioned as a custom one-off from Jesse Kennedy to be carried in my regular kit as a functional piece. I asked for his typical massive "Middle Earth" title to be omitted, and for the compass rose to be a good deal smaller, the way I envision an extant map of the time would have been drawn.

Lastly, I skinned a squirrel today to feed the bird, and took more care than usual. It is stretched under salts right now, and I plan to use the furred hide to line a new fitted wintertime falconry glove I've a mind to make.

*sigh*. Keeping busy! Still got that bow stave I'm working on, and have two leather projects in the planning stages, plus the looming scabbard project that'll commence when my sword arrives from Yeshua's customs shop...whenever that happens. Been working on finalizing the suspension system for my big seax (whose scabbard I finished but never posted)...it'll all come together someday!

[Mirimaran]

Looking good, Greg! That knife looks like it would get you out of a scrape, if need be. Very inspirational for the long winter nights by the fire!

Ken

[Eric C]

I must say you've improved the look s of that little knife. I never was happy with the handle. Oh and I suppose you found the tooth pick in the handle cavity. It probably wasn't necessary as the handle would have tightened if I had kept working with it, but I didn't know that at the time.

Nice work.

[Elleth]

On that looks wonderful!

Any chance of a before and after on the knife?
(If memory serves your seax suspension had a sneak preview on your oilcloth surcoat demo, yeah? It looked cool!)

Re maps: I love it!
One of the long term projects I have in mind is making a smaller scale map of my local area based off topo and Google maps, but in JRR style. For extra fun, grabbing some of these and translating to Elvish would be extra fun.
http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names_USA.html

Hunh... Just occurred to me. Do we have textual support for paper in our area of ME, or would they have been using (hide) parchment?

[Ringulf]

Very nice work all!
Would love to see a picture or pictures of your current falconry equipment and how it works in with your kit. You had a list of said equipment in a post a while back, I think it was to show the different carries for hunting as opposed to trekking and such.
The work on the knife is great! What can you tell us about coke baths?
And finally I am working on a shire tobacco pouch that is also a map to do double duty for Ringulf's "covert ops" in the Shire, I will post that one when I am finished, but I absolutey love your carry along map idea, How will you carry it in the wild? Any plans for a mini portmento type map tube to tie outside quiver or portmento itself?

[Ringulf]

On that looks wonderful!

Any chance of a before and after on the knife?
(If memory serves your seax suspension had a sneak preview on your oilcloth surcoat demo, yeah? It looked cool!)

Re maps: I love it!
One of the long term projects I have in mind is making a smaller scale map of my local area based off topo and Google maps, but in JRR style. For extra fun, grabbing some of these and translating to Elvish would be extra fun.
http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names_USA.html

Hunh... Just occurred to me. Do we have textual support for paper in our area of ME, or would they have been using (hide) parchment?

It would be cool to actually see the refference, but it seems to me that at least in the Shire, where books and mailed letters exist with such frequency and commonality, that they would be using paper rather than hyde or plant fiber, like papyrus, due to the processing cost and weight of those materials. But still a great question, one we tend to skim over when reading the books in exceptance of the multi cultural tech levels presented by the Professor.

[Elleth]

I'd always simply assumed the hobbits had paper I suppose- it just fits their anachronistic nature from the rest of ME. On the other hand the East had paper ages before the West, and it's not exactly a difficult technology. I can't imagine the good Professor was ignorant on the timeline of its adoption in the real world, so I assume any mention of paper is a deliberate choice.

Gah.. It's enough to drive an infrastructure / material technology nut mad. : )

[Ringulf]

Yes it is frustrating at times when you are involved in groups that have factual history as a technilogical absolute. Then, though you want to be as historically based in Middle Earth as you can be, you feel that somwhere around the 11th or 12th century corresponds well and if we stopped with Human men in their many different cultures that would be fine. However; that is until you deal with the Hobbits having pre-industrial European type egrarian tech and The Elves have an ancient tech predicated on phenominal craftsmanship and magic. Then the Dwarves have metelurgical and engineering skills far beyond the norm. And finally the Rangers of the North are High men in recluse, so it is a ticklish line between The Dunadain and there common brethren.
But this is the difficulty with being too demanding of a fictional environment. Though I think we strike a fairly good ballance here by basing all we can on parallel historical example and letting the books and our imagination fill in the rest.

[Rifter]

good stuff, nice work

[Greg]

*cracks knuckles*

Ho-kay...

Ken: Thanks! That's just what I thought...I used it to shave some raw lump maple sugar into my hot oats, you guessed it, next to the fireplace just this morning!

Eric: Never saw a toothpick...didn't ever dismount the grip. Sanded it to the new length in-place, and then cut the tang off at the appropriate length. Hammered the rear bolster on hot, quenched, and then hot-peened the tang. Feels solid, still works solid. Thanks again!

Elleth: In progress pics should go up tomorrow-ish. Yeah, the seax suspension you saw there was a prototype to work out strap lengths and angles, etc. Now I'm rebuilding it with nicer materials, and a touch of class.

Ringulf: Falconry equipment needs to be updated and photographed...right now, not much aside from my hoods and the bird itself look right alongside kit. Coca-cola was introduced to me as a cheap patina by Pete Remling years ago. Submerge your parts in Coke overnight, and you'll find them greyed in the morning. In my in-progress photos, you'll see that the bolsters (mild steel, I believe) age gently, while the blade (high carbon steel) goes nearly black after the same duration of soaking. To even them out, I brushed the blade gently with some high-number (>600 grit) wet-dry paper to give it the patina we have here. The process works particularly well on cleaned up pitted material...the pits grab the color and stand out nicely.
In the second photo, you can see a fold on the map. Rolling it in a tube would be very bulky for travel...I don't want to notice it until I need it, so I've folded it flat. How will I carry it? You'll have to wait for that one.

Thanks, everybody!

Just occurred to me that I should have mentioned the reason for shortening the handle, beyond the size of my own hand, since that didn't' change its ability to fit it's scabbard. Because I didn't want my oft-used utility knife stowed on my scabbard, which gets taken off, I'm stitching a small leather tube into my boot cuff where it will live full-time. Several cultures made use of knives in socks or boots, and though I hate how mainstream the 'boot knife' concept has become, it's just too darned convenient to say no.

[Eric C]

I've got a "shield-maiden" in a story I'm working on that carries a small seax in each boot. Turns out she's actually a slave to Thorbed's family trying to defend various things about herself. I'm thinking about posting part of one of my chapters but she's not overly featured in it (depending on how much of the chapter I post).

Anyway, I think your knife was about my first hidden tanged knife. It always looked like a flaming ice cream cone to me. But you've always loved it, so I've been happy with that. It doesn't look as bad now that you've worked on it a bit.

[Greg]

Alrighty, here are some of the 'before/in-process' pics I promised. This is just after re-shaping the rear bolster a little, showing hammering it on hot to better fit the tang further up, and then doing a hot peen on the tang itself. Still need to dig out a really clear picture of the knife before any changes were made, but it suffices to say that the length of the tang in the second photo, blurry in the background, is shorter than it was on the completed original knife, so the handle has taken quite a length reduction.






Once the peen was in place, additional grinding took place to match the final resting place of the rear bolster to the handle width/taper and vice-versa. Then everything was buffed with high-grit paper, coke patina'ed, and buffed to the current aged appearance.

[Greg]

Aaaaand found one. An oldie from a recipe I don't use anymore, but a full view of the knife in its original form. Looking at it now, I took off over 1/3 of the handle's total length (darned near half of it, actually), and flattened those shoulders to give more space behind the guard.

[Laothain]

That's a beautiful knife. Good job Greg.