Custom Handmade Hand Forged Working Knives and Tools.
We support the Wet’suwet’en First Nation. We support all First Nations people, everywhere.
Some of the different knives and tools we’ve made for hunters, trappers, cowboys and indigenous hunters and elders. We use to peddle our knives and tools at rodeos, farmers markets, knife shows and art and craft shows. We took orders and made heavy duty camp knives, hide scrapers, skinning knives, horse shoeing knives, straight razors and garden knives and tools.
Over the past 27 years we’ve survived in the the bush, living simply, off most grids (there are logging roads) growing our food and hunting. This has given us a chance to develop working knives and tools.
https://aki-and-scott-fireweed.blogspot.com/2021/12/living-with-solar-power-for-25-years.
Big camp knives forged from leaf spring.
Custom Made Hunting Knives
The first couple of years here we foraged native plants and hunted for our food. Aki carved and Scott made forged hunting knives from leaf springs for cash to buy gas and sugar. We learned bushcraft skills and how to survive in the Chilcotin (Tsilhqot’in).
Now we grow most of our food.
All these knives were made 20 - 25 years ago. Most were sold on the road.
At shows. We had 20 - 30 tools going at the same time. Preparing for the show, re-stocking. Now we build1 to 4 tools and knives at a time. Everything is custom to order. We spend more time.
Custom Woodcarving Tools
We’ve worked, testing and experimenting with all our repurposed materials in the boreal forest.
Hunting for survival, raising animals for survival has been part of our lives here. Having a big garden, putting food away by drying, canning and freezing is a big part of our spring, summer and fall. 2019, we’re going into our 22nd winter.
Every so often we see carving tools we made 20 years ago on the internet.
A Haida carvers tool kit. Our mark was a brand at the time. You can just barely see the “S” (snake) at the top.
Handmade Gardening knives and tools.
On the gardening scorp, Rob Borsato, an organic farmer, forged the blade from spent chainsaw file. We mounted and made the cherrywood handle. An excellent tool.
Cathy Allen, Rob Bosato’s partner designed this Zucchini knife.Both have run their 4 acre organic farm for 35 years.
Traditional living, processing your own hides
Hunting in the back country with Horses.
Adze, slicks, skews, chisels and knives. They are what we started with. Hunting knives, kitchen knives, timber frame tools and hoof knives came with living in the Cariboo.
We’ve made all kinds of garden tools. Hoes, bulb planters, specialty knives and shovels. Pictures are somewhere. We’ll post them when we find them.
We’ve made a few dozen hide scrapers. Every rodeo and fall fair we’d sell a few. From top to bottom, a large hide scraper, a draw scraper knife and a small hide scraper. Like the ulu, it seems the hide scraper is a woman’s tool. Almost exclusively we sold medium size hide scrapers to older indigenous women. We can’t seem to find a picture of the medium size which was the most popular. Doing hides is hard work. The design (top and bottom scrapers) was from a drawing left for us on a napkin at the rodeo banik stand by the hereditary chief’s wife..
The large scraper pictured we still have and have used it as a hoe in the garden. It’s great. The small scarper (bottom) has the perfect angle. Great for deer hides. The medium size was preferred for moose hides.
We used wood hockey sticks (broken) for the medium hide scraper handles. We’d sand them and bring out the lamination’s. They where 16” - 18” long. To use the draw knife style scraper you’d hang your fresh hide on a pole sitting along and off the ground. Our fish tail slicks were a scraping tool of choice as well.
More Traditional Woodworking Tools
We’ve made all kinds and sizes of chisels, slicks and skews.
We’ve been making custom horse shoeing knives for 20 years.
Odds and ends
2 1/2 inch D2 steel blade, aluminum guard, stainless steel pins, copper lanyard insert in a moose antler butt.
We’re just building this page now, digging up old photographs. More to come.