Making a bush craft plumb bob & line
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Snörslå; Chalk line and plummet, or should it be coal line and plumb bob? Either way it can be used to make a straight line perfect from one point to another or vertical even when the log is uneven. It is a useful tool when working logs into useful objects, and it can be made without advanced tools. The line is twined inner bark of pussy-willow and the plummet forged iron. The hammers and tongs used when forging where made in previous videos.
This is one of the first non-360˚videos on this channel and if you are a new viewer welcome to my childhood forest. This is where I spent my summers as a boy not too far from where my grandparents lived, fishing in the steam building huts and tree houses and living outdoors with my cousin. It is in the mid-south of Sweden just by a major forest and highland lake system drained by a number of streams pouring down the slopes to lake vättern. This land was once owned by a family of blacksmiths powering their hammers and bellows by the force of a waterwheel. The old forge is long gone and I have found no hand tools left for a blacksmith to use. But I find it to be an interesting challenge to limit my use of hand tools to what the nature has to offer. I’m not talking about the source of heat or metal, there is a lot of second hand or scrap metal around and I did find a portable forge blower in the basement of the house. But the hands and hand tools are my focus in these videos and the human body itself in union with nature.
I mean: what does it mean to make something by hand? A steel tool is not a hand, it is an extension of a hand, not a hand,and it cannot be made by a hand directly, iron and steel are too hard. Metal softens when heated but in a literal sense it is not a hand that beats it but a tool.
I made forging tools by hand with the materials provided by the land: sticks and stones, birch bark and willow and I used them to forge metal; to forge tools using hand-made tools. These became my first generation of genuinely hand forged tools. First I made forging tools but the stone tools intrigued me so I tried to make tools for wood-working under the same conditions and it worked just fine. I found a sandstone usable to grind and sharpen the tools and when eventually I had a full set of wood-working tools I started to use the tools forged.
That is where we’re at now. During the winter I cut down a pine with the axes forged and now I plan to turn it into a toolbox, I just need a few more tools; a chalk line and plumb bob for example, that is what this video is all about. Forging always takes time but I have tried to limit the video to the important steps and techniques needed to get a hold of what really is acquired to get a functional tool out of such a setting.
Nice work. I loved the video editing, great content as aways, gustav
Thank you Angelo, more content is on its way, this time with a bit more wood work.
What a wonderful, simple tool! We still use a modern version today, when I paint rooms with my father and we need to make a line on the wall to do in colour!
I was wondering why you aren't using the metal hammer that you made in the first video of the series, but I see your point of trying to make as much with the most basic of tools. Though at a point where you made axes and used them, I think it is a bit of a moot point, as what is the difference between an axe and a hammer? :) But I salute your efforts and am rewarding myself after a tough day with a few of your videos at a time!
Oh and about the childhood forest, that is a wholesome thing indeed, and as I have commented on the previous videos, I plan on doing something very similar, and I want to set out into the wooded hills of my childhood much in the same way. There is a ruin of a medieval watchtower/garrison where my grandfather was stationed at during the cold war, an outpost for a castle on the opposite hill under which I learned the craft of blacksmithing. I think that it would be wonderful to reconnect with the past, both my own and longer history, tied to me in some way. Your videos are pushing me to follow that dream. :) So thank you!
That is awesome, yes follow your dreams. Don't wait, it's summer now 🫡