Guardians of The Lambsfoot!

[Pt-Luso]

Very nice photo, José! Did you lay down on the ground to take that one?

Fantastic, congratulations José!! Please give a big hug back to Mariana!!

Thank You very much Dennis for your kind words.

 

[Pt-Luso]

Mine today...

Dennis this buffalo horn is awesome!!

 

[Pt-Luso]

More one from the Lambsfoot lime/lemon.

 

[Cambertree]

Morning Guardians, I flushed SJs joint last night and it appears that some of the grit was hiding a fairly significant gap in the joint. It appears the spring is thicker than the tang. (See below) Do any of you have a DIY remedy for this issue?

I know some of you are fairly handy when it comes to these things.

Thanks in advance
Jiki

Jiki, if I had to guess from your pics, I think it’s perhaps that the polishing compound which you flushed out was caught between the sides of the tang and the liners, as you said.

When the pivot pin was peened tight it was actually sandwiching some of that gunk in there.

I believe the backsprings and blades are stamped out of the same thickness stock, so I’m not sure that there’s going to be a big difference in thickness. You can actually see the exposed pin in the gap where the tang looks askew.

Here on my ebony user Lambsfoot, you can see that the backsquare of the blade looks thinner than the backspring, but in reality, it’s only by a couple of thousandths of an inch, because the sides of the blade tang are ground and polished a little more than the sides of the backspring.

If you look in the blade channel, you can see that the tang is actually the same thickness as the spring.

As far as a DIY solution, I would just peen the pin tight again.

Some people use a vice.
I just rest one side of the bolster/pivot pin on a metal surface like the side of my prybar, and lightly tap the other side of the pin with a 4-oz ball peen hammer or pin punch. Then turn it over and adjust the other side the same way.

When you are happy with the tightness, action and blade centring, then just blend the pin and bolsters with fine sandpaper on a compressible substrate like leather, and polish it back up on a strop charged with compound.

My ebony user Lambsfoot gets the most use out of all my traditional slipjoints (although recently it’s been getting a rest in favour of the Ironwood 2019) and I periodically retighten it every six months or so.

You can see the outline of the pivot pin on the bolsters, but I’m not worried about that on a working knife:

Bored at work and you can't find any wood...

Very cool, I’d like to see more of your whittling here. I’d also be keen to hear what you think of the Lambsfoot as a whittling and user knife.

That's excellent! Thank you.

Great picture.

Cheers John.

Funny thing (kinda). All of my knives with a similar blade to these Lambsfoot knives are on the other foot (see what I did there). I've just never had a Lambsfoot. They appear to be a great pattern/knife and the pictures not only in this thread but in the thread about the SFO for @waynorth are nothing short of breath taking in some cases.

Time to get one, put it to work and join the fold, my friend!

I agree completely with your thoughts, Chin. They immediately brought me up short. I would not want Jack to make any effort that would end in sacrifice. Thank you Chin

Thank you Harvey.

I always think of merino as being softer, but it could be merino you know Chin. I'll have to ask old Les That sounds like a fascinating read, thanks for the link, I've certainly heard the author quoted. I don't know where you find the time to do all the great reading you do I am close to the end of my history of New York (Low Life by Luc Sante), it has been a fascinating read, but the book is a bit hefty to carry around, so I've only really read it in bed! I was reading an interesting article on the history of the flat-cap this afternoon!

Thank you for all your kind words my friend, I'm grateful

I'm afraid I can't make out what that crop is, but like yourself, I love studying old photographs. I have this one as wallpaper on my Ipad

There's actually a section on ink-erasers in Levine's guide, they have a fine sharp edge for scratching away a slip of the quill

Thanks mate, I’ll be interested to hear what you think of that Luc Sante book. I thought you might have read Mayhew. The title doesn’t exactly sound like a thrilling pageturner, but it is really fascinating stuff. The way it is written makes it very easy to dip into in small bites as it’s broken up into walks through different parts of London, and entries on different ‘trades’. I like the Victorian Underworld volume, the best.

