Blimey, thank God that is over!
- Thread starter spamel
- Start date
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Come along to the amazing Summer Moot (21st July - 2nd August), a festival of bushcrafting and camping in a beautiful woodland PLEASE CLICK HERE for more information.
To be fair the mods need a break too and if I was Tony I would have pulled the ethernet as well...I mean, done some essential server maintenance or suffered some data centre downtime 
B
bushyboo
Guest
echo what everyone else has said , yes im sad too i missed it and had withdrawles also didnt find out about the backup till last night i was like a junkie getting a fix 
Well I whittled some reclatte cheese spatulas out of gorse for my german friend, joined British blades, and have now decided the most disirable edged tool for a forager is a hand sythe, and I want one
Nice to be back again
I want one shaped like this little bronze one
It's an ideal tool for not only gathering rushes/ reeds & grasses but for howking nettles and brambles as well as fungi.
cheers,
Toddy
p.s. and the inflamed spot on my left foot is the remains of a cleg bite
three weeks later 
I want one shaped like this little bronze one
It's an ideal tool for not only gathering rushes/ reeds & grasses but for howking nettles and brambles as well as fungi.
cheers,
Toddy
p.s. and the inflamed spot on my left foot is the remains of a cleg bite
Sheesh! Are your clegs still around, Toddy? They must be nails! (or was the photo taken earlier in the year?)
Nice to see the site back - I'm another saddo who missed it!
No, I think that bite was in August, but I got bitten in the middle of November by one
I hate clegs :bluThinki
cheers,
Toddy
I hate clegs :bluThinki
cheers,
Toddy
I want one shaped like this little bronze one
It's an ideal tool for not only gathering rushes/ reeds & grasses but for howking nettles and brambles as well as fungi.
cheers,
Toddy
p.s. and the inflamed spot on my left foot is the remains of a cleg bite
Toddy, what if I made you a steel blade (free) to the same shape and you could test it and let us all know what its like? I would need perhaps an outline of the thing for size? It would not be as nice as the bronze but good enough to play and test with it.
I am waiting for some steel so could add it to what I am making.
xylaria
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
I want one shaped like this little bronze one
It's an ideal tool for not only gathering rushes/ reeds & grasses but for howking nettles and brambles as well as fungi.
cheers,
Toddy
p.s. and the inflamed spot on my left foot is the remains of a cleg bite
Now thats a lovely looking tool.
i have only tried a 90` scythe once before, it was a pakistan hemp scythe my landlady lent us to do the garden when i was a student. It wasn't quite the full grim reaper, but it took some getting used to. I was thinking of 180` scythe but the curve is simerlar to your lovely bronze. It will have no usable point but maybe lanyard on the end of the blade so a cross bar can attached to turn it into a skin scraper and herb chopper.
I am thinking of carving one out wood, and then giving it to a hobby maker to make me a metal one. I remember chopping down nettles with cumun[(sp?) pron. cum awn] hurley (shinty) bat] when was a child, there is a urban legend that says that they can cleanly take the top off a mans head if wielded wrong. So I want to see if wooden tools can have a usable edge, or it is just celtic stories that the various hockeys are war games.
Having suffered a chipped shinbone from a hocky stick and both my wife and my mother suffering scarring from hockey sticks, I can afirm that hockey is warfare not sport!
Mind you being a spectator at an all girls hockey match is more than just education......!
Mind you being a spectator at an all girls hockey match is more than just education......!
Speaking for myself Aaron - yep I am sad!
When I am not out and about - leading international expeditions, canoeing, walking (just got in from a cracker through our local woods and am almost finished packing for a canoe bimble tomorrow), testing gear for shooting/walking mags and writing books about walking/cycling in Wales, making kit/knives/spoons - I realy enjoy settling down to chat with my friends on this site and missed it awfully!
It beats the carp out of the awful carp that they have on telly these days (I only get the standard 5 channels [one in Welsh!]- no way will I pay extra for even more carp!)
I love this site and all who sail in her.
Yep I am a sad little loser
John
Well said sir!
Yes, just like everyone else I missed the site when it was done. Tony must feel very satisfied that he has created something that means such a lot to so many people. We are not sad. We are just a caring community of people with common interests. A rarity these days in my experience.
Jojo that would be brilliant 
I tell you though, I think you'd find more than a few of us interested in one. The handle on the little bronze one is made from yew, and the hook/bump at the bottom keeps the blade from pulling out of your hand.
I think a tool like thait could be every bit as special as the bushcraft knives we are all so fond of.
Xylaria have you got an Ulu knife? It's bit like a half moon herb chopper but Inuit women use it for prepping skins as well as a general edc sort of tool. They have tiny dinky little ones for cutting sewing threads and the like too.
cheers,
Toddy
I tell you though, I think you'd find more than a few of us interested in one. The handle on the little bronze one is made from yew, and the hook/bump at the bottom keeps the blade from pulling out of your hand.
I think a tool like thait could be every bit as special as the bushcraft knives we are all so fond of.
Xylaria have you got an Ulu knife? It's bit like a half moon herb chopper but Inuit women use it for prepping skins as well as a general edc sort of tool. They have tiny dinky little ones for cutting sewing threads and the like too.
cheers,
Toddy
How about this little item Mary?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/An-unusual-Vi...oryZ4708QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/An-unusual-Vi...oryZ4708QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
It looks like a tool for a specific task, doesn't it? neat though.
The crescent shaped sickle seemed to have all the advantages of a small billhook, the curve meant that I could *pull* brambles, nettles and rushes clear so that they could be cut free but I could also (and did) use it like a small hand scythe (we call it a heuk around here) to cut grain. I also had a go at cutting off apples and bunches of elderberries from the trees with it and it was excellent for that too. A colleague who cleans up a beach on a regular basis eyed it up too, reckoning it would be a great tool for beachcombing.
cheers,
Toddy
The crescent shaped sickle seemed to have all the advantages of a small billhook, the curve meant that I could *pull* brambles, nettles and rushes clear so that they could be cut free but I could also (and did) use it like a small hand scythe (we call it a heuk around here) to cut grain. I also had a go at cutting off apples and bunches of elderberries from the trees with it and it was excellent for that too. A colleague who cleans up a beach on a regular basis eyed it up too, reckoning it would be a great tool for beachcombing.
cheers,
Toddy
I thought it would also be an very interesting project to make. Do you by any chance have a drawing or could you get one? So that I would have some proper dimensions to work from? I have 2mm 01 tool steel, I am getting some 3mm and some 5mm. Would it need to be hardened and sharpened or left unhardened and so on. Depending on the size, I may be able to make one out of some bronze I have got, but that is a may be, I am not sure what type of bronze it is. Also, would it need to be a single bevel, ,like a chisel edge or double edge like a scandi.
Somewhere I have much better photos, but no idea where, HWMBLT is looking, maybe we'll get lucky.
Basically the blade tapers across it's with, just like a good billhook does, but I've no idea if this is necessary if it's made with steel or not. It had a single bevel though and the back was flat. The bronze had been poured into an open mould.
I'll see what I can do about resolving those photos a bit more.
atb,
Toddy
Basically the blade tapers across it's with, just like a good billhook does, but I've no idea if this is necessary if it's made with steel or not. It had a single bevel though and the back was flat. The bronze had been poured into an open mould.
I'll see what I can do about resolving those photos a bit more.
atb,
Toddy
