What is the fascination of knivemaking?

[USANewbie]

My fascination with smithing came from youtuibe.

[Purple Bullet]

I think my copy of "Modern Blacksmith" got wet in Hurricane Ida. However, before FiF, before Foxfire, almost any time guys with metal skills had extra time on their hands, they were building knives. The first time I went offshore (circa 1965-66?) The shop in the hold of the converted LST I was a galley hand in was producing knives out of files and leaf springs. The first cable-damascus (it wasn't called that then) I ever saw was one made for a friend's older brother by his father when he went to the Korean conflict. The handle was unwelded cable except for the pommel.

One guy who WON'T be building a knife soon is me! I feel like I'm a victim of "bait and switch". I went in for a simple "trigger thumb" release today. Doc said I'd be playing guitar again in three days. It must have been worse than he thought, cause while I was still out in recovery he told my wife I couldn't use it for TWO WEEKS! Grrrrrr! 

[anvil]

Navy, huh? I was an airdale '67-71'. 

[Purple Bullet]

Thanks for serving and thinking well of me, but I can't steal honor. The LST was converted into a drilling tender for offshore oil wells. My dad was a tool pusher for Gulf Oil and I was a fourteen year old on summer vacation. I learned what work was that summer. A fatal accident left them short-handed. I once did twelve hours making beds and cleaning heads another 12 hours helping with slips as they tripped out and in and another 12 making beds and polishing galley deck. I slept well after that.

My military experience was Civil Air Patrol cadets, Chamberlain-Hunt Military Academy and a couple of semesters of ROTC. After getting a high lottery number I dropped out. At one point I was going to volunteer for the Marines, but my dad, a WWII Marine vet talked me out of it. 

[Frosty]

On 10/21/2021 at 11:37 PM, George N. M. said:

Frosty, read the story The Knife and the Naked Chalk 

Thanks for tossing me into another Kipling rabbit hole George! I hadn't read that one but will probably be reading about Puck for a while now. 

I have Leslie Fish bookmarked in general, I don't recall listening to "The Song of the Men's Side" either. It's a good one to listen to after reading "The Knife and the Naked Chalk," makes me not want to step on shadows.

Serious thanks George.

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

Frosty, Kipling has been one of my favorites since I was a young 'un, along with Robert Service.  Read Puck of Pook's Hill  first and then Rewards and Fairies.  Martha and I read them aloud to our son, Tom, when he was young.

One of my favorite passages from Puck of Pook's Hill is when the girl, Una, asks Puck about the now departed People of the Hills and if they were fairies in the sense of the gossamer winged small spirits.  Puck replies:

'Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic—Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!'

I discovered Leslie Fish back in the '70s and have enjoyed her ever since.  The whole genre of "filk music" can be very cool.

To bring this back to blacksmithing, a few paragraphs after the previous quote Puck is explaining to the children how the "Old Things" started out as gods, then became the People of the Hills, and finally left England, he says, "First they were Gods. Then they were People of the Hills, and then they flitted to other places because they couldn't get on with the English for one reason or another. There was only one Old Thing, I remember, who honestly worked for his living after he came down in the world. He was called Weland, and he was a smith to some Gods. I've forgotten their names, but he used to make them swords and spears. I think he claimed kin with Thor of the Scandinavians.'"

Have fun, some rabbit holes are better than others and the one labelled "Kipling" is a deep but fun one.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

PS Another "filk" singer who you might enjoy and who does a number of Kipling's works in song is Michael Longcor.

GNM

[Frosty]

I wish our scout masters had read a little Kipling around the campfire when I was a scout. Then again they probably didn't want to get a bunch of teens worked up. Robert Service is another author who can reach you on a gut level.

I'll check out Michael Longcor too. Some of Leslie Fish's songs are perfect to listen to while watching live cams of the eruption on La Palma.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHVUP_Ic6aY

Frosty The Lucky.

[Steve Sells]

you know Mike is also a smith from Lafayette Indiana

[Frosty]

I didn't, thanks Steve. Is he a member? If not why?

Just kidding, I'm just checking back in, I've been listening to Ms Fish Filking and watching the eruption. It's almost midnight there right now 2:25p. AK time, the action is VERY visible and picking up. I'm sure glad I don't live on that end of the island.

Frosty The Lucky. 