Wow there’s so much going on in that photo. The hand-me-down, adult size clothes and boots, the thin faces, hard eyes, and manual labourer’s hands. Are they tannery workers, perhaps?

It’s sad to think of all that human potential chewed up in those factories and ground into an early grave.

I remember reading that knife grinders would often be showing signs of silicosis by their early twenties and usually be dead in their thirties.

Thanks for the Levine tip, I was thinking what those erasers could be repurposed for.

Jack Black Thank you.

Wonderful, Harvey. For a second it looked like you’d found a Lambsfoot with a Granton type scalloped blade!

I thought this was kind of cool, as well as potentially useful

A nice bit of high speed steel with your Hartshead.

I am meeting an old friend for lunch and a pint tomorrow, quite a rare treat for me these days, so I am looking forward to it

http://www.whitelocksleeds.com/

I will have my stag Hartshead Barlow in tow, in case any pies need bisecting

Great pic, and that looks like a classic pub with some fine choices on tap.

Good day, folks.

I just finished reading through 600+ posts here. Ordinarily, I'd have cut my losses but I had the time today so I took it. I've lost my quotes and it's possible that I missed some comments but I appreciate them all and I most definitely enjoy all of the pictures. A fine bunch of knives and even finer owners.

I took a brief moment or two to snap a couple pictures of the knives I have with me today.

Great pics as usual, Dylan. That’s an epic read, my friend.

I’m glad to see you found a jet black ebony Lambsfoot, I recall your first ebony Wright (not the Guardians edition) was more of a chocolate colour.

Those two knives look amazing.

Thank you Chin...I agree with your comments to Jack about spending so much of his time tending this thread and his being an overall great person.
Yes, Dutch is used as a bird dog, in the upland field(pheasant, quail) he does point, if the bird will remain stationary, and hold, until I tell him to flush. When waterfowl hunting he usually sees the bird before I do, but he does 'mark' off my gun, That is, he follows the movement of my swing and when I can hit a bird or two he 'marks' the fall, waits for my command to retrieve, then goes gets the bird. If he does not see the fall of a bird, I can direct him by using a whistle and hand signals He is five years old, at six months of age he went to a pro trainer. He spent five months learning the basics of being a hunting retriever and has been actively hunting and training since. Is he exclusively a bird dog, absolutely not. He is my best friend and constant companion, I'm just so fortunate that he loves to do what he was bred for...hunt and retrieve. Thanks for asking!

Thanks for the great description of Dutch at work, Preston. It reminded me of some of Jack O’ Connor’s classic Field and Stream articles. Watching a well trained dog at work is truly a thing of beauty. Sometimes bird dogs here do double duty as scent trailing deer dogs as well. One of my friends has a dog who knows what they will be hunting that day from the firearm that comes out of the safe, and ignores all other quarry.

Here are my humble contributions to the thread... Huge thanks go out to Charlie for such wonderful creations.

Jack Black...Fantastic!

Fantastic photos of some stunning knives. Great to see you here.

 

[Jack Black]

Jiki, if I had to guess from your pics, I think it’s perhaps that the polishing compound which you flushed out was caught between the sides of the tang and the liners, as you said.

When the pivot pin was peened tight it was actually sandwiching some of that gunk in there.

I believe the backsprings and blades are stamped out of the same thickness stock, so I’m not sure that there’s going to be a big difference in thickness. You can actually see the exposed pin in the gap where the tang looks askew.

Here on my ebony user Lambsfoot, you can see that the backsquare of the blade looks thinner than the backspring, but in reality, it’s only by a couple of thousandths of an inch, because the sides of the blade tang are ground and polished a little more than the sides of the backspring.

If you look in the blade channel, you can see that the tang is actually the same thickness as the spring.

As far as a DIY solution, I would just peen the pin tight again.

Some people use a vice.
I just rest one side of the bolster/pivot pin on a metal surface like the side of my prybar, and lightly tap the other side of the pin with a 4-oz ball peen hammer or pin punch. Then turn it over and adjust the other side the same way.

