![]() First job – taking down a sweet chestnut limb I did not use any large swings or try and gouge the wood out with it, just a steady chipping rhythm, and eventually worked my way through the limb. I took the limb down using a rosette cut, chipping away at the wood all the way around the limb until it fell over. I needed this to make bark strips for weaving a sheath out of the bark and the wood for carving spoons. The first job I had to do with the adze was to take down a small sweet chestnut limb. I left these adzes to dry out and tighten for a month until they were needed on the final part of the course. They were quite difficult to tie off but I settled for simple overhand knots to finish. Initial rawhide wrapįor the next layer of rawhide I used wider strips, which allowed me to really pull them tight without worrying too much about it splitting. As rawhide dries out it shrinks and goes very hard (almost rock hard). ![]() I left this one to harden in a warm area for a couple of days. ![]() Just tighten slightly, and tie off the ends when you are finished. Don’t pull too tight as this will snap the rawhide. I wrapped thin pieces around the blade and the handle initially. Rawhide from a dog chewĪfter laying the rawhide out flat I just used a sharp piece of flint to cut it into strips I could use to bind the adze together. I boiled the dog chew in water for about twenty five minutes in order to soften it enough to be able to cut it into strips. I like to use rawhide as it was commonly used and is easily obtained these days from dog chews (I buy the biggest I can find). Traditionally rawhide was used to bind the flint to the handle alongside sinew, buckskin or other natural cordage. I did not smooth the handle down too much, as I wanted to retain some natural grip. Carving the shapeĪfter shaping I stripped the bark off and roughly smoothed it with sandpaper. I did not cut so deep so as to weaken the handle as this tool was destined for some hard use. I used the curve to give the flint blade a flat surface to sit on and carved out the notch to give the rawhide some additional surface area to hold on to. This piece of yew was cut down in my garden and then sawn to its basic shape with a modern saw. It needs to have a well-defined edge that has good strong shoulders. The flint axe blade shouldn’t be overly sharp as that will make it fragile. I had kept some flint from the course I had done with John Lordand I got a couple of good strong blades from this chunk of flint. I took my inspiration from the Cheddar Gorge Museum where I came across this very basic but beautiful flint adze. I ended up making two adzes out of flint, rawhide and curved branches. The adze I created for this has been extremely useful since then on other projects such as hollowing out this long bowl. The aim was to make them without the use of modern tools and I would need an adze to help me craft the sheath. I needed one to undertake my final project on my Woodcraft School Primitive Technology course: to create a bone bodkin and a bark sheath. So to become that self=respecting Stone Age woodworker I had to go out and make myself one as they do not turn up in the shops that often. When I want a bowl fast a modern adze is what I use, but if I have the time and I want to create something in a more leisurely fashion then I love to use a flint adzeĪny self-respecting Stone Age woodworker would always have had a decent flint adze to hand.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |