Stumbled across this on Google recently: Salt Man 4 (405-380 BCE): computer reconstruction of clothes and accessories. This reconstruction by Aleksei Moskvin provides a much clearer view of many details that might be difficult to interpret for those of us who can only look at the mummy through the odd online photograph. Of note:
- The mummy wears a round cloak similar to those sported by Cappadocians in the Persepolis reliefs, but it's made of animal fur and is fastened with cords at the neck instead of a fibula.
- The tunic is woven in a single cross-shaped piece, including the sleeves, then stitched along the undersides of the sleeves and down the sides of the body. Its neckline is straight, not round, and is quite wide. Its body is also wide and not flared.
- The trousers have a lot of extra fabric between the legs. This makes a lot of sense if you keep in mind that they were developed for riding horses; this cut would ensure that no seams are strained and busted when sitting astride the horse.
- The sash appears to have weights sewn into the ends. Other details throws all my old ideas about how the sash was constructed into doubt.
- The mummy had a pair of small clay pots tied to the belt by cords looped tightly below the rims of the pots' openings.
- A knife in a curved sheath was also tied to the belt, which I had not noticed before, but I'm pleased to see that it's more-or-less in keeping with the way I wore my knife at Marathon 2015 and Plataea.
Showing posts with label knife. Show all posts
Showing posts with label knife. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 13, 2023
Friday, September 4, 2020
Waterproof hot glues
IMPORTANT NOTE (3/22/21): Since publishing this article, I have learned that pine rosin fumes have been found to cause asthma. The process described below should always be done outdoors. If weather doesn't permit, then postpone it.
This year I've been trying to eliminate any period-inappropriate materials from my designs. One that's stuck with me for a long time is rubber cement, which I've used to attach leather facings to wooden scabbards. I use it primarily because in a real military campaign you couldn't reasonably expect to stash away your scabbard every time it rained, and rubber cement is waterproof, while for a long time the only alternative that came to mind was hide glue, which isn't. (I understand traditional hide glue is less readily water-soluble than the modern kind that I've been using, which has urea added to keep it liquid at room temperature - traditional hide glue must be kept warm to work with it.)
Anyway, I've read years ago about making varnish from pine rosin by dissolving it in alcohol. This can be used to protect sinew wrappings on arrows from softening and coming loose. It recently occurred to me to ask if this varnish would be sufficiently sticky to use for scabbard facings before it dried. I was in the process of making a new letter opener, and it seemed like the right opportunity to try it out.
If you've ever touched a sawn-off stump of a pine tree, you know that pine resin is incredibly sticky and impossible to wash off with normal soap and water; you need highly-concentrated alcohol (70+ percent hand sanitizer gel works well for this purpose) or some other nasty organic solvent like acetone (nail polish remover). Resin consists largely of rosin, the solid component, and turpentine, a natural solvent that keeps the resin liquid. Turpentine takes a long time to evaporate out of fresh pine resin, so resin is processed commercially by heating in a still. Those who aren't trying to collect the turpentine just cook it off in an open pot.
I ordered some rosin from Creekwood Naturals for experimentation. This product arrives as a coarse, sandy powder. It becomes sticky when wet, but it seems to be waterproof.
My first experiments went thusly: I dissolved some rosin in rubbing alcohol and let it evaporate to a thick, syrupy consistency that could be painted onto a scrap of sanded poplar plank. For comparison, I also smeared some fresh pine resin on the wood, alongside rubber cement. On top of all three adhesives I pressed a tiny swatch of chamois, then let the substances dry.
The fresh resin took the longest to dry. After several days, all three swatches peeled off easily. The resin was still slightly sticky under the leather; the rosin brittle; the rubber cement, well, rubbery.
I'd heard that beeswax is often used in rosin-based pitch glues to reduce the rosin's brittleness, so my next test used a mix of alcohol-rosin varnish reduced to a syrup and a bit of Sno Seal, which is emulsified beeswax used to waterproof shoes. This did not work out at all. The mix took forever to dry, and wasn't sticky enough.
Giving up on emulsions, I decided to try a hot glue. I shaved some beeswax into a metal bowl and, working by eye, added about two to three times its volume in rosin, then slowly melted the bowl's contents with a heat gun. At first, the beeswax melted while the rosin turned into a sticky mess, but with prolonged heating and stirring with a brass rod, the mixture became uniform. (It also released fumes that stung my eyes, and when hot enough, began to smoke.) Then I smeared a little onto the poplar and quickly stuck the chamois swatch onto it.
