Another Bone Knife

Bone knives are excellent for tasks requiring a more sturdy edge than stone normally is. For example, while cutting true tinder fungus with a stone is a pain, shaving it off with bone is easy. Bone is also sharp enough for cutting non-fibrous vegetables, gutting fish and skinning small animals. In the latter task bone has the advantage of not normally being sharp enough to slice through the skin, especially if you have a rounded tip on the knife. Though I prefer to work with fresh bones I have been in short supply of bones for a long time since last hunting season so in this case I had to use an old sheep leg bone I found in a field.

Start by sawing halfway into the bone at the lower end margin of where the blade is supposed to be.

















Score around the sides and top so that the front piece is freed from the rest without cracking the rest of the piece. Score almost all the way through. Using water will help a lot.

















Split from the top and break off the waste. This waste piece was made into a small chisel. It might not be of very great utility, but I'll try it on green wood.

















Afterwards the blade was ground thinner and pointy. For cleaning fish I would ideally want a thinner tip, but I want a stronger edge on this one for broader application.

















I already had a birch bark sheath from a now broken knife to reuse.

Needle Case

Needles are as a rule; small and fragile. Consequently being prone to loss and breakage. The needle case does the job of containing and protecting them towards breakage and dulling. Needle cases can be made very elaborately or very simply, from wood, antler, ivory or bone. This one can only be classed as very simple and is made from sheep bone. When I get my hands on some reindeer (caribou) leg bone I will make a bigger, more beautifully carved version.

This design is of Inuit origin, but I know that other natives, including the Scandianavian Saami used similar designs. The idea is simple. You have a hollow case, a leather/buckskin strip and two stopping devices. When closed it looks like the photo below. The needles are then protected inside the tube.














To open it, simply pull the opposite stopping device.














The needles are stuck into a buckskin pad.














A proper belt hanger could be made for it, but for this one I used only a stick to make sure the thong doesn't go all the way through. I will just carry mine in a pouch.

Toe Bone Fishing Hook

This winter I have made a number of antler and bone hooks made in several different ways. A method I tried fairly recently I would say is more than likely my new method for making a bone hook. Bone has two major advantages over antler as a hook. It gets sharper and isn't as affected by water (antler softens a lot after some time). The disadvantage is usually that bone isn't as flexible and has a strong tendency to break, especially where cut agains it's grain. The toe bone hook follows the grain all the way and can be left thinner, which faciliates easier bait attachment and possibly higher overall efficiency. With other words, this is yet to me, probably "the ideal" primitive fishing hook. I know that the barrel cactus have even more suitable hooks, but that plant is unfortunately not to be found here.

First you need a toe bone. Clean it up well.














Grind both sides until you expose the marrow in the middle, this will make into a natural, hollow rectangular(ish) piece of bone.














Clean up the inside.














Cut at what you judge to be the most suitable place and cut the shape of the hook.














Round the edges of the hook and make it sharp.

Fishing Gorge

Due to a heavy work load at school and in the home I have had very little opportunity to test much of my new equipment yet. So, when the workload hopefully eases sometimes this summer, I'll have opportunity to test the fishing equipment some more too.

Anyway, having heard about the efficiency of the throat gorge for several years, I have decided to give it a go. My experience with metal hooks is that smaller and thinner is better. This is where I believe most practitioners fail today. To large and too crude.

I used the thigh bone of a black grouse. First it was sawed off in one end, then halfway through on the other. As usual, water helps reduce the work involved.














Four slithers was made by scoring it along the length in four places.














The pieces are scraped pointy in the end and all that is left is to tie a thin thread to the middle. I don't think it will slip, even without a groove. The smallest one is less than 1,5 cm long. Hopefully small enough for the small fish I usually go after.

Black Grouse Wing Bone Call

Laje said that he had heard about making a call from the wing bones of a black grouse. It is supposed to work when calling hazel grouse. Not knowing how it is supposed to look like I decided to take the design from the turkey wing bone call.

The three largest bones in one wing makes up the structure of this call. The ends are sawed off with a serrated flake to produce three tubes.














The broken ends are ground even.














Stake the tubes free of marrow so you can blow through them.














Amazingly these three bones fit very well into eachother. If you can't get it through you may have to shorten off a little more of the irregular ends. At least I had to.

Finally smear the splices with hot pitch to seal the the joints.














I assume all wing bones of birds will make similar calls, but the sounds may be completely different it seems. This call sounds nothing like hazel grouse, so it is obviously the wrong design, but if you suck the air in and allow your lips to vibrate it sounds a little like deer I think. I will hopefully get into the forest and test that theory on Thursday.

Bone and Antler Arrow Points

Finished two points the other day. One are made of reindeer antler and the other of sheep bone. They are narrow because of these materials' inferior sharpness and I will not use them for anything over the size of roe deer or perhaps reindeer due to the probable lack of bleeding qualities.














Have anyone tried making Plains Indian style arrow points from hardened hide or sinew? Just for a curiousity I tried that once. My results were far from satisfying, so if someone has an idea on how it was done, please tell me.

Bone Needle

Made a new bone needle yesterday. The bone is one of the bones connected to the toes on the elk (moose). It was cleaned with a flake and reduced in lenght by abrading on the edge of my abrading stone.














The bone has the approximate shape of a needle, but is too tapering. The bone is abraded narrower and is cut even a little shorter to a better length.














Though you can drill the hole after finishing it, I prefer to do it before, in case my drilling doesn't hit dead centre. It can be done with either a hand drill or a simple flake. I used the latter method on this particular needle. Drill from both sides and carefully join the holes with an awl.














The needle is finished by scraping it with a flake (more like a block this one) and rounding the edges. This particular needle ended up a little too thick in the rear end for my taste, but to not compromise the strenght of the eye I couldn't go much narrower.

Hide flesher

Due to upcoming exams and thigh rolling cordage between the reading, I will post mainly from my backlog to until next Friday. My backlog is quite extensive, but be prepared for a lot less pictures than in my current posts. I used to be rather lazy with the camera...

When I got the elk/moose hide for my coracle this autumn I was lucky enough to come in time to also secure two legs and two ears as well. To prepare the hide for stretching it on the coracle I decided to make a cannon bone flesher. After skinning the leg and taking off sinew and cartilage with a sharp flint flake the bone was scored on the inside of the depression where the main tendons are placed.














After scoring about half way through I gave it an indirect blow, with my antler hammer on a chisel. Predictability wasn't of the essence here so the rather rough edges didn't bother me.














The marrow and bone splinters was fished out of the bonecavity with sticks and the edges smoothed and sharpened with a flake.














The hide was skinned very poorly and lots of big chunks of meat was stuck on the hide. To remove them, the only possible way was using a sharp flake to make a starting cut and rip the chunks off. This tool comes in to use when removing the small pieces of flesh and the membrane, something that wasn't neccesary on the hide for the coracle. So this tool remains largely unused.

I got to test it on removing the inner bark of the fleshing beam of pine. It is probably excellent for taking of alder bark for tanning. Is likely to shred it at the same time!

Awl Update

The bone awl has now been finalized. So has the knife from the other end of the bone. If you have noticed, I use a lot of pink and purple backgrounds. :-) That is because the lighting is best in the bathroom, where my daughter's towels are already laying there. From now on, I will try to use slightly more manly coloured towels...

Awl Update

Had planned to finish this project today, but due to several more pressing concerns I was unable to do so. Among them pictures for this wednesday's article.

Smashing bones is usually only semi-predictable. But it is more likely than not that you will get a good awl blank. This time was no exception. The roe deer hip bone took a blow with an antler hammer to the side and broke off in three nice pieces.














Next there is grinding, grinding and more grinding. Grinding bone is luckily a lot quicker than grinding antler. What is left on this particular piece of awl is really just to grind it to a longer and narrower point.