1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup plain yogurt or sour cream
3 tablespoons dried minced onions
1-1/2 teaspoons powdered garlic
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon prepared yellow mustard
1-1/2 teaspoons Louisiana-style hot sauce
Mix everything in a jar or tupperware and refrigerate for at least half an hour to let the onions rehydrate.
Use with e.g. deli sandwiches; burgers; green salad; tuna or potato salad; crudite, fries or chips.
I use 1/2 cup each of regular mayonnaise, light mayonnaise and nonfat yogurt, but I am told that using a full cup of regular mayonnaise and leaving out the light would be better if you were putting it ahead of time on anything absorbent, e.g. potato salad or a sandwich.
The amount of hot sauce and pepper isn't enough to make it hot.
Thursday, July 2, 2020
Thursday, June 18, 2020
Sheffield-style Bowie
Although I've only read it once, now nine years ago, one of the novels I've found most moving is Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. Incidentally, there's a couple passages where Yossarian ponders stabbing Orr with the hunting knife slung from the mosquito net bar over the dead man's cot. I forgot until recently that it wasn't just any odd knife that could qualify as a "hunting knife" (of which there's a wide spectrum of designs meant for different tasks involved in hunting). It actually receives a little bit more description in one passage, where it's stated to be "long" and "bone-handled."
I always had in mind to make it in an Old Western style. I settled on a "classic clip point" Bowie from Crazy Crow. It features a guard from the same source, sold as "white brass" - this may mean either very high-alloy brass or nickel silver, but since it has the same color and working properties as the latter, I assume that's what it is - and matching cutler's pins, escutcheon plate and scabbard hardware. I did have to rely on yellow brass for the escutcheon pins and the staple holding the throat. Since I dislike working with bone, I used a pair of holly scales, finished with linseed oil, which coincidentally imparts a color to pale wood not dissimilar to antique bone. According to the Wood Database, holly typically has a janka hardness comparable to black walnut, but the hardness and density of a tree trunk varies with growing conditions and the scales I used seemed little harder than poplar.
This time around, I tried to use only pre-modern materials wherever possible. The sheath and frog are unstained veg-tan, finished with neatsfoot oil and then a thin coat of beeswax melted in, and stitched with waxed linen thread. Admittedly the beeswax is in the form of Sno-Seal, which is softened with a volatile solvent to make it spreadable at room temperature, but the only modern material remaining in the finished knife is two-part epoxy used to reinforce the attachment of the scales, throat and chape. Both the throat and chape are seamed up the back and silver-soldered. Because I don't have the skill to produce a smooth round end to the chape, I instead left it with a round opening closed by a soldered flat plate - which isn't correct as far as I know for this type of knife; it really looks like something more appropriate to a Napoleonic-period spadroon or naval dirk. The frog button is attached the same way, using a leftover bronze stub from another project as the "neck."
The frog itself was a bit of a puzzle to me until I noticed that a number of originals have frogs significantly wider than the scabbards themselves. This means that pressing the stitched edges of the frog together makes the middle pop open wide enough to fit around the scabbard, button and all, and the buttonhole can then be pressed down around the button provided the hole is large enough and has a wide enough horizontal slash to either side. While it strikes me as needlessly complicated compared to the more modern style of making the sheath side-seamed with an integral belt loop, it does work perfectly well for holding the scabbard in place while unsheathing and resheathing the knife.
While I was at it, because this blade, the matching guard and wooden scales are so cheap, I ordered another set which I hope to later turn into a "sister" knife. This one will have curly maple scales, brass hardware, and leather blackened with vinegaroon. I think yellow brass pairs better with darker woods and leathers than lighter ones.
These blades require a lot of work off-the-shelf. The tangs are wide enough to be considered slab tangs, but don't come with pin holes drilled, and being upwards of 5mm inch thick, they took a lot of effort to drill through, moreso because apparently EN 45 steel requires more care to anneal than just heating it to red-hot and letting it cool on its own. I made the pin holes on the first knife 1/8 inch, but these struck me as too big because of how there are two of them side-by-side next to the junction of the tang and blade, possibly creating a stress point that's larger than necessary. Antique Sheffield Bowies often appear to use thinner pins. So I plan to make the holes and pins on the second knife 3/32 inch wide.
The blades come with an edge ground on, but are otherwise brut de forge. The hammermarks are too deep to remove entirely unless you want to make the blades significantly thinner. The first one measured 4.5mm (nominal thickness 3/16 inch, or ~4.76mm) before polishing and a hair over 4mm afterward, which is still decent for a blade this length. I've seen very few original 19th-century blades that were this rough-looking, and real Sheffield Bowies always seem to have a nice even finish, so I assume they were either thicker before finishing or less deeply hammermarked to begin with. The rough look still works if the conceit is that this isn't a Sheffield Bowies per se, but rather a domestically-made one in the popular imported style - which is, of course, exactly what it is.
The butt ends of the tangs have to be shortened and look better when slightly rounded. I gave the tangs a very slight waist with an angle grinder so as to provide a more secure grip, since the straight-edged, peg-shaped grips seemed likely to slip out of the hand, especially when paired with smooth wood scales. But I felt they were too narrow to be made much narrower without leaving the grip uncomfortable. Instead, I followed a suggestion from Mikko Kuusirati at myArmoury and tapered the scales toward the guard (i.e. they are thicker at the butt end). Lastly, the tang on the first blade met the ricasso ever so slightly closer to the edge than the spine, which made for an unappealing look. Since these blades have a saber grind, they can tolerate losing width on the spine, which I achieved with a few quick passes of the angle grinder (this incidentally also flattened the spine and removed all remaining pits and scale).
The guards also require some work: The slots are designed for hidden-tang blades and need to be tediously filed until they're wide enough. Luckily, the crowns on the guards are exactly the same width as the blade tangs, so neither needed adjustment. I shimmed and silver-soldered the guard and then packed any remaining gaps with a beeswax-linseed oil mix to ensure no water gets in and causes corrosion, though historically cutler's resin might've been a more likely choice.
One last note: I am not a hunter, and I understand that many hunters find the large-ish (but far short of machete- or cleaver-sized) Bowie knife with a centered clip point and a quillon on the spine side ill-suited for any particular field task. The Bowie is a fighting knife, or at least a multi-purpose one, and the features that make it suitable for fighting are detrimental to some other uses. So I won't argue either way about the appropriateness of the name. That being said, this style is frequently referred to as a hunting knife and I see no reason Yossarian would've analyzed its suitability for various jobs before casually describing it as one.
While I was at it, because this blade, the matching guard and wooden scales are so cheap, I ordered another set which I hope to later turn into a "sister" knife. This one will have curly maple scales, brass hardware, and leather blackened with vinegaroon. I think yellow brass pairs better with darker woods and leathers than lighter ones.
These blades require a lot of work off-the-shelf. The tangs are wide enough to be considered slab tangs, but don't come with pin holes drilled, and being upwards of 5mm inch thick, they took a lot of effort to drill through, moreso because apparently EN 45 steel requires more care to anneal than just heating it to red-hot and letting it cool on its own. I made the pin holes on the first knife 1/8 inch, but these struck me as too big because of how there are two of them side-by-side next to the junction of the tang and blade, possibly creating a stress point that's larger than necessary. Antique Sheffield Bowies often appear to use thinner pins. So I plan to make the holes and pins on the second knife 3/32 inch wide.
The blades come with an edge ground on, but are otherwise brut de forge. The hammermarks are too deep to remove entirely unless you want to make the blades significantly thinner. The first one measured 4.5mm (nominal thickness 3/16 inch, or ~4.76mm) before polishing and a hair over 4mm afterward, which is still decent for a blade this length. I've seen very few original 19th-century blades that were this rough-looking, and real Sheffield Bowies always seem to have a nice even finish, so I assume they were either thicker before finishing or less deeply hammermarked to begin with. The rough look still works if the conceit is that this isn't a Sheffield Bowies per se, but rather a domestically-made one in the popular imported style - which is, of course, exactly what it is.
