Nessmuk KITH official thread

[cwp]

EDIT Drawing date pushed to 8 May 2006

OK,

Sign-up with forum handle and real name to nessmuk@firebirdforge.com.

Drawing date will be 1 May 2006.

Knife style has to be based on the nessmuk style, size, handle material, blade material**, etc open to artistic interpretation.

Do your best work. If you have to drop, just e-mail before 1 May, and no harm, no foul.
I will keep an updated list here, but don't expect instant turn around. I will update it no less than once a week, probably more, but won't promise it.

Any other suggestions for rules/guidlines as we get started?

--Carl

**Blade material needs be a hardenable steel and the knife needs to be usable and heat treated. However, stainless, and carbon steels are acceptable.

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************************************************** *******************

Nessmuk KITH Participants

Handle	Name	Sends To
cwp	Carl W. Price	Hammerdownnow
hammerdownnow	Roc Ellis	Cory
Ice-Tigre	Gary Blessing	Boo
boo	Bobby Keller	Ice-Tigre
cory owens	cory owens (entered by boo)	Andrew
Andrew Garrett	Andrew Garrett	Carl
SEED for drawing	1147138710

edited to pull anarcher out, per his request.

[hammerdownnow]

[Andrew Garrett]

Allow me to be the first then.

Andrew Garrett - no screen handle - friends know me as Andy

This is three simultanious KITHs for me! Jeeze!

[anarcher]

Count me in too. e-mail on the way.

[cwp]

Andy,

I've added you, but can you send me an e-mail to nessmuk@firebirdforge.com so I can track everyone that way.

Good start. 4 people in already.

Thanks,
--Carl

[McAhron]

I'll respond in the next couple of days. Im trying to buy a home and if I get it, my lifes going to be pretty busy,so we'll see

[jdlange]

I have to see how the next week or so goes as I am getting married at the end of the month but if things go smooth I will be in, I havent been around in a while so I should do SOMETHING...........hehe

[Ice Tigre]

I'm in! E-mail sent!

Gary

[cwp]

Well, I played at the forge this afternoon. It was a good day. Got 4 nessmuks forged out. They really do go pretty easily, I'm liking these.

Anyway, did 4 sizes, 3 hidden tangs that fit some crown antler I have from a nice 3x4, and a couple of 2x2 mule deer. The largest, is about the size defined by the original measurements, and the others are smaller.

Largest is 1084, middle two are O1, and the smallest is full-tang damascus. I hope they turn out. Got them out in the charcoal annealling now, will get them grinding soon.

Who else is playing?
--Carl

[cwp]

OK, Got another two. Welcome boo, Cory. Anyone else want to play?

--Carl

[cwp]

Didn't like how the list got shifted around, so changed it to a table.

--Carl

[McAhron]

Well Im in escrow and hope to close on April 14th.
I sure wanted to join in the fun this time.
If I can get one done in time may I join later?

[cwp]

We'll take entrants up until the deadline (end of April). So if you can get one done, you can get in the drawing.

--Carl

[cwp]

Ok, in one of the other threads there was a discussion about Kephart and Nessmuk, talking about Kephart knowing him and showing some of Kephart's knives. I thought I would post this from Camping and Woodcraft.

Hatchet--- A woodsman should carry a hatchet, and he should be as critical in selecting it as in buying a gun. The notion that a heavy hunting knife can do the work of a hatchet is a delusion. When it comes to cleaving carcasses, chapping kindling, blazing thick-barked trees, driving tent pegs or trap stakes, and keeping up a bivouac fire, the knife never was made that will compare with a good tomahawk. The common hatchets of the hardware stores are unfit for a woodsman's use. They have broad blades with beveled edge, and they are generally made of poor, brittle stuff. A camper's hatchet should have the edge and temper of a good axe. It must be light enough to carry in or on one's knapsack, yet it should bite deep in timber. The best hatchet I have used (and it has been with me in the mountains for seven or eight years) is one shown in Fig. 103, except that the handle is a straight one, 17-inch, that I made myself. Its weight, with leather sheath, is 1 lb. 10 oz. With this keen little



tool I have cut many a cord of the hardest woods -- hickory, oak, dogwood, beech, etc. -- up to young trees eight or more inches thick, often laying in a winter night's wood with it. (The way to learn chopping is to go slow, give all your attention to making every blow tell just where it is needed, and don't strike too hard.)

Sheath Knife.--- On the subject of hunting knives I am tempted to be diffuse. In my green and callow days I tried nearly everything in the knife line from a shoemaker's skiver to a machete, and I had knives made to order. The conventional hunting knife is, or was until recently, of the familiar dime-novel pattern invented by Colonel Bowie. It is too thick and clumsy to whittle with, much to thick for a good skinning knife, and to sharply pointed to cook and eat with. It is always tempered to hard. When put to the rough service for which it is supposed to be intended, as in cutting through the ossified false ribs of an old buck, it is an even bet that out will come a nick as big as a saw-tooth -- and Sheridan forty miles from a grindstone! Such a knife is shaped expressly for stabbing, which is about the very last thing that woodsman ever has occasion to do, our lamented grandmothers to the contrary notwithstanding.

Many hunters do not carry sheath knives, saying (and it is quite true) that a common jackknife will skin anything from a squirrel to a bear. Still, I like a small, light sheath knife. It is always open and "get-at-able," ready not only for skinning game and cleaning fish, but for cutting sticks, slicing bread and bacon, and peeling "spuds." It saves the pocket knife from wet and messy work, and preserves its edge for the fine jobs.

For years I used knives of my own design, because there was nothing on the market that met my notion of what a sensible, practical sheath knife should be; but we have it now in the knife here shown (Fig. 104). It is of the right size (4 1/2 - inch blade), the



right shape, and the proper thinness. I ground the front part of the back of mine to a blunt bevel edge for scaling fish and disarticulating joints. The sheath being flimsy, and the buttoned band a nuicance, I made one of good leather that binds well up on the handle and is fastened together with copper rivets besides the sewing.

Cutlery should be of the best steel obtainable. Knicks and dull edges are abominations, so use knives and hatchets for nothing but what they were made for, and whet them a little every day that they are in service.

Pocket Knife. --- The Jackknife has one stout blade equal to whittling seasoned hickory, and two small blades, of which one is ground thin for such surgery as you may have to perform (keep it clean). Beware of combination knives; they may be passable corkscrews and can openers, but that is about all.

---Horace Kephart, Camping and Woodcraft

I thought that it was interesting that he went to almost the same kit that Nessmuk had. And look at that fixed blade, that is about as close to a Nessmuk as you can get. It appears that by this time, these were offered everywhere as a hunting knife.

--Carl

[NJStricker]

What was the date of this passage from Kephart? The knife is a Marble's Woodcraft, right? So he used knives of his own design, until he found this one commercially available.