When you are happy with the tightness, action and blade centring, then just blend the pin and bolsters with fine sandpaper on a compressible substrate like leather, and polish it back up on a strop charged with compound.

My ebony user Lambsfoot gets the most use out of all my traditional slipjoints (although recently it’s been getting a rest in favour of the Ironwood 2019) and I periodically retighten it every six months or so.

You can see the outline of the pivot pin on the bolsters, but I’m not worried about that on a working knife:

Extremely helpful post Chin Nice pair of straight punches there. I was only thinking the other day, that it's been ages since I last peened a knife. I used to do it all the time, mainly because of the old knives I used to pick up from the markets a few years back

Thanks mate, I’ll be interested to hear what you think of that Luc Sante book. I thought you might have read Mayhew. The title doesn’t exactly sound like a thrilling pageturner, but it is really fascinating stuff. The way it is written makes it very easy to dip into in small bites as it’s broken up into walks through different parts of London, and entries on different ‘trades’. I like the Victorian Underworld volume, the best.

It is excellent my friend, I really recommend it, and think you would thoroughly enjoy it. It's so exhaustively researched, it almost reads like a contemporary account, but is also extremely readable. In expensive on the big river site too

Wow there’s so much going on in that photo. The hand-me-down, adult size clothes and boots, the thin faces, hard eyes, and manual labourer’s hands. Are they tannery workers, perhaps?

It’s sad to think of all that human potential chewed up in those factories and ground into an early grave.

I remember reading that knife grinders would often be showing signs of silicosis by their early twenties and usually be dead in their thirties.

Thanks for the Levine tip, I was thinking what those erasers could be repurposed for.

They are cutters in a tuna canning factory Chin, in 1911. Yes, extremely hard times to grow up in, for those that survived childhood at all - not that 'childhood' was even a concept for poor folks back then, as Sante discusses at length. The grinders lived notoriously short lives, even by the standards of the day

A nice bit of high speed steel with your Hartshead.



Great pic, and that looks like a classic pub with some fine choices on tap.

Thanks mate, it's a good old-fashioned place, apart from the creeping prices THat's a great pic, and some useful-looking tools there

 

[Pt-Luso]

Jack Black...Fantastic!

Congratulations, wonderful stag.

 

[Pt-Luso]

Splendid stag Chin.

 

[donn]

Mild & Bitter was common in West Yorkshire. I always thought a 'Boilermaker' was a cocktail too!

Although I'm a graduate of Purdue University, whose mascot is a Boilermaker (the human worker, not the drink), I've never tried the drink. (As a student, I once attended a party where beer was generously served from a keg, and then had some whiskey near the end of the evening, and my stomach violently rejected the combination. I suppose that could be considered a "backwards Boilermaker", but IIRC, it was the last time I had "hard liquor". )

Hope you and Lucy have a nice day as you continue to recover from your exhausting Thursday. Looks like decent weather.

Urgh!! That looks disgusting! I take it you use cooking whiskey?

On the trip I mentioned, we got escorted across Morecambe Sands by the Queen's Guide Great pic Davvid, and very topical of course Hope work isn't too punishing my friend

Jack, that's something I always wanted to do! But never got round to doing. You may like to hear that Cedric Robinson retired in April.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ime-run-out-for-queens-guide-to-morecambe-bay

He's also just published his latest book.
'Sands of Time-Following in the footsteps of Cedric Robinson on Morecambe Bay'.

Rather than Guardians T-shirts maybe we need Guardians lunch boxes.

You mean like this one.

David, thanks for all the background on Dan Dare; sounds like a genuine hero!
Superb picture of your oxhorn EYE lambsfoot!
- GT

Your welcome.

Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes did an excellent take on Dan Dare as a retiree, living on a military pension, and writing his memoirs in a Thatcheresque dystopian ‘future’. While the people of the north are starving, Dare is brought out of retirement to be the figurehead for the reelection campaign of Prime Minister ‘Gloria Monday’.

