Knife for sale (SOLD)

This time for sale is a Lappish type knife. Carbon steel blade in scandi grind with a small secondary. Handle materials are brass, moose antler and birch bark, with thin reindeer hide next to antler spacers. Tang peened on an inlaid brass plate. Dark brown leather sheath with a birch wood full liner inside for the blade.

- Blade 97x21x4,8mm
- Handle 113,5mm long, 31x22mm max width and thickness, 35,5x24 pommel.
- Weight knife only 135 grams.

This knife is sold, thank you!

Puukko + Leuku

These are my typical works as a maker of Nordic knives. A puukko with 9,5cm carbon steel blade and birch bark + brass handle. Larger knife is a Lappish style leuku, this time with about 22cm blade. In top picture tar oiled curly birch/brass handle, in lower with dyed curly birch/moose antler/ brass.  All my knives have individually made belt carry sheath, with birch wood liner inside to cover the blade.

In leukus a full flared relatively large pommel plays a big role. As a large knife it's meant to be used also in chopping tasks, and this type of pommel prevents the knife from sliding out of the hand even when your grip ain't that tight. It also makes it possible to wield the leuku just by holding it from the pommel. This is important with a bit shorter bladed leukus, to give more leverage for chopping.

In areas where leukus are from, the winter and cold period of the year is very long. So quite often you wear gloves, even very thick ones, so obviously a knife with flared full pommell is much easier to unsheath.

I prefer to make leuku blades few millimeters less in width than the handle, so the knife can be sheathed/unsheathed without compressing the sheath mouth.I find that feature more important than the extra weight near the tip given by the blade widening drastically. This is very common with many leukus, but as well it's quite common to see leukus which have a wider blade and you have to press the mouth of the sheath flat when pulling the knife out. If you want more weight at the front, then I rather forge the blade getting bit thicker towards the tip.

Basic barrel shaped puukko is an all-rounder, very common style in Finnish knife culture. Puukkos with some kind of a pommel are common too, but I would say this barrel shape is the most common in historical point of view. Birch bark provides good grip even when wet, which helps not only in use but also when unsheathing the puukko.

Is the summer coming or not?

It's May. A month of almost hot sunny days, but as well chilly snowing every now and then. Just yesterday it was very warm and summerlike weather. And today around 0 celcius, wet snowing, gray, chilly wind like in October.

Almost all of the snow has melted, but lakes are still mostly covered with ice.

Today I spent most of the day inside. Sewing knife sheaths and watching the rain and snow taking turns. Walked only 2 hours in the forest. Yesterday I saw a first mosquito of the year. No sign of them today in cold weather. I don't miss them, but many birds would find some use for them I'm sure.

A female capercaillie came right in front of the window, looking like just about to ask if there's some food to offer. Hopefully early summer won't be cold and wet like the weather now, as it would mean hard times for nesting.

In the east wing of my company's knife manufacturing facility is the ultra modern professional sheath drying laboratory; the sauna.







Sheaths stithched, left to dry, waiting for tomorrow's dyeing. Now it's good time to bring back some memories from last week's skiing trip in northern parts of Inari municipality. Pretty perfect weather, some skiing, ice fishing, skiing, ice fishing... not bad at all!

My friend hauled his stuff in a pulk...

...and I had a packback, as usually. Not much difference in effeciency, as the snow didn't get really soft at all even during the daytime.

Graylings were a common catch. Some to eat in the evening, and something to take back home too.

It was a last trip on the skis for this season. Even in these northern parts pretty good amount of ground was exposed already. Not really slowing down yet though. But now a week later with raining and temps constantly above 0 it's a different story already there too. Will be on foot and paddling the canoe for the next 6 months. Now waiting for lakes to open for setting fishing nets and getting some fish to table again.

Winter came back...

...and turned to thaw again. Like always in late April and early May here in north Lapland, snow is melting, occassionally raining, sometimes snowing. Just 4 days ago it turned back to the weather of early March or so; warm sunny days, but night temperatures dropped even down to -15 celcius. Bit of fresh snow, and the skiing conditions can't get better.

Yesterday it turned back to normal late spring, raining and warm breeze in the air. South facing hill sides are without snow, but lakes well frozen still.

 

Dogs were bored when having a break during a day trip. They were checking the surroundings, going slowly further away....

When I told them to stay closer, they started playing. Obviously not enough exercise yet.

Sometimes even a 10 year old is ready for a play.

Right place for the skis?

Even with large areas of the ground exposed here and there, skiing is the best way to move around still.