Puukko finished

I have to make this short and sweet, because I have to pack my bags. Tomorrow is the last day of school this year. I'm off to Turku to get drunk this weekend before a 1000km drive on Sunday night to my December work place in Lapland. Nice.

As you can see from the picture above the lakes are frozen down here so you know its gonna be cold up north.

We had an outdoor classroom today to learn about the ice, snow, and winter conditions. Grilled a few sausages while we were there. I chopped a piece of ice from the lake to inspect it and it was over seven cm's thick of clear ice. Five cm's of clear ice is what you want to walk on it safely. I'm still not walking on it yet though.

Yeah, guess what else. My knife is done. I finished that bad boy today.

I stiched up the side first. I got it real wet to mould it round the wooden inner sheath, marked the holes, drilled them and banged the stiches in.

I folded the top piece over where the ring is and stitched it real nice. When I finished and was admiring my work I noticed that I forgot to put the ring in the loop so had to cut the stiches off and do it again. Then I just cut some leather to make the belt loop and like a proper knob almost stiched it before putting it through the ring again. Finally added the popper button thing and the sheath was ready for greasing and I rubbed linseed oil into the handle of the knife. I'm not going to stain the handle and apparently the sun is going to do a good job of tanning the leather for me. Although I will have to wait untill summer.

I'm off to pack now so...

Laters

Making a traditional puukko (knife)

Been busy in the classroom the past few weeks so nothing that interesting to post, but I now have my first aid card and certificates to add to my portfolio. I also passed the food hygiene passport test the other week so now I can apply for a job in McDonald's!

Anyway it was a pretty good week last week, we got to make a puukko, which is a traditional Finnish knife with a single curved cutting edge and a flat back, the flat back allows the user to place a thumb or his other hand on it to concentrate the force. Puukko's are used both as a tool for all kinds of carving, especially to work wood, and to clean the catches of anglers and hunters. Got to make the whole thing from forging the blade to carving the handle and making a sheath.Check out the pictures and I'll explain a little as best as I can remember.

We started off in the classroom where we were told about the process's and drew a few designs for our own knives before heading to the forge.Mikko teacher fired up the forge and showed us how its done.

Start off with the tang, that goes the whole way through the handle. We were told to think of the metal as play-doh and to try to stretch it out as we hit it. The tang has to taper out so that the thickest part is where the cutting edge will begin.

Tang sorted so time to chop it off at the length you want for the blade, about the width of your palm. From here you can make the metal wider but not much longer so better chop it off in the right place. Then to start forming the basic blade shape and hammer out the bevel.

The shape he's forming here is the back of the blade not the cutting edge. when he starts to hammer the bevel it will push the tip of the blade up, leave the curve underneath.

Now it was our turn. Mikko made his in about 15 Min's, it took us a little longer.

Mikko warned us not to expect too much from our first try at this. The drawing at the top is what I was aiming for, I didn't quite match it, but luckily we had plenty of grinders.

After a little help from my friend the grinder.

Not looking too bad now, got a few new designs so off to the workshop to start on the handle.

 While we were waiting for everyone else to finish up.

 After spending the day at the blacksmiths forge everyone is pretty clean, apart from charlie who looked like she'd been down the mines.

This is where we came to start the knife handles, you wont believe it, but this is a primary school work shop. Not even a posh school, just a normal school for little kids in Finland, It had everything.

I chose a piece of birch for the handle, strong and not too hard to work with. Marked where the tang would go through and drilled the holes so it would fit as tight as possible.

After carving the handle, I cut a piece of reindeer antler and a piece of brass to match and fitted it to the front of the handle using some super epoxy.

When it had set I filed it all down so everything matched. Then got on with the wooden piece that will go inside the leather sheath.

So I got a little mad next. With the blade protected and fixed I Was supposed to hammer the end of the tang coming through the handle to form a rivet to secure the blade in place. Apparently I was hitting it too hard and the whole bloody thing fell apart, I even snapped the tip of the blade but that is easily fixed.

Even though I had spent a good while forming the small piece of brass to fit the shape of the back of the handle I chucked it away chopped the end of the tang off. Plugged the whole and re-glued the whole thing. Its not going to be as strong without the full tang riveted at the end but time was running out and I wanted at least the knife finished by the end of the week. I also added a piece of leather between the handle and reindeer antler

I'm pretty pleased with it so far, I need to sand the handle a few more times and stain it. I started making the sheath at home, it's not finished yet but I'll sew it up this week and maybe dye the leather. It's been so good this week that I will definitely be doing this again so dont be supprised if some of you start getting knives for presents.

Laters.

Moose hunt

I've not written anything in a while, been a bit busy with a few other things. I had the identification test last week. It was supposed to be the week before but the teacher in-charge of nature knowledge was ill and off work so it was postponed. I don't know if I passed the test? I don't even know if we're going to get our results? the teacher was not happy with the overall scores and it looks like we're all going to have to do it again. He played a little game in the test by adding extra tree and plant species that were not on our revision list so he could see how well we really knew what we were identifying. Obviously I gave everything a name weather I knew what it was or not.

Last week we got to join up with a local hunting club for a moose hunt. Because this hunt was quite close to a road the hunters didn't want to use their dogs in case the dogs ended up charging across the road and getting hit by a car. So we were there to do the dogs work.

Here is Vesa the head guy using a machete to show us the starting point for the morning drive and where we were trying to heard the moose to. What we had to do was line up with about 60 metres between each person and start walking in the direction of the hunters, who were waiting locked and loaded about a kilometre in front of us. We had to bang sticks together, shout, scream and just make as much noise as we could to try and scare the moose towards the hunters. That was the plan anyway.
We had to keep in line to try and stop any moose from finding any big gaps and slipping through. Even tho they are big animals they're sneaky fuckers and we were told they could easily get past us if we wern't careful. We didnt see anything in the morning so headed back to the hunters lodge for lunch and to plan the afternoon.

Refreshed and ready to go, we had a new area and we were hoping for a kill in the afternoon. We lined up again along a road this time, waited for the signal that the hunt had started and banged and shouted our way through the forest again. I was waiting the whole time to hear a gun shot but unfortunately I got to the line of hunters at the other end and we had nothing again. Then all of a sudden I heard Aras and Andy screaming they're heads off banging sticks together somewhere on my left, something came over the radio and there were reports of a moose heading our way so we waited hoping to see a moose charging through the trees.
What we actually saw was Aras and Andy, now arguing over who's fault it was that the moose got past. Apparently the moose had sized up Araz and walked back past him calm as you like,then it met Andy who jumped out screaming from behind a tree hoping to scare it, but the moose just paused for a second and carried on like he wasn't there. We were told after that moose are not really scared of humans and are not stupid, so there was no surprise that it wandered straight past as there were only two of them. When moose hunting using a dog the moose aren't scared, the dog will track down the moose and when it is in sight bark like mad. The moose don't run, just stand there staring at the dog, the hunters get to sneak up on the moose undetected by the noise the dog is making and line up their shot.

Ex-veggie Andy posing with his new friends

Ok so we didn't get anything on our day out, but they still had two hanging that were shot a few days ago. A young calf that was about six months old at the front and bigger boy behind about four years old.

While we were there having a cup of tea Vesa chopped up the little fella.

He wasn't messing around. I'm not joking this thing was in bit's in less than five minutes.

Ready to get shared out amongst the hunters.

Then he showed us where and how to get the best cuts of meat from one of the legs.

Job done. The best cuts from the leg, nothing wasted tho the rest of it goes in to make moose mincemeat.

 Hunting day over, then we had a few hours off before night time orienteering. Same deal as daylight orienteering but with one less control point and obviously your in the dark. I didn't mess around, It was raining and I was wearing my wellies and a big rain coat but I ran around the whole thing. I fell a few times and got my leg stuck between two rocks when I was climbing up a cliff but I was determined to pass. It went well, I passed first time round unlike the day orienteering which I'm pissed right off about and I'm not talking about that until I pass it so until next time.

Laters