Very topical for us in the UK at the minute.

Cheers David.

Yes, I’m not really a knife collector, I just like examining and using historical working knives from different parts of the world, and trying to gain an understanding of different patterns and steels and hand tool evolution. The Lambsfoot knife must easily be the most represented single pattern in my ‘accumulation of edged tools’.

Yes it’s winter here mate - not winter as you know it of course, and certainly nothing like Dave and Will must take for granted.

I was hunting up around the 1000-1200 metre (3300-4000’) line in the High Country. A dusting of snow makes tracking sign much easier, of course. This was the only hunt I recall being on, that I’ve seen no fresh deer sign at all, despite that area usually being well populated with Sambar.

My hunting partner and I kept covering more ground, and finally came across some other hunters who told us that the area had had a hound crew working it over heavily all week.

Never mind, it’s always a pleasure just to be out in the bush at dawn, and the campfire conversation and cameraderie is always something to look forward to as well.

But that’s part of the gamble of hunting public land. It’ll be back to private property next time, for sure.

Thanks for the elaboration Chin, it must be great to get out on a hunt. Sorry to hear you didn't get anything this time. I'm assuming a hound crew is hunting with dogs? I guess that must of spooked any deer there.

I often have a distinct craving for meat pies after viewing your posts.

I do to! I buy pie. Take picture of pie (with lambsfoot). Eat pie. Post picture of pie (and lambsfoot). Check my post is all in order by looking at posted picture of pie. Then think "damn, now I'm craving pie".

Apologies for the late acknowledgement of your replies folks. Work asked me to work ALL weekend, but day off today.

Phew.

 

[dc50]

Sounds like a great day Dave Smashing pic of Samuel

Thank you, Jack, at his age it's always a mystery as to what he will be like as a grown young man.

Never seen before footage # 1...

Great photos Duncan of our gentle giant.

Naps are important, and require lots of practice!

Dennis now that I'm retired I have a strict nap time it starts at 1 PM daily and lasts until I wake up.

Great photos, Dave! Handsome fella! But he does have a look of quiet bedlam in his eyes, I think he does love your knife!

He does doesn't he that's why I volunteered to pay for Taekwon-do lessons to focus some of that energy into something that may serve him later in life if needed.

It was certainly worth the wait! Such great scenery, Dave!

Thank you my friend,

Great looking Barlow Chin!

I do to! I buy pie. Take picture of pie (with lambsfoot). Eat pie. Post picture of pie (and lambsfoot). Check my post is all in order by looking at posted picture of pie. Then think "damn, now I'm craving pie".

I love pie!! alas there's no pie in my pantry So I'll go make Spam on toast instead.

 

[screened porch]

'shammy leather'

We always just called them shammies. I don't think I knew they were leather for quite a while.

You can see the outline of the pivot pin on the bolsters, but I’m not worried about that on a working knife:

I find, if I don't slip in a razor blade before I peen, I get them too tight. I guess I don't have a very light touch.

The grinders lived notoriously short lives, even by the standards of the day

I think it was Anthony Burgess who said the industrial revolution couldn't have happened without the gin mills and opium dens. Now we're not allowed even that.
Well, I have to admit we're still allowed the gin.

 

[dc50]

Just chilling in the shade.

 

[Half/Stop]

Here are my humble contributions to the thread... Huge thanks go out to Charlie for such wonderful creations.

Congratulations on your Waynorth Cutlery Lambsfoots

Jack Black...Fantastic!

Beautiful Hartshead Barlow TF

@TFBraden Welcome to the Guardians TF. It appears you have made a grand entrance!

We have a very special treat for the Guardians today.... If you have ever wondered just how the famous Jack Black Studio's got their special effects to give us pictures like the one above?
Some rarely seen special "Behind the scenes" footage to let you guys and gals in the know how..........

Never seen before footage # 1...

Never seen before footage # 2....

Thanks again Jack for such a great Day!

Thanks for the photos Duncan! It’s great to see the master at work!

