Recent content by robin wood

I live in Edale. Coopers is prob your best bet. There's no campsites in the village with fires sadly. Upper Booth campsite is lovely but books up well in advance closed until March Ollerbrook farm bunkhouses good if weather grim. Fieldhead is good campsite with good facilities but definitely...

I worked on the replica bronze age Dover boat and used bronze axes and adzes every day for three months. At first I could not believe we were going to work with tools that were so soft, (45 rockwell) but by the end I loved them and could carve an ash canoe paddle as fast (25 mins) with the...

You can view the page at http://www.bushcraftuk.com/forum/content.php?r=663-How-to-sharpen-a-hook-knife-vid

That depends entirely on the compound block you are using. They come in a host of different grit sizes. What matters is that each stage of your process has an appropriate grit size so that you can easily remove the scratch pattern from the previous grit. If you jump too much from a coarse 1000...

King stone in 1000 followed by 5 or 6000 then autosol is great. Emery paper followed by strop is a big jump, the polish will never remove the scar pattern from the paper so you end up with a sawtooth edge which works well for a short while. Folk that use that method end up stropping a lot.

I have not made any youtubes for a few years but have just done a few including how I sharpen a hook knife. There are obviously lots of ways of doing it and no one right way but this works for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cac949WVIog

Oh yes a well sharpened and adjusted plane swooshing over clean wood and leaving a super polished finish is one of life's more refined pleasures. Hard to beat.

I was working away for the weekend so missed it, about to catch up on 4OD now this is the link http://www.channel4.com/programmes/time-team-specials/4od#3752430

Yes that's exactly what it means, new technologies rarely replace old ones, here I am typing at a computer but I still use a biro, occasionally a fountain pen and I have plenty of friends that still carve lettering in stone. Lawn mowers didn't replace scythes nor mini diggers spades. The Dover...

The Dover boat is very different to a dug out, amazing technology and weird joinery that was an evolutionary dead end.

Just heard that the Time Team special on the Dover boat I helped build which goes out Sunday will be the last Time Team ever, end of an era, glad to have been part of it even if right at the end.

Thanks all. They seem to be well received by the spooncarving community I'll be interested to hear how bushcraft folk get on with them.

I have been working on some new tools specifically designed for spooncarveres but the axe may be of interest for folk looking for a nice lightweight pack axe. I live near Sheffield which helps when developing new tools. The hook knives are laser cut there and rough ground, then I put the bend in...

I spent 20 years living in cute National Trust cottages, chocolate box pretty and I loved them all. I heated with wood on a rayburn, which was the heart and soul of the home. If I went away for the weekend it was cold and damp when I came home and took three days to properly heat through. I...

They are more common the nearer you are to the channel as they are not resident here, every one you see has flown the channel. We get them in Derbyshire in good summers. What I don't understand is why do they fly here? It's a long way to come and they are not breeding here, are they trying to...