White Wolf Fian: Practice Piece #2

I've managed to get a few more pieces for my tool kit. I bartered for a medieval style saw with Lord Edhan. I found a file that has a curved and a flat course and medium tooth on it. And the white wire you see is a heavy duty coat hanger that I plan on turning into my drill and ring and dot tool. One of the reasons I have started a new piece rather than finish the first is because I have not made the ring and dot tool yet.

I decided to go ahead and jump right in on a strap end. I haven't up my mind what decoration I will use but I suspect it will be something very simple. I seem to remember seeing a strap end in my Bone and Antler book that had a series of ring and dots that were coloured. I think that is where I am going with this end.

I'm using beef bone. It is the easiest for me to get my hands on. I can either buy soup bones or I can buy a bone from the pet shop and clean out the crap they stuff in it for the dogs. I've got a few bones already so I plan to start with those.

I found a bone that had a relatively flat section and cut out a piece that was 3/4 inches by 2 inches. Unfortunately, I pretty much suck at hand sawing so I ended up with a piece that was thicker on one end than on the other, and thicker on one side than the other.

I forgot to take a picture of the work but I scraped with the knife to get the sides about the same thickness and I use the saw the straighten out the back and side. I also used the saw, after marking the bone with a pencil, to cut the end in the general shape I wanted it to be. Once done with that I went back to the knife and files to smooth out the end, flatten the top a bit, level out the back, in general cleaning the rough piece of bone into a shape that is recognizable and workable.



I really need my drill and ring and dot tools so I can finish this and the first piece, the bone cloak pin. I want to try using linseed oil or tung oil mixed with soot or powdered pigments to stain the piece in such a way that the decoration really shows up. I have some Red Sandlewood, called Saunders in period cooking, that supposedly colours food red. I wonder if it will work to colour oil as well. Otherwise, I need to get some red ochre for the colour red.

Something I learned with this piece is that a tiny bone shaving in the eye burns. I've had wood shavings in the eye that hurt but they never burned. I'll have to be more careful about my work and try to keep the bits and pieces out of my eyes. I also think I need a different clamp system for bone and antler work. I think part of my control issue with the saw is that I was trying to saw a tiny little piece of bone while it was clamped into my work bench clamp. I was bending over and the frame of the saw kept bumping into the work bench.

From beginning to this point I have spent approximately 4 hrs on this practice piece. Looking at it again I think I still need to flatten the top a little more before I start the decoration.

White Wolf Fian: Progress #1

Progress has started on my White Wolf Fian. I decided that progress would start by working the projects provided to me by Master Stephen at the Bone and Antler Carving Class. Here is a my progress after 3 hours of scraping and filing on my Bone Cloak Pin. I have a small course set of files, an extra carving knife, and a small fine file that I used as my starting tools.

The knife worked much better than the files. Even the course files took a long time to make any indentation in the bone at all. The knife allowed me to shave and chip away at the bone pin much more successfully. The course file did work well to create the beading along the shaft of the pen.

I still want to slim the shaft down more, so it goes through the fabric easier, and I want to add some kind of decoration to the top wedge. With that in mind I need to make myself a Ring and Dot tool. I am planning on making one from an old cheap flat head screw driver that has been filed with a wedge file to make the three prongs needed to make the Ring and Dot.

I also need to make a hole drilling tool. I'm not really sure how to proceed. Right now I am thinking that I will take a very small rod of steel and grind the shape into the end. I want to avoid using power tools if at all possible to the grinding will be done with a course grinding stone set up to be powered by either the foot or the hands. We'll see how well that works. If it doesn't work I may have to find a smith to make the tools.

Nalbinding: Mittens and Socks, Oh My!

 Just a couple of projects I have been working on. A pair of wool mittens in a slightly modified York Stitch and a pair of wool socks in Mammen Stitch.

Because the York Stitch is so prone to helixing (a tight twisting) I decided to add a row of mammen every 5 or 6 rows. It helped a little bit with the twisting but not enough. I really do dislike the York Stitch, mostly because of the twisting but I also find it very slow to do.

Mammen Stitch, on the other hand, is the stitch I tend to go to more often than not. It is denser than Oslo but doesn't use as much yarn as the Broden, Dalby, or Aisle stitches.

This is the first pair of socks I have made using the reducing heel method. Previous socks had been made using the slipper method where you made the toe then made a tongue for the bottom of the sock. The reducing method is the one seen in the Coppergate sock and seems to hold up to regular usage as opposed to the tongue method.

Nalbinding: Playing with Connections

I haven't done another hat recently but I was asked to make another pair of socks for the spouse. I decided I wanted to try playing with the connection B1+F1, the same connection used on the Aisle Mitten. With the Aisle Mitten the rows are very tight on one side and smooth on the other and fabric is very dense, making it really good for heat retention and water resistance.

I decided to use the same connection but with the Mammen Stitch. I don't know what I was expecting but I was definitely delighted to find that my efforts resulted in a fabric with a tight set on rows on one and a smooth surface on the other. The fabric isn't quite as dense as with the Aisle stitch but it is still dense enough to make for a great winter sock here in Canada.