New Toy! (If not somewhat pre-loved)

I picked up a lathe last week. I've been wanting one for ages and was fortunate enough to acquire one through a friend.
It's an "Advance" brand, built in Australia around 1960. I haven't played with it much yet but I certainly am looking forward to doing so. A friend is making me a cover for the motor, guard for the gears and a tray to catch swarf (chips).
I'm planning on making a coolant reservoir and pump assembly (thingy) a little later.


A full write up of this brand of lathe can be found here.

Sami, not a Scandi machete

I stand corrected. A diligent observer has noted that "Long blades are not usually used in scandinavia as tools...
.. Lapplanders of course have the "leuku" but it is a different design from a scandi "puukko"."

That said I never knew if the Scandinavians had machete type instruments in the first place so I was hoping to try something that hadn't been done. As it stands I'll be trying something that's been done by the Sami people in Finland for I don't know how long (probably a while, I'm guessing).

So here's my chunk of file which is going to end up looking more or less like a really big Leuko, or Sami.


Thanks for the update, Pun.

Knife for The Suburban Bushwacker

I've been following SBW's blog for some time now and recently asked him if he'd be kind enough to review one of my knives. As a thankyou for taking the time to post a review I've offered to make a knife to SBW's specifications and he's kindly accepted.

After a few emails back and forth regarding the design we settled on making a full tang scandi styled knife, loosely based on Rod Garcia's Skookum Bushtool, though with a deep finger choil and orange G-10 handle.

The initial sketch I sent through to SBW (above) shows the handle with two tubes holding the scales to the tang, and pins arranged in the shape of the Southern Cross (A constellation seen in the Australian skies). The buttcap is to be welded on to the tang.
The design has changed slightly in that the index finger choil will be deeper and (given that I'm making this out of a file) the file markings near the spine of the blade will be ground back to avoid having a rust trap.

I've done the initial grind on the file and now have a blank (once I've removed the rasps) ready for profiling.



More to come later.