The butt ends of the tangs have to be shortened and look better when slightly rounded. I gave the tangs a very slight waist with an angle grinder so as to provide a more secure grip, since the straight-edged, peg-shaped grips seemed likely to slip out of the hand, especially when paired with smooth wood scales. But I felt they were too narrow to be made much narrower without leaving the grip uncomfortable. Instead, I followed a suggestion from Mikko Kuusirati at myArmoury and tapered the scales toward the guard (i.e. they are thicker at the butt end). Lastly, the tang on the first blade met the ricasso ever so slightly closer to the edge than the spine, which made for an unappealing look. Since these blades have a saber grind, they can tolerate losing width on the spine, which I achieved with a few quick passes of the angle grinder (this incidentally also flattened the spine and removed all remaining pits and scale).
The guards also require some work: The slots are designed for hidden-tang blades and need to be tediously filed until they're wide enough. Luckily, the crowns on the guards are exactly the same width as the blade tangs, so neither needed adjustment. I shimmed and silver-soldered the guard and then packed any remaining gaps with a beeswax-linseed oil mix to ensure no water gets in and causes corrosion, though historically cutler's resin might've been a more likely choice.
One last note: I am not a hunter, and I understand that many hunters find the large-ish (but far short of machete- or cleaver-sized) Bowie knife with a centered clip point and a quillon on the spine side ill-suited for any particular field task. The Bowie is a fighting knife, or at least a multi-purpose one, and the features that make it suitable for fighting are detrimental to some other uses. So I won't argue either way about the appropriateness of the name. That being said, this style is frequently referred to as a hunting knife and I see no reason Yossarian would've analyzed its suitability for various jobs before casually describing it as one.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Solingen mini-hunter
Sunday, April 12, 2020
German hunting trousse, part II
Some German hunting knives and other equipment of the period with non-ferrous hardware had applied flanges and I wasted much time debating with myself about whether this was something I wanted to try. In the end I decided it would be too easy to screw up.
I stained, thinned down and shaped the ash scales, then finished them with linseed oil. The oil, unfortunately, brought out the wood grain strongly, and I don't think anyone giving these grips a close look in person would mistake them for antler. A better choice than ash might be holly, plain maple, or even light-colored poplar, although knifemakers seem to consider poplar a poor choice due to its softness (it's said to dent much too easily unless saturated in stabilizer).
In the meanwhile there were also the washers to make. Judging from photos of antiques, the smaller pieces of a hunting trousse most often had one highly-domed rivet or a pin set with a pair of washers at the top of the tang and simple pins for the rest, while the cleaver would usually have its scales attached entirely with domed rivets or washers. Since I can't get solid nickel silver rivets that are just right, the heads have to be attached separately. Radovan Geist suggested using upholstery tacks with the pins cut off and holes drilled in the middle, which he used on his amazing 17th-century Jagdmesser earlier this year, but previous experience has shown that I'm no good at keeping circular metal objects from spinning while drilling the middle. Kellam Knives also sells premade rivet heads which would be perfect for this use; it's just that two each of them on the knife, fork and bodkin plus up to ten for the cleaver would come to almost $56 and I didn't want to spend that much.
Instead, I fabricated some washers from a half-inch strip of 14-gauge nickel silver. First I marked off half-inch segments, then knocked a dent in the middle of each with a nail, to act as a pilot hole.
The holes were drilled thusly: I set the nickel strip on a board and hammered escutcheon pins into the wood around it so that the pin shafts prevented the strip from spinning around and the heads would keep it from flipping outward. This worked well enough, but for some reason I couldn't keep the holes centered: Almost all of them wound up to one side - the same side, no matter how I tried to correct the drill's angle. This is one of the many, many times I regret not having space or money for a drill press.