I repeat: Wow! Once cool, the glue bonded the chamois to the wood with immense strength. When I tried to peel it, the leather itself ripped up before the glue failed. I can dent the glue with my nail, but it's not sticky, and even though it's mostly rosin, it more resembles very hard, dark beeswax.
It seemed perfect, but now was time for the real test.
Earlier, I'd ordered a piece of pitch glue to try to glue the wooden halves of a scabbard core together. It was tricky. I warmed the glue, pinched off thin bits and laid them on the edges of one half, then melted them with the heat gun and quickly pressed the halves together. Then I had to heat each edge in turn and press it more tightly, and scrape off or press down the lumps of glue sticking out of the seam. I also had to shoot the heat gun into the scabbard, then stick the blade in to force any inward-protruding lumps aside and keep a good fit.
When it came time to apply the facing, I melted the entire bowl of rosin-beeswax mix, let it cool to a consistency sort of like room-temperature corn syrup, and smeared it as evenly as possible on the core with the brass rod in one-inch stages. I melted it again with the heat gun, then pressed on the leather. When each half of the facing had been applied, I heated the whole face evenly and pressed it against a flat surface to try to smooth out the lumps of glue that had built up underneath. The result was still somewhat lumpy. Finally, I stitched up the facing with linen thread in a double-running stitch, and trimmed off the excess.
My heavy reliance on a heat gun does call into question the practicality of this kind of glue in period. Trying to do the same thing over open flames might well be difficult, as may trying this method on a larger, more complex scabbard such as one for an akinakes. Nonetheless, when the time comes, this will be what I try.
I have no doubt that this glue will prove waterproof. Even if it becomes slightly sticky in the rain, the idea of it bleeding through the leather is inconceivable to me. To my mind, the real test will be whether it softens after a few hours in the hot sun, for which purpose I'll have to wait for the right weather.
As for the letter opener itself: The blade is another full-tang dagger blade from Atlanta Cutlery, with maple scales and steel pins. I did reshape the tang to be a little more like a classic Luristan dagger, but while it affects a Near Eastern Iron Age look and I'm using it as a test bed for period materials, I don't believe this object bears sufficient resemblance to any Achaemenid-period dagger to warrant actually using it at reenactments. (I would, however, love to be proven wrong.)
As an aside, I've bought four Windlass Steelcraft blades this year, and their geometry seems to have worsened compared to my previous purchases, with slightly thinner spines and much thicker, squared edges that will take forever to sharpen.
The scabbard, with its central ridge, straight lines down the edges (here interpreted as facing seams), and rounded tip without a chape, is modeled after those shown in Neo-Assyrian art such as the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal and at the Palace of Sargon II. Its core is made from American commercial poplar (tulipwood), probably yellow poplar, which is simply the low-end hardwood we usually get in my part of the country.
This year I've been trying to eliminate any period-inappropriate materials from my designs. One that's stuck with me for a long time is rubber cement, which I've used to attach leather facings to wooden scabbards. I use it primarily because in a real military campaign you couldn't reasonably expect to stash away your scabbard every time it rained, and rubber cement is waterproof, while for a long time the only alternative that came to mind was hide glue, which isn't. (I understand traditional hide glue is less readily water-soluble than the modern kind that I've been using, which has urea added to keep it liquid at room temperature - traditional hide glue must be kept warm to work with it.)
Anyway, I've read years ago about making varnish from pine rosin by dissolving it in alcohol. This can be used to protect sinew wrappings on arrows from softening and coming loose. It recently occurred to me to ask if this varnish would be sufficiently sticky to use for scabbard facings before it dried. I was in the process of making a new letter opener, and it seemed like the right opportunity to try it out.
If you've ever touched a sawn-off stump of a pine tree, you know that pine resin is incredibly sticky and impossible to wash off with normal soap and water; you need highly-concentrated alcohol (70+ percent hand sanitizer gel works well for this purpose) or some other nasty organic solvent like acetone (nail polish remover). Resin consists largely of rosin, the solid component, and turpentine, a natural solvent that keeps the resin liquid. Turpentine takes a long time to evaporate out of fresh pine resin, so resin is processed commercially by heating in a still. Those who aren't trying to collect the turpentine just cook it off in an open pot.
