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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

They're everywhere, they're everywhere, they're everywhere

Assignment for Introduction to Psychology this past summer:  create a model of a neuron and submit a labeled photograph.

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.

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.

Fibula 2

Here we go again:

This one is made from 1.5mm steel rod (a hair less than 1/16-inch).  I think this is a bit too thin, and might not stand up to the strain of fastening a heavy cloak.  But it works much, much better than the 1/8-inch in any case.  I might consider using a thickness up to 1/12-inch or so.

The use of only a single brass bead is intentional, as I wanted to keep the amount of metal to a minimum.  The round copper-plated beads on the first attempt already had 1/8-inch holes, so they were easy to use as filler.  However, for this pin, that wasn't necessary, since it was easier to drill out enough bone beads to fill out the bow when I only had to increase the hole diameter from about 1mm to 1.5mm.

And one more time:

Of course it turned out wonky due to the metal bending too much where the large round bead should be, forcing it over to one side.  I also made the pin too short, which didn't help.  Due to the wonky bead and too-acute bend in the bow, I think this attempt looks much less elegant than it could.  I might remake it someday.

A few notes:  Some of the bone beads - which, according to the package, come from the "Cherished Collection by Nicole" (um, sure) - had tiny seed beads jammed in the stringing holes which had to be pushed out before the bone beads were useable.

Also, the steel, which comes from the spine of a marker flag, is apparently high-carbon.  Between the second and third successful fibulae, I accidentally quench-hardened another pin while forming the coil, which was the first time I'd ever successfully quench-hardened anything, causing the coil to snap like dry spaghetti.

Fibula

Steel rod with bone and brass beads.

Lessons learned:  For this purpose, 1/8-inch steel is much too heavy.  Shaping it required a lot of annealing and forging.  The rod is also too stiff, making it difficult to clasp and unclasp, and pressing on the bow of the fibula in the process puts a lot of pressure that I fear will eventually crack the bone beads, even though they're not packed together.  And, of course, I wasted a lot of time enlarging the stringing holes on each bead (except the small smooth brass ones).

The bone beads are from an inexpensive packet I got at A.C. Moore.  The brass ones are from Crazy Crow.  Actually, the smooth brass beads are copper-plated.

I would like to try again with a thinner steel, in 1/12 or even 1/16-inch if I can find it.  I also wanted to incorporate fewer metal beads and some animal horn ones.

All-purpose leather cap

A side project I made using this PDF pattern.  The shell is made from a leather remnant I got at a craft store, while the visor is some "blacksmith" leather I bought years ago and have never found a use for.  I would've preferred the visor to match the crown in color, but a number of experiments failed to produce a construction and finishing method that wouldn't bleed dye and deform when wet or "crack" when creased.  I wanted this cap to be functionally indestructible.  The blacksmith leather is extremely dark brown, but appears blue-black in the photos due to outdoor light (it was slightly overcast this morning).  For the same reason, it also has a smooth leather lining inside the band with a replaceable cotton sweatband hot-glued into place.

This is what the cap originally looked like.  However, after completing it on Sunday, I decided that the bright gold buttons and lacquered brass buckle were too ostentatious and military-looking.

Luckily, I had some antiqued brass-plated buttons and two of these 1/2-inch buckles from Tandy Leather, and an uncle of mine had given me a bottle of Blacken-It.  I sanded the lacquer off the remaining buckle, darkened it, brushed back the Blacken-It finish with steel wool (it's still darker than it appears in the photo), and put together a new chin cord yesterday.  The cords are just attached with twisted copper wire through a pair of holes on either side, so they can be easily removed and replaced with needlenose pliers/clippers.  The other cord will probably be used for a costume hat project.

While this style is recognized in the West as a Greek fisherman's or sailor's cap, it was common peasant or working-class headwear, especially in Eastern Europe, so it would also work for any early 20th-century costume.  And because it's made of leather, it also counts as a motorcycle cap.  I like to think the functional chin cord would also work better for that purpose than the simple chain that a lot of them feature.

I modified it in two ways:  First, the band is a bit wider than in the pattern, for more headspace, and second, I also made the visor wider from side to side.  This forces the ends to be pulled in more when stitched to the band, which causes the visor to curl down more, protecting the eyes better from the sun.