After cutting the washer blanks into octagons, I soldered two of them onto the ends of a scrap of brass rod, then used a stone Dremel bit to grind them round and slightly domed (for which reason it was important to get the thickest nickel stock I could find). At first I used low-temperature solder paste, but this proved too weak, and the washers broke free while being ground. I tried again with silver solder, which worked, although it has its own drawback in that the solder is so strong that I could only remove the washers from the rod by re-melting the solder. I heated the washers with a blowtorch while holding the rod with a pair of heavy pliers. When the washers were red-hot, I grabbed another pair of pliers in my other hand to quickly pry them off.
After further cleanup with files and then polishing, the washers were ready to attach. I set the scales with epoxy and nickel silver pins in the usual fashion. Because nickel silver doesn't anneal (or at least I haven't yet figured out how to do so), the kind of plastic deformation involved in peening the pins is, well, harder. Still, it's not a huge undertaking.
Setting the pins causes some metallic discoloration of the surrounding wood where the hammer hits it, which I have to then sand, brush the sawdust off of, and oil one more time. The pin with the washers at the end was by far the easiest one to set, which makes me wonder why all such knives didn't have washers on all the pins.
I haven't made a sheath for this knife. If all goes well, it'll wind up not as a belt knife but carried in a cleaver sheath side pocket alongside its siblings.
I stained, thinned down and shaped the ash scales, then finished them with linseed oil. The oil, unfortunately, brought out the wood grain strongly, and I don't think anyone giving these grips a close look in person would mistake them for antler. A better choice than ash might be holly, plain maple, or even light-colored poplar, although knifemakers seem to consider poplar a poor choice due to its softness (it's said to dent much too easily unless saturated in stabilizer).
In the meanwhile there were also the washers to make. Judging from photos of antiques, the smaller pieces of a hunting trousse most often had one highly-domed rivet or a pin set with a pair of washers at the top of the tang and simple pins for the rest, while the cleaver would usually have its scales attached entirely with domed rivets or washers. Since I can't get solid nickel silver rivets that are just right, the heads have to be attached separately. Radovan Geist suggested using upholstery tacks with the pins cut off and holes drilled in the middle, which he used on his amazing 17th-century Jagdmesser earlier this year, but previous experience has shown that I'm no good at keeping circular metal objects from spinning while drilling the middle. Kellam Knives also sells premade rivet heads which would be perfect for this use; it's just that two each of them on the knife, fork and bodkin plus up to ten for the cleaver would come to almost $56 and I didn't want to spend that much.
Instead, I fabricated some washers from a half-inch strip of 14-gauge nickel silver. First I marked off half-inch segments, then knocked a dent in the middle of each with a nail, to act as a pilot hole.
The blackened end of the strip was from my attempt to anneal it. This doesn't work with nickel silver like it does with brass.
The holes were drilled thusly: I set the nickel strip on a board and hammered escutcheon pins into the wood around it so that the pin shafts prevented the strip from spinning around and the heads would keep it from flipping outward. This worked well enough, but for some reason I couldn't keep the holes centered: Almost all of them wound up to one side - the same side, no matter how I tried to correct the drill's angle. This is one of the many, many times I regret not having space or money for a drill press.
After further cleanup with files and then polishing, the washers were ready to attach. I set the scales with epoxy and nickel silver pins in the usual fashion. Because nickel silver doesn't anneal (or at least I haven't yet figured out how to do so), the kind of plastic deformation involved in peening the pins is, well, harder. Still, it's not a huge undertaking.
Setting the pins causes some metallic discoloration of the surrounding wood where the hammer hits it, which I have to then sand, brush the sawdust off of, and oil one more time. The pin with the washers at the end was by far the easiest one to set, which makes me wonder why all such knives didn't have washers on all the pins.
Friday, March 13, 2020
German hunting trousse, part I
I've recently developed an interest in acquiring an old German hunting trousse of the type that was used in 17th and 18th centuries. These were sets of culinary tools used in the processing of big game such as deer and boar. Typically a trousse would include a Waidblatt or Waidpraxe (hunting cleaver), one or two by-knives, and a carving fork and/or an awl-like tool, the function of which is variously believed to be either a simpler version of a fork or a sharpening steel. These would all have matching hilts. Since they were tools of aristocrats (as the saying went, "Das Jagen/Ist Ein/altes Recht/es gehöret/für den Adel/und Sein/geschlecht"), they were rather ornate, often with silver furniture.
