Tool : Crook Knife

Whilst attending the CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace I purchased a Lauri Hook Blade from English Handmade Knives stall, I had wanted to try my hand at handling a stick tang blade for a while.

The gentleman at the stall gave me some tips on how best to go about handling the blade as well as a helpful fact-sheet.

The Lauri Hook Blade dimensions are 60x18 mm

The first job was to cut down the stick tang to the required length and then file down the brass bolster to fit the blade.

For the handle I used a piece of Sycamore, after squaring the end off I marked out where the stick tang would go.

Using the drill press I removed most of the required material, after that it was a simple matter of filling out the fit the profile of the blade.

Once the blade was fitting nicely I marked out the handle shape.

Clamping the handle into a vice I cut the handle to shape, from here I sanded the handle to the shape I wanted.

At this point I used some epoxy resin to set the blade in the handle, once set I did a final sanded down until smooth and fitted nicely in my hand.

Tool : Bushcraft Self Made Bucksaw

When having a camping over night I feel you can get away with out the need of a saw, most of time you can simple collect dead standing or hanging wood from around your camp site and snap these in to usable lengths.

The buck saw is a extremely useful tool when camping in winter, when its cold an you need more firewood for the long night or its wet and you need to process larger logs to get to the dry wood inside. The bucksaw allows you to process a large amount of  wood with ease and relatively quickly.

As buck saws are very simple to make I carry just the blade with two bolts with wing nuts and make the saw when in camp.

Mors Kochanski  Bush Craft book has a great diagram and instruction on how to make a buck saw.

First job was cutting the hazel to length, using the saw blade with out an tension on the blade was a bit tricky.

Cutting a grove in the end of the upright for the blade to sit in.

Finally the grove was deep enough for the blade to sit in.

Cutting the notches for the horizontal bar.

and a notch for the bolt to sit in to hold the blade in place

The horizontal bar took a bit of adjustment to sit correctly in the notches.

After that it was the simple part of putting it together