They broke the mold...

With all the fun of this, and this, and even this, one has to wonder where all those little .36 inch balls come from.

Well this little handy is a .36 caliber bullet mold. It's designed to make .36 caliber balls out of melted lead - one round at a time. Certainly not a mass production device, but probably adequate for passing time around the campfire. You could make a couple of dozen rounds in an evening, provided a source of lead, a hot fire, and a melting pot.

The sprue would have been cut off with a pocket knife or file.

Now...if only you could make black powder...you'd have just about everything you'd need.

It's Fish Knife Friday #6

This one has a brass handle, with a five-petal lotus emboss on the right side. Enjoy!

Tomahawk Time!

This is a tomahawk. It's technically a "mouse" 'hawk. The blade is of recent manufacture, and is about 3 inches long along the cutting edge. The shoulder rig I bought separately.

The tomahawk is associated with Native American/First Nation people, but the iron head is a European innovation. Prior to European contact, native peoples fashioned axe-like weapons/tools out of stone or copper. The tomahawk, as we have come to think of it, was actually patterned off of the Europeans' shipboard boarding axes which where probably used as early trade items.

The Native Americans subsequently adapted these axes to fulfill their non-naval needs, including (often) removing the spiked poll and/or adding a provision for tobacco smoking through the poll and shaft. Imagine having an axe that you can smoke through like a pipe...

This 'hawk is balanced for throwing, but I use it (sometimes) when camping as an obvious camping tool as well as a potential self-defense item. Fighting with a 'hawk is pretty brutal, and this is a highly effective melee weapon.

Trippin' trippin' trippin'....

I call this monstrosity the "Trippin' Knife".


Why?

Well, imagine it's a time about 16 years ago. Also, imagine a junior in college (he'd be me). Imagine him partaking of, er...various recreational pharmaceuticals...with some of his buddies. Now imagine these recreational pharmaceuticals seriously altered one's perceptions of reality. Now imagine bugs crawling all over you. Just kidding. Now imagine in this altered state, stumbling through the wilderness (or undeveloped pine barrens - take your pick) at night. Now imagine taking a break and sitting down in the grass and sand to ponder the stars, the wind, the trees, and that strange buzzing in your ears... and reaching down with you hand. Now imagine the first thing you hand encounters is this vaguely primitive knife.

Weird, huh?


Well, that's how it went down, and odd as it may seem (or not, given my altered state at the time) encountering that knife then, under those conditions, was as improbable and as spiritually akin to Bilbo Baggins finding the One Ring of Power in Gollum's cave.

Seriously - when these, er...chemicals, are racing through one's brain, it's not hard to find profundity in the otherwise mundane.

Finding this ugly knife, with its spoon, saw, carpet knife, drill, corkscrew, fork (I mean a fork, for fuck's sake!), and other accouterments in my condition was friggin' PROFOUND. I keep it as a memento of those days and great times...it sits on a shelf with my other treasures.

Since it's about 2 1/2 inches thick, I can't see how one would ever carry it. Whoever lost it must have been more chopped up than we were, 'cause it also weighs about 3 pounds.

A primative poker...

This one I made myself. It's a deer antler, cleaned, polished and equipped with a tarred line grip. It has no cutting edge, so it's strictly a stabber. I was going through a primitive (i..e paleolithic) thing for a while, so I had a passing interest in plausible ancient weaponry. Somewhere I have a sling that I braided up out of jute twine and a leather pouch, and briefly attempted to launch stones with it. Since this effort required more coordination than I have and a level of practice that I found off-putting, I consigned my primitives to the shelf.

Incidentally, the hide that this piece is sitting on is a genuine Vodou (of Voodoo, or Vodun) drum from Haiti, and is estimated to be over 100 years old. I also collect and play ethnic musical instruments, so I may incorporate some of them into this blog as it progresses. It's not weaponry, I know, but it's still cool.

Now let's get primative!

Here's an flaked (or flintknapped) obsidian blade hafted to a deer antler handle with sinew, just like they used to do in the good old days. Flintknapping is almost a lost art, although there's been something of a revival in recent years, including some incredibly beautiful and surprisingly functional blades. Go to www.flintknapping.com as a launching point into this arcane artform.


Obsidian is a volcanic glass that can be flaked into remarkably sharp edges - sharper, in fact, that we are able to make with surgical steel, which is why it is still used in some modern surgical applications.

Incidentally, neither antler nor obsidian can be detected by a metal detector, although there are laws in many juridictions that prohibit the carrying of "undetectable" weapons. I've always loved that turn of phrase - If a weapon is undetectable, no one could find it, and would be unable to enforce the policy. If someone found it, it would no longer be undetectable, and no law would have been broken.

Whatever. Obey the law and everthing should be just fine...right?

Itty Bitty #3, or one last cannon (for now)

I know it's hard to see. Even the modern digital camera's macro lens has its limitations. The little field cannon on the U.S. penny is non-functional (the bore is there, but there's no touch hole), but it could be if:

a). I had a small enough Dremel Tool bit to make a touch hole, and,

b). if one could actually get black powder grains in there.

It's gold. It's cute. It's a cannon. What else can I say?