I have, as yet, no idea where to acquire blanks for the cleaver, awl or fork (standard carving forks are much too large, and replica 18th-century table forks have tines that are too short and necks that are too long). The by-knife would also be a little uncertain. The flat-tanged varieties of traditional Jagdnicker strongly resemble it, but have thickened shoulders that would be difficult to grind away cleanly.
An alternative presented itself, however. It is marketed as a "mini" version of a Spanish belduque. Whether it's an accurate replica of that is neither here nor there as far as my purposes are concerned, but I had a gift card to Amazon, so it's as good a choice as any. And that's why this is where I'm starting the project.
The belduque arrived with a somewhat loose-fitting sheath, a full-bellied grip with horn scales, and a rather poor secondary bevel which is not really visible in my photos. The blade is 3mm thick at the shoulder, about half again more than the heaviest modern paring knives I've handled, with much less distal taper. I like this because I figure if the heat-treatment is poor on this cheap knife, the thicker blade will ameliorate it somewhat.
Another thing to note is that the bolster, while it may look deep yellow in the catalogue photo, actually appears to be nickel silver (also known as German silver), an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel with only a faint yellowish tinge. This isn't a bad thing, since nickel silver, as its name implies, looks a lot like real silver (though more durable and less prone to ugly tarnish) and the original hunting trousses often had silver furniture, while I've never seen one with brass. It does, however, make obtaining furniture a little more complicated and expensive.
Obviously, the first thing to do was get rid of the scales. I ground off the ends of the pins, then gradually wedged an X-Acto blade between the scales and the tang, and then thicker blades until the scales were forced off.
The original by-knives rarely if ever had bellied grips; indeed, to judge by the many photos I've looked at, straight-sided grips are one of the distinguishing features between these and modern ones. So some trimming is in order.
I set the tang in a heavy vise and erased the markered edges with an angle grinder. Grinding metal generates a lot of heat, enough to anneal the blade (i.e., ruin the heat-treatment) if left unchecked, and if I were working on the blade I would tend to pause frequently and rub the blade down with an ice cube. But the vise, which is in essence two big chunks of steel, acts as a heat sink -- when I'd finished grinding, the tang was only slightly warmed. Also, the vise prevents me from accidentally grinding off too much.
Found some nickel silver rods on eBay at a slight discount because they're tarnished... I don't know why that matters because it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes with some Brasso to deal with it, but in this project even polishing is redundant since only the very ends will even be visible. Anyway, luckily I was able to get more than enough for the entire project and one or two more all at once.
The correct material for the scales is deer antler, but I hate working with antler. It's foul-smelling and cracks too easily for my tastes. Instead I'm using some yellow ash.
The ash is cut, shaped and textured with various rotary tool attachments. The cutting wheel really isn't the right tool for this job, as it breaks much too easily, and explosively, as well as producing a ton of smoke. But in the absence of a power saw, this was the fastest way to get the job done, and I am nothing if not impatient about certain tasks.
I wrapped up today's work by applying wood stain to the textured tops of the scales. I intend to let it dry for a week or so, then sand the scales to their final shape. With any luck, the sanding will remove most of the stain, leaving color only in the grooves, and provide a look similar to genuine antler.
I have, as yet, no idea where to acquire blanks for the cleaver, awl or fork (standard carving forks are much too large, and replica 18th-century table forks have tines that are too short and necks that are too long). The by-knife would also be a little uncertain. The flat-tanged varieties of traditional Jagdnicker strongly resemble it, but have thickened shoulders that would be difficult to grind away cleanly.
An alternative presented itself, however. It is marketed as a "mini" version of a Spanish belduque. Whether it's an accurate replica of that is neither here nor there as far as my purposes are concerned, but I had a gift card to Amazon, so it's as good a choice as any. And that's why this is where I'm starting the project.
The belduque arrived with a somewhat loose-fitting sheath, a full-bellied grip with horn scales, and a rather poor secondary bevel which is not really visible in my photos. The blade is 3mm thick at the shoulder, about half again more than the heaviest modern paring knives I've handled, with much less distal taper. I like this because I figure if the heat-treatment is poor on this cheap knife, the thicker blade will ameliorate it somewhat.
Another thing to note is that the bolster, while it may look deep yellow in the catalogue photo, actually appears to be nickel silver (also known as German silver), an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel with only a faint yellowish tinge. This isn't a bad thing, since nickel silver, as its name implies, looks a lot like real silver (though more durable and less prone to ugly tarnish) and the original hunting trousses often had silver furniture, while I've never seen one with brass. It does, however, make obtaining furniture a little more complicated and expensive.
Obviously, the first thing to do was get rid of the scales. I ground off the ends of the pins, then gradually wedged an X-Acto blade between the scales and the tang, and then thicker blades until the scales were forced off.
You don't get to see the removed scales, since I threw them out weeks ago.
The original by-knives rarely if ever had bellied grips; indeed, to judge by the many photos I've looked at, straight-sided grips are one of the distinguishing features between these and modern ones. So some trimming is in order.
I wrapped up today's work by applying wood stain to the textured tops of the scales. I intend to let it dry for a week or so, then sand the scales to their final shape. With any luck, the sanding will remove most of the stain, leaving color only in the grooves, and provide a look similar to genuine antler.
Friday, November 15, 2019
They're everywhere, they're everywhere, they're everywhere
The myelin sheaths are rolled-up plant labels, while the nucleus and ends of the axion are brass beads. Everything other than the beads is solid copper.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Experimenting with cupric acetate
Many if not most leatherworkers know that a solution of ferric acetate, aka vinegaroon, will turn vegetable-tanned leather dark grey or black. Thus, while it's not actually a dye in the strict sense (the black color is not the result of black pigments in the solution but of a chemical reaction that takes place in the leather) it can be used as one in a limited capacity, and is cheap to produce using just vinegar and steel wool.
Years ago I saw a post on the myArmoury forums mentioning that if you use copper instead of iron, the result is blue. I bought some copper wool to try this out, and finally got around to it last week. After soaking the copper in vinegar for a few hours, I wondered if it might not take a long time to create the acetate, since copper is more resistant to corrosion than iron.
It turns out there's a way to speed the process up enormously. All that's needed is one more common household chemical, et voila. The video doesn't show it, but the midpoint of the steeping looks amazing, like a breaking wave filmed underwater.
It was at this point that I began to worry. Was the blue color just a reference to the liquid itself? What would it do to leather?
The answer is just a little. The dry leather stained with cupric acetate is on the lower left. To the right is the same piece after oiling, next to an unstained, un-oiled piece from the same hide.
The color doesn't seem to wash out easily after drying, so there may be some chemical reaction taking place, but the visual effect is modest - and this is after getting the leather sopping wet with the solution. It probably contributes to the darkness of the oiled brown leather. What you see in the photo, though, is the test scrap at its darkest - freshly-oiled leather will lighten with time as the oily and dry areas reach equilibrium.
Years ago I saw a post on the myArmoury forums mentioning that if you use copper instead of iron, the result is blue. I bought some copper wool to try this out, and finally got around to it last week. After soaking the copper in vinegar for a few hours, I wondered if it might not take a long time to create the acetate, since copper is more resistant to corrosion than iron.
It turns out there's a way to speed the process up enormously. All that's needed is one more common household chemical, et voila. The video doesn't show it, but the midpoint of the steeping looks amazing, like a breaking wave filmed underwater.
It was at this point that I began to worry. Was the blue color just a reference to the liquid itself? What would it do to leather?
The color doesn't seem to wash out easily after drying, so there may be some chemical reaction taking place, but the visual effect is modest - and this is after getting the leather sopping wet with the solution. It probably contributes to the darkness of the oiled brown leather. What you see in the photo, though, is the test scrap at its darkest - freshly-oiled leather will lighten with time as the oily and dry areas reach equilibrium.
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