[JHCC]

Some of the eruptive activity going on at Kilauea is quite impressive, too: https://youtu.be/Mxp-ymrykn4

[Frosty]

Kiluea is always impressive, even when "nothing" is happening it's awesome. I've only been to Hawaii once and we stood at the edge of the lava flow, it was making my jeans smoke from 5'. I wanted to get or make skewers and BBQ steaks over it but didn't want to get on Pele's bad side.

I sacrificed a single serving bottle of scotch to her though. 

Frosty The Lucky. 

[Yanni Rockitz]

Man -- Fire, Filking, lava and liquor... enthralled amidst the music of Kipling while contemplating the intricate whittling of Gladioli as the steel heats in the forge -- who needs a xxxx TV!  ;-)  Long live the IFI forum!

Edited October 28, 2021 by Mod30
Language

[Yanni Rockitz]

My fascination with blades began with Tolkien. Every blade had a name and a provenance that often spanned many centuries. A deadly implement of honor and beauty, passed down from father to son, lost in battle, rediscovered in a Troll's cave, imbued with magical powers... as a ten year old boy, I didn't stand a chance.

 

"This, Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore."
                                                                                                                                           Words of Elrond
                                                                                                                                           from The Hobbit

 

Made by the Elven-smiths of old, Orcrist had a beautiful scabbard and jeweled hilt. There were runes on the sword which bore its name. At first glance, Gandalf identified the sword as a "good blade." Like Glamdring and Sting, Orcrist glowed whenever Orcs were near.

[ThomasPowers]

Beater and Biter IIRC.  I wouldn't say every blade---just the *good* ones.  It might be an artifact of preservation...

I hope to get to this lecture Friday and see if they come up with any method I'm not familiar with:

Annual Snead-Wertheim Lectureship presented by Dr. Michael A. Ryan Department of History "How to Forge a Magic Sword"

"On the walls of Gondolin where the elvish smithies din and the orcs come up like thunder..."

[Frosty]

On the walls a'framing, Blacknail Thumb crusher strikes again.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

For Higher Wages?

[Frosty]

Tacky Thomas but you nailed it.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

"You've got to clench them" said Tom hammering his point home!

[Frosty]

Dead as a door nail.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

"That's the sound of Marley working on the Chain Gang!"

[Frosty]

In daze of future past.

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

Speaking of JRR Tolkien here is the description of the blades Tom Bombadil took from the barrow on the Barrow Downs and gave to the hobbits:

For each of the hobbits he chose a dagger, long, leaf shaped and keen, of marvelous workmanship, damasked with serpent-forms in red and gold.  They gleamed as he drew them from their black sheaths, wrought of some strange metal, light and strong, and set with many fiery stones.  Whether by some virtue in these sheaths or because of the spell that lay on the mound, the blades seemed untouched by time, unrusted, sharp, glittering in the sun.

"Old knives are long enough as swords for hobbit-people," he said, "Sharp blades are good to have, if Shire-folk go walking, east, south, or far away into dark and danger." Then he told them that these blades were forged many long years ago by the Men of Westernesse:  they were foes of the Dark Lord, but they were overcome by the evil king of Carn Dum in the Land of Angmar."

One of these was the blade with which Merry stabbed the knee of the Witch King causing him to stumble and be killed by Eowen at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

And behold! there lay his weapon, but the blade was smoking like a dry branch that has been thrust into a fire; and as he watched it, it writhed and withered and was consumed.

So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse.  But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North Kingdom when the Dunedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king.  No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[Yanni Rockitz]

What a weaver of luxurious language that guy was... Reading that was like taking a little vacation, just now.  ;-)  Love it!

[JHCC]

Worth noting that pretty much anything Tom Bombadil says is in meter, usually a combination of dactyls (one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed) or trochees (one stressed followed by one unstressed) with the occasional spondee (two stressed) or anapest (two unstressed followed by one stressed) for emphasis. For example:

Quote

"You let them out again, Old Man Willow! What be you a-thinking of? You should not be waking. Eat earth! Dig deep! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!"

 

[Rojo Pedro]

Not to hijack this thread but making knives is super fun. 

I love making tools and knives are tools. I told myself I didnt want to be a knife maker thanks to FIF but now I want to make more. 

My go to camping knife was my first knife. Made from a bed frame and a piece of old hammer handle, it holds an edge really well and I take great joy in using it.