Whenever trees are cut down or heavily pruned, I try to get some nice bits to carve. One of my neighbours was cutting down a young pencil cedar a few weeks back, and I got this beautiful branch.
A Japanese-inspired Puukko and sheath
On our way to our holiday destination in the south of Slovakia, my girlfriend an I visited Dictum last summer. I think it’s the largest store for traditional tools and supplies, located in southern Bavaria. Judging by the prestige and fame of this shop, I was hoping for a massive store to wander through for hours, picking stuff off the shelves and stacking them in my cart. Sadly, it’s more of a small showroom where you can see and try many of their products. The store is clearly more internet-oriented. Half the stuff I was interested in was not at the actual showroom, but in the warehouse nearby. This was especially so for the materials, such as leather and wood. These I was most hoping to see and pick out myself. Next time I’ll order online.
My girlfriend’s wallet
My girlfriend made this wallet. I have no pictures of the making process because I wasn’t planning on blogging about it. But it turned out so nice that I just had to show it. Plus, I made the leather strap and put on the buttons, so I can brag a little too.
My Japanese toolbox
As I said in my post about a leather case for my essential leatherworking tools, I’ll be doing some travelling soon, and I want to take some of my tools with me. For this, I made a lightweight, Japanese-inspired toolbox. It’s made out of tulipwood (or yellow poplar, liriodendron tulipiferia), which is not native to my area, but cheap as chips, lightweight, easy to work and still quite tough. I used it for my second lap steel as well. The darker wood I used for the little planks across the top are quartersawn English elm (ulmus procera) , which does grow locally. It was also quite cheap and it’s quite hard and I think it’s pretty. The joinery on the box is big dovetails on the corners, glued and nailed together with big forged nails. This thing won’t fall apart soon. The elm planks were glued and doweled onto the top with birch (darker) and ramin (gonystulus, lighter) dowels. The box locks by sliding a piece of wood between two of the elm planks. I made the thing without the use of power tools, hand tools only. I finished the box with a 50-50 mix of boiled linseed oil and natural turpentine.
A case for my essential leatherworking tools
A lot of things have happened since my last blog post. I earned my Bachelor’s degree, went to Rome for a week and was admitted to the Master’s programme I applied for, to name a few. This is the reason I have not posted anything for a while. I have made some stuff that I would like to show you though. Sadly, I don’t have time to show you all of it. I’ll be leaving for a short trip to Slovakia tomorrow. I might make a blog post from there. On my way there, I’ll be stopping by Dictum in Metten to pick up some stuff. Can’t wait to see if the store is as good as I’ve heard. For now, I’ll just make some shorter posts.
Carving kitchen utensils
These are some kitchen utensils – two spatula’s and a shallow spoon – I carved last week. The wood came from a big oak log that I’m slowly but surely turning into a hewing bench. More on that soon.
I made a little video of how I carve a spatula:
My first spoon
This is my first spoon. I carved it last week from a piece of cleft oak from the log that I’m building a hewing bench out of. There’ll be a post on that very soon.