Mora Carving Knives & Carving Autumn Mushrooms.

Hi good morning guys thanks for joining me. What I thought we'd do in today's video is just a little bit of basic carving and also talk about a couple of inexpensive carving knives. Certainly this time of year autumn there's a lot of mushrooms and fungi about so what I thought to do is just show you just a basic way about to just carve one out. One of the things I love about carving is the fact that it probably gets you outside when you want to stay indoors. You know this time of year now we come from that transition period the summer's gone autumn's now with us so again you know it is quite easy just to stay indoors watch a little bit of tally watch a little bit of YouTube wherever it may be but just having a little project like this at hand would probably get you outdoors otherwise when you'd be staying inside. So as you can see here I've just got a little fire just burning down by the side of me I've also got the tarp set up so I'm going to be comfortable it just means I can spