![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
rusty staples make interesting knives
As you might remember, I have been working for the Norrbotten Museum Archives, inventorying and archiving the papers from the Lule älvs floteningföreningen (the organisation responsible for floating timber logs on the Lule river, between the late 1800's and the late 1900's).
Part of this process has been removing rusty staples and paperclips from the documents, so that they don't do further damage to the paper. Fairly early on I started saving them, because I wanted to see how big the pile got. The answer is really big. like more than one yogurt bucket full.
So Keldor said to bring them home, he wanted to try a technique he'd seen for welding that sort of tiny scrap metal together to make a knife with an interesting pattern. I did, and he did.
He mixed them with steel powder, which would have a very different carbon content to the staples and paperclips, and forge-welded them to a solid bit of metal, which he then turned into a knife.
But then, what should one make the handle of, if the blade is made from salvaged scrap removed from the archive? Well, from wood that was also salvaged from the archive, of course. The documents often come in three-ring binders. I take the papers out of the binders, inventory them (remove rusty staples and paperclips if needed), and box them up for storage. The binders that are in good shape get added to the shelf of free supplies that visitors to the museum library are welcome to take, and the rest get trashed. Except for three of them from the 1960s, which, under their cloth covers, had wooden spines. These he opened up, removed the wood, sliced it, sanded it, glued them together, and turned them into the knife handle. Because the wood alone isn't strong enough for the attachment point where the knife shaft gets riveted through the end of the handle, he used a bit of scrap bronze for the end, and, to add some visual interest, he also added one bit of reindeer horn, and one bit of moose antler, neither of which were scrap from that archive, but both of which were scrap from another project, so the only materials cost for the project was the steel powder. Plus his time, of course, but he had been wanting to try this technique for a while now, so it was time happily spent.
I am really happy with the result:
if for any reason the link to the photo breaks, perhaps the link to his FB post about making it will still work.
Part of this process has been removing rusty staples and paperclips from the documents, so that they don't do further damage to the paper. Fairly early on I started saving them, because I wanted to see how big the pile got. The answer is really big. like more than one yogurt bucket full.
So Keldor said to bring them home, he wanted to try a technique he'd seen for welding that sort of tiny scrap metal together to make a knife with an interesting pattern. I did, and he did.
He mixed them with steel powder, which would have a very different carbon content to the staples and paperclips, and forge-welded them to a solid bit of metal, which he then turned into a knife.
But then, what should one make the handle of, if the blade is made from salvaged scrap removed from the archive? Well, from wood that was also salvaged from the archive, of course. The documents often come in three-ring binders. I take the papers out of the binders, inventory them (remove rusty staples and paperclips if needed), and box them up for storage. The binders that are in good shape get added to the shelf of free supplies that visitors to the museum library are welcome to take, and the rest get trashed. Except for three of them from the 1960s, which, under their cloth covers, had wooden spines. These he opened up, removed the wood, sliced it, sanded it, glued them together, and turned them into the knife handle. Because the wood alone isn't strong enough for the attachment point where the knife shaft gets riveted through the end of the handle, he used a bit of scrap bronze for the end, and, to add some visual interest, he also added one bit of reindeer horn, and one bit of moose antler, neither of which were scrap from that archive, but both of which were scrap from another project, so the only materials cost for the project was the steel powder. Plus his time, of course, but he had been wanting to try this technique for a while now, so it was time happily spent.
I am really happy with the result:
if for any reason the link to the photo breaks, perhaps the link to his FB post about making it will still work.