Recent content by Keith_Beef

But do baffles puzzle you?

You can certainly make your own knife with very minimal tools and materials. Look on YouTube, there are loads of videos that show the process, or get a copy of Wayne Goddard's $50 knife shop. Angle iron and the bright drawn or cold-rolled bar (or black, hot rolled, for thicker pieces) from B&Q...

I received an email from a company from which I had bought one of two items previously; the message contained a discount code like "XMAS10" for 10% off. Well, surprise surprise, the code "XMAS25" worked even better! (I tried other values, like 30, 40 and 50, but they didn't work.)

You can carve wooden soles and nail leather uppers to them, but these too will wear through if you don't put irons or rubbers under them. I keep a pair of clogs by the back door and put them on to walk down the garden to the compost bin. I knew that the rubbers were worn out (I had replaced them...

I wonder how many people live hand to mouth, in that they keep no food whatsoever... I can imagine a fair few people live like that here in the town where I live and in Paris where I work. I don't mean people bothering on destitution, either, but people who wake up in a morning, dash out to...

I leave that to your imagination...

SWMBO and I were at another couple's house with another friend the weekend before last for supper. Part way through there was a power cut. I had a little torch in my pocket: shone up at the ceiling it lit up the room enough for the hostess to go and get four candles (oh yes) and a box of...

I stopped in at the Indian grocer and got a handful of little white aubergines and two handfuls of ladies' fingers.

From volume I of The Traditional Bowyer's Bible

Sometimes I find that a folding knife in a pocket is hard to get to if the pocket is a bit tight or I'm crouching. A knife on a belt sheath can be a bit too visible or can (in a dangler style sheath, like a puukko or brukskniv) need a hand on the sheath as well as a hand on the knife. A neck...

My mother loves turned wood and bought me this probably about twenty five years ago, turned out of a single piece of wood. In the centre is a tube big enough for six needles, over that fits a piece that's a kind of double bobbin for two kinds of thread, on that piece sits a thimble and then the...

A soap dish!

Maybe something like an Irish bodhrán.

Drumskins?

I'd not heard about that. Colleagues at the end of last week talked about some bloke who'd run the Swedish preparedness manual through Google Translate and was flogging copies over t' Intarwebs.