Striker

Well, we're not talking football here but a slightly more traditional 'craft' of firelighting from sparks. In the previous post I showed off my first forged knife - well whilst I was there and waiting for stuff to cool I also made a steel flint striker.



The idea behind this is that you strike the edge of the flattened portion (on the right of the image) on a sharp edge of a bit of flint to generate sparks. These sparks are showered into a suitable tinder which then ultimately becomes a fire. There are modern equivelants that produce, more and hotter, sparks but it is still nice to use and make more traditional processes. another homemade bushcraft product!

Hand forging a knife

A couple of weeks ago I went on a course to learn how to forge knives and other tools. It was a brilliant day out and the chap who had the patience to teach me was Dave Budd (www.davebuddknives.homestead.com). He did a good job. Here is the (almost finished) article.

I still have the handle to finish - it is made of oak and it needs to have a bit more sanding, then Danish oil, then more sanding, more oil etc etc.

The blade also needs to be sharpened but that won't happen until I have made the sheath. That will be another day with Dave and another learning curve!

Here is a closeup of the handle and blade.

I did get a bit fancy and added some file work on the spine to make it look a bit flash!