The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
I did the same thing this morning. Left from home, through neighborhood streets to the local stream valley park, along the path to the reservoir, around the reservoir, and back home the way I came - about 9 miles in all. No knife or stick action yet today, but I will have an update later, possibly.
I had intended to strip the bark from a beech stick I picked up a couple of weeks ago, but SWMBO came home right as I was getting started, and had other plans for my time. Here instead is a picture of the last couple of sticks I worked on:
Gracias Frank
Great work on those sticks Frank
Diana and I are lucky to have a similar "Urban Trail" a couple minutes from our house. The best time of the year to walk it is in the fall ( no mosquitoes and no
)Thanks for sharing !
Looking really good mi amigo
I think maybe your geography is a little mixed up DanAre you and Tom sort of neighbours by any chance or I got my geography all wrong
. Or maybe you meant to say “Ray” instead of “Tom”?
RayseM
. I’m way south of that in the Old Line State 
seas165
writes about walking along a place I had never heard of in Maine - though I have certainly spent time on Sebago Lakes. The SONGO LOCK was my first experience with a lock system when I was a kid.
seas165
- you've been around on Blade Forums for a while but we have never met. Here we are all gathering as friends. I'm from a bit North of you, currently on the Boothbay peninsula. I guess we have a new destination to visit in our great state.
I think maybe your geography is a little mixed up Dan
I think he is is Maine with our friend
Yes i am in maine, and i believe
seas165
post and the C&O canal name got stuck in my head HOWEVER it's the "Cumberland and Oxford" canal and NOT Tom's C&O canal stomping grounds Ha! I didn’t notice that…the C&O canal name got stuck in my head HOWEVER it's the "Cumberland and Oxford" canal
.
Nice... knife and sticks.I had intended to strip the bark from a beech stick I picked up a couple of weeks ago, but SWMBO came home right as I was getting started, and had other plans for my time. Here instead is a picture of the last couple of sticks I worked on:
Looks like you got a good chunk of it.ALL RIGHT MY FRIENDS - I've been threatening to post this CHAGA KING HARVEST thread since I first mentioned this particular chaga stash, here in October of 22. Took me a year to come up with a harvest system and 2 tries before we somewhat succeeded.
On this rainy Sunday morning, with time on my hands, hot coffee at the ready and a recent success story, I share in case any of you are faced with such a delightful challenge some day.There will be knife photos included at the end.
TALL OLD BIRCH STUMP - with a mass of chaga 24+ feet up in the air with the ground sloping away from the base of the tree for a greater height out of reach.
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THE PRIZE AT THE TOP ~ I've been guessing this big nose to be 14" off the tree and at least 12" tall. That, plus all the growth above has had me tantalized and pondering for over a year how to get it down. 20 minute hike into the woods on a winding and up and down trail. Too far to carry a ladder and I have no climbing gear. Short of carrying in my battery chain saw - to cut the tree down (that would get me banned from the preserve for life) this would all be accomplished from the ground with what I could carry in...
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MY TOOLS ~
• A THROW LINE - consisting of an 1-1/4" steel ball encased in a paracord turks head wrap attached to 60' or so of jute line. This needed to be break away line in case the ball got hung up in a branch or something. I learned that the hard way.
• 75' of the 1/8" no stretch line connected in the middle with a 24" length of French military surplus razor wire/cutting cable. All attached to two handles. With one handle removed the blue line - attached to the jute - is pulled over and guided onto the chaga - after I successfully throw the ball and jute over and into position.
The first time we tried this we learned two things.
1) The chaga nose has such a slope that positioning the saw cable high up enough (hopefully, close to the trunk face) was stupid difficult.
2) The tarred banks line we used - before the Ultra High Molecular Weight non stretch line - was like pulling on to rubber bands once the very
aggressive saw took a bight into the chaga. We simply could not get any seesawing action going. The banks line just stretched and bounced back.
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SO WITH THE 2 LESSONS UNDER OUR BELT from our first attempt - we returned with this no stretch line and a plan to position the line as high up the "nose" as we could.
LINE GUIDE IN POSITION ~
Here you can see that I rigged up a few lengths of branches to form a kind of line block/guide at the face of the chaga. In this view the slope of the nose is not too pronounced but you can see from the previous photos, the other side profile is steep. The guide stick appears too close to get a throw ball behind it but that is a trick of the camera perspective. It was about 3" away from the trunk. Yes, a small target but I thought it to be a better option than just a wild throw that only captured the first 2" of nose (like last time).
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MY WIFE STOPPED COUNTING AFTER 6 THROWS~ I was determined and told myself that the only way I would quit trying was if she had had enough, as it was a cold day to be standing around watching another person get all the exercise. She was in to it though and it only took me about 12 or 13 tries after all, to get a good landing.
My guide branch was too flexible though to be as effective as I had hoped. Had to be pretty flimsy for me to lift it that high, strapped it to the trunk and be able to control its orientation to the chaga face. As it was the throw line ended up pulling the saw line to within 4" from the trunk. There was too much texture on the surface if the chaga, even with the slippery line, to get the saw line to hop up another few inches.
Rather than being greedy and risk loosing the purchase that we achieved I decide to commence the sawing. We figured that we might be able to saw down towards the trunk.
THE CABLE SAW worked BEAUTIFULLY - aggressive and easy once we got it moving. Didn't take 2 minutes. I once tried sawing a smaller chaga with a pole saw and that was way less than successful. The chaga is dense and hard. In the pole saw attempt, after I created a saw kerf 3" or 4" deep I gave up. Finished the job by throwing a 3/8" rope into the slot and jumping up and down with the rope in my hands until the rest of the chaga broke free.
The cable saw never even hesitated.
SUCCESS ~Left a lot up there but we managed to retrieve a substantial chunk. That's 11" + long x 8" + tall. My biggest chaga yield by far to date.
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HERE below IS THE REMAINING~ Still standing waiting for a huge wind to take down the rest of the tree or for me to come up with PLAN 2. Yup - I have a plan 2 which includes the same tools but a variation on the approach. More if that ever happens.
You can see that we did succeed in cutting down towards the trunk. Not much control but better than none.
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COINCIDENTALLY - this week - I was working on handling a pair of BRISA puukko blades. From my last chat harvest I had a few pieces big enough that I thought it worth sending it to a friend to be stabilized (under pressure with Cactus Juice Stabilizing Resin). I received enough useful pieces back to create 1 stacked chaga handle with birch bark slices between.
THIS IS THE RESULT ~
View attachment 2426651
There is certainly potential for some full length chaga handles in my newest harvest. Haven't decided to do that but I could...
THAT CONCLUDES MY CHAGA PRIZE SAGA - Thanks for watching. I appreciate your kind and patient indulgence.
My first branch had a fork in it but lifting a 20'+ branch in that air with any precision, as the ground slopes away below you is more of a challenge than you might imagine. As it was I needed to lash 2 branches together to get the height. 8' or 12' up - no problem - add another 12'+ though and...Looks like you got a good chunk of it.
I don't know if you had thought about or tried this, but find a stick like you used as a guide pole either with a fork branch or cut a notch in it and set your saw wire in it and lift it over the chaga. You can be much more precise that way.
Never knew about this stuff but certain I've seen it on Birch trees here, what does it taste like when made into a drink? Strong or bland?
Will Power
. Read on a few pages. Strong or bland depends on the process. Lots of folks buy or use ground chaga and make individual cups of tea. That to me is very insipid and not really deriving any of the health benefits that chaga offers.