What a grand example, Ron! That is some prime ebony!

Thanks Dennis!

 

[JohnDF]

Lookin' mighty fine

Thanks, Dennis.

Morning John, solid choice

Good morning, Jack. Thanks.

That wonderful stag looks right at home there at the waters edge, John!

Thanks, I'm glad it didn't decide to take a drink.

Good morning, John!

Good Morning, Dennis.

Cheers John.

Thank you, Chin.

 

[screened porch]

Looks like I need to dust my locomotive.
It's a lamp. When you turn it on or off it rocks, rattles, and toots.

 

[r8shell]

He must have an AI monitor that watches this thread while he sleeps and wakes him if we stop posting lambsfoot content...

It does seem that way, doesn't it?

We have a very special treat for the Guardians today.... If you have ever wondered just how the famous Jack Black Studio's got their special effects to give us pictures like the one above?
Some rarely seen special "Behind the scenes" footage to let you guys and gals in the know how..........

Never seen before footage # 1...

Never seen before footage # 2....

Thanks again Jack for such a great Day!

Fantastic!

Fantastic Dennis, looks like you've got a great set-up there

My great grandmother and grandmother, and later one of my uncles, worked at Chesterman's Bow Works in Sheffield, and I have quite a few of their rules, tape-measures, and spirit-levels

Old tools are great, old measuring tools are better, and old tools with a family connection are the best!

I had a pleasant visit with Dad. His old knees are bad, so we didn't do a lot except sit and visit with various friends and go out to eat a lot. I think I gain a few pounds, so I'll get some walking in this week. (My mother has been vegan for 30 years and runs up four flights of stairs daily, my dad likes to eat pastries. I aim to find a middle ground halfway between, and hope I'll be alright when I'm in my eighties. )

Finally got a chance to sharpen up the new Lambsfoot this weekend:

Good thing, too. Took a walk yesterday and had to battle a fantastic beast!

 

[Fodderwing]

Morning Guardians, it's a sunny day in Yorkshire

Beautiful panorama and cutlery.

We have a very special treat for the Guardians today.

Great to see the master at his craft Duncan! Thanks!

Incredible!
Is that a fossil behind the Lamb

Thank you Dennis. It's a conch we picked up beach combing on Ocracoke.

Mine today...

Way cool image Dennis.

Fantastic Dennis, looks like you've got a great set-up there

My great grandmother and grandmother, and later one of my uncles, worked at Chesterman's Bow Works in Sheffield, and I have quite a few of their rules, tape-measures, and spirit-levels

I am always drawn to old measuring tools also Jack. Found one yesterday in an antique mall but managed to walk away. But now it's on my mind again... Great image of your barlow.

 

[Fodderwing]

We always just called them shammies. I don't think I knew they were leather for quite a while.

I find, if I don't slip in a razor blade before I peen, I get them too tight. I guess I don't have a very light touch.

I think it was Anthony Burgess who said the industrial revolution couldn't have happened without the gin mills and opium dens. Now we're not allowed even that.
Well, I have to admit we're still allowed the gin.

Cool pic Jer. Nostalgicly winsome.

Good thing, too. Took a walk yesterday and had to battle a fantastic beast!

Is that beast an aloe vera plant? Did it keep your barlow?

 

[WhittlinAway]

I’m hoping to fully catch up later today, but couldn’t resist a quick comment on this:

Finally got a chance to sharpen up the new Lambsfoot this weekend:

Looking good!

Setting up personally preferred edge -> more use -> more patina.
All of those things -> more delight.

 

[Hairy Clipper]

dc50 "I love pie!! alas there's no pie in my pantry So I'll go make Spam on toast instead."

The good folks down the road about 50 miles appreciate what you do for the local economy Dave!
https://www.spam.com/museum

 

[Prester John]

I love pie!! alas there's no pie in my pantry So I'll go make Spam on toast instead.

Gonna have to try that. Got some in the ice box now. I usually just fry a slice with two eggs.