I ordered some rosin from Creekwood Naturals for experimentation. This product arrives as a coarse, sandy powder. It becomes sticky when wet, but it seems to be waterproof.
My first experiments went thusly: I dissolved some rosin in rubbing alcohol and let it evaporate to a thick, syrupy consistency that could be painted onto a scrap of sanded poplar plank. For comparison, I also smeared some fresh pine resin on the wood, alongside rubber cement. On top of all three adhesives I pressed a tiny swatch of chamois, then let the substances dry.
The fresh resin took the longest to dry. After several days, all three swatches peeled off easily. The resin was still slightly sticky under the leather; the rosin brittle; the rubber cement, well, rubbery.
I'd heard that beeswax is often used in rosin-based pitch glues to reduce the rosin's brittleness, so my next test used a mix of alcohol-rosin varnish reduced to a syrup and a bit of Sno Seal, which is emulsified beeswax used to waterproof shoes. This did not work out at all. The mix took forever to dry, and wasn't sticky enough.
Giving up on emulsions, I decided to try a hot glue. I shaved some beeswax into a metal bowl and, working by eye, added about two to three times its volume in rosin, then slowly melted the bowl's contents with a heat gun. At first, the beeswax melted while the rosin turned into a sticky mess, but with prolonged heating and stirring with a brass rod, the mixture became uniform. (It also released fumes that stung my eyes, and when hot enough, began to smoke.) Then I smeared a little onto the poplar and quickly stuck the chamois swatch onto it.
I repeat: Wow! Once cool, the glue bonded the chamois to the wood with immense strength. When I tried to peel it, the leather itself ripped up before the glue failed. I can dent the glue with my nail, but it's not sticky, and even though it's mostly rosin, it more resembles very hard, dark beeswax.
It seemed perfect, but now was time for the real test.
When it came time to apply the facing, I melted the entire bowl of rosin-beeswax mix, let it cool to a consistency sort of like room-temperature corn syrup, and smeared it as evenly as possible on the core with the brass rod in one-inch stages. I melted it again with the heat gun, then pressed on the leather. When each half of the facing had been applied, I heated the whole face evenly and pressed it against a flat surface to try to smooth out the lumps of glue that had built up underneath. The result was still somewhat lumpy. Finally, I stitched up the facing with linen thread in a double-running stitch, and trimmed off the excess.
My heavy reliance on a heat gun does call into question the practicality of this kind of glue in period. Trying to do the same thing over open flames might well be difficult, as may trying this method on a larger, more complex scabbard such as one for an akinakes. Nonetheless, when the time comes, this will be what I try.
I have no doubt that this glue will prove waterproof. Even if it becomes slightly sticky in the rain, the idea of it bleeding through the leather is inconceivable to me. To my mind, the real test will be whether it softens after a few hours in the hot sun, for which purpose I'll have to wait for the right weather.
As an aside, I've bought four Windlass Steelcraft blades this year, and their geometry seems to have worsened compared to my previous purchases, with slightly thinner spines and much thicker, squared edges that will take forever to sharpen.
The scabbard, with its central ridge, straight lines down the edges (here interpreted as facing seams), and rounded tip without a chape, is modeled after those shown in Neo-Assyrian art such as the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal and at the Palace of Sargon II. Its core is made from American commercial poplar (tulipwood), probably yellow poplar, which is simply the low-end hardwood we usually get in my part of the country.
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Monday, April 25, 2016
Making a belt knife
As I observed at the time, one takeaway from Marathon 2015 is that we still sometimes need a small but sharp knife around camp for mundane jobs. Since my flanged dagger project will require grinding primary bevels and cold-forging flanges anyway, I decided to practice these skills and acquire a needed accessory in the process.
The knife is inspired loosely by one seen in Oriental Institute Publications 69 (pg. 311 of the PDF) and, to a lesser extent, one with a more extreme recurve found at Deve Hüyük. Mine doesn't exactly resemble either of them, and is sized to be useful for tasks like cutting rope and opening boxes. I don't know what the purpose of the recurved shape is, but it's pretty common, used by the Romans, Thracians, and in South Asia, so there must be something to it.
The lack of any blade shoulder gives it away as a utility knife with little use as a weapon, as there's nothing to keep the fingers from slipping onto the blade if used for stabbing and it's too small to put any power behind a slashing attack. Of course, that does make it a bit less safe as a tool as well; even most utility knives have a bit of a shoulder, but not all, so if you're not reckless, it's fine.
I markered the outline freehand on 1x1/8-inch mild steel bar stock, added the rivet holes with a drill press and cleaned them up with my Dremel's cone cutter. I cut the outline with my angle grinder and did the primary bevels with the standard stone grinding wheel. I intended for it to have a flat grind from the spine, but when the edge started to get too thin, it wore away and deformed. Perhaps being overly cautious, I wound up giving it a convex bevel that only extends about half its width. As a result, the blade is very sturdy but probably won't get too sharp.
Forging the flanges was easy enough (took a lot of effort, but that's just my lack of stamina talking), but there was still quite a bit of extra material, which suggests that I might want to go back and reduce the extra width I added to the flanged dagger tang for that purpose
The grip is black walnut, cut and drilled at Bucks, with a simple linseed oil finish. The trick in drilling rivet holes in a grip of this type is to chuck up a bit on the drill press, hold the blade either over the edge of a block or preferably in a vise so that the tang sticks out, and position it so the drill bit is sticking straight down through the rivet holes. Then slip the grip onto the tang, making absolutely sure not to move the tang at all, start the drill press and lower it until it drills through the grip, passing through the tang holes in the process. It's a delicate job even with modern equipment and a humbling reminder of what clever bastards ancient people were. I understand that a clamp is preferable for holding the blade but there weren't any in the shop that would actually work for the purpose.
I made the slot a bit too wide, requiring a shim (that little pale edge peeking out between the blade and grip), and the grip is a bit too narrow between the flanges, which I didn't notice until after drilling. So I rounded off the ends of the flanges so they wouldn't bite into my hand. Rivets are simply an annealed common nail cut up with the angle grinder's cutting wheel. The sheath is heavy molded rawhide with a welt and glove suede facing, painted with the Iranian rosette and just tied to the belt with a suede band.
My camera didn't want to focus on it, but I found the rope-like seam produced by single whipstitching very interesting. When the needle initially entered the leather from the front, whipped around and passed through the front again, the seam on the back was curled forward into a shape I found oddly reminiscent of the edging seen on ornate akinakes scabbards (see here, third photo from the top on the left). Obviously the resemblance is not that great, but I could imagine this kind of leather seam edging, whose decorative quality is purely incidental, as being distantly ancestral to that used on what are presumably metal facings.
The knife is inspired loosely by one seen in Oriental Institute Publications 69 (pg. 311 of the PDF) and, to a lesser extent, one with a more extreme recurve found at Deve Hüyük. Mine doesn't exactly resemble either of them, and is sized to be useful for tasks like cutting rope and opening boxes. I don't know what the purpose of the recurved shape is, but it's pretty common, used by the Romans, Thracians, and in South Asia, so there must be something to it.
The lack of any blade shoulder gives it away as a utility knife with little use as a weapon, as there's nothing to keep the fingers from slipping onto the blade if used for stabbing and it's too small to put any power behind a slashing attack. Of course, that does make it a bit less safe as a tool as well; even most utility knives have a bit of a shoulder, but not all, so if you're not reckless, it's fine.
Forging the flanges was easy enough (took a lot of effort, but that's just my lack of stamina talking), but there was still quite a bit of extra material, which suggests that I might want to go back and reduce the extra width I added to the flanged dagger tang for that purpose
I made the slot a bit too wide, requiring a shim (that little pale edge peeking out between the blade and grip), and the grip is a bit too narrow between the flanges, which I didn't notice until after drilling. So I rounded off the ends of the flanges so they wouldn't bite into my hand. Rivets are simply an annealed common nail cut up with the angle grinder's cutting wheel. The sheath is heavy molded rawhide with a welt and glove suede facing, painted with the Iranian rosette and just tied to the belt with a suede band.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
TDrevnosti
Just came across this shop on Etsy that features bronze Central Asian knives and akinakai which might be good for certain Scythian subgroup impressions. They are small but look nice.
TDrevnosti
TDrevnosti
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