Back ten years ago about
I was working on a little project for Del Stubbs today and I took a break to look through my archives for an image I couldn’t get out of my head. I keep coming across this picture when I go through my various hard drives stuffed with photographs and projects I haven’t done anything with yet.
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They all tell a story. It’s interesting to have a lifetime of stories but not enough time to actually tell them. That’s an interesting part about life. Recalling it takes more time than actually living it.
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This was probably taken almost ten years ago. When I first taught myself how to carve. I didn’t know about a lot of things and didn’t even really know there was this rich culture in handcraft. Without books, and videos I had to learn by making every mistake one could make. I thought I was just some oddball person going against the grain of modern life.
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Naturally you need unique tools for this and often the ones I wanted weren’t really made anymore. So I started spending a lot of time with my great friend Matthew Paul who is a self taught blacksmith that started out around the same time I did as a carver. Coincidence? Maybe not. The cosmos have their ways.
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I filmed a lot back then. We got very obsessed with how these type D style / 10th century Scandiavian axes were made and used. We forged a dozen of these style axes in three days without a power hammer. Slept on the floor near the anvil. Woke up the next morning and the anvil was still hot. It had retained the heat from forging the night before. I wish I had those filmed but they were another tucked away project that burned up in a house fire. But I do have others I’ve put online and images like this! We never ended up making ourselves an axe to keep. They were all scooped up soon after.
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Matt got really into researching and forging these Seax blades as well which you can see in the photo.
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I used to do a lot of crazy things things to get interesting shots. Often that meant getting hit with molten flux a bunch of times while forge welding or sticking my head in a spray of sparks from a grinder. Good times! Let’s do this again Matt!
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Check out Matt’s work @mpknives
Additional Notes:
The axe in the image is an old Ronnqvist axe. This is the second handle I made for axe. The first one had to be sacrificed so we could study the axe head better. I had come across a perfect crooked piece of black birch sapling that grew in shape I liked. It’s a small sapling with the pith I’m the middle. I still have that axe and handle today. It’s a bit different than the upswept handles Drew Langsner had patterns for from Jögge Sundqvist’s axe. But I like how it chops and slices so I kept it.
As you can see in the photo the axe has not yet been wedged and hung.