Thursday, November 3, 2011

Primitive bone knife

Here's a nice little bone knife I threw together. I made it from bone for the purpose of helping me split those huge nettle stalks lengthwise. Doing it with just the hands was a bit of a task. I squeeze the stalks between two pieces of wooden slat. And then I use the bone blade to split them from base to tip. It works just fine and unlike a metal knife, the fibers aren't cut by the blade. The handle is a piece of cottonwood and the cordage is good old artificial sinew. I cheated and used some of my brand new Elmers Glue All Max which is Elmers answer to Gorilla Glue. That stuff is great! It set up over night and I couldn't budge the bone one bit. I like making primitive stuff but if I have modern materials like artificial sinew and modern glues, so be it. To me, its still primitive if only half of the stuff is stoneage. I could have used hide glue and some real sinew, but I save stuff like that for the really serious, showy things.

Blade is 2 1/2" total length 4 3/4"




made from a section of deer leg bone



project took about 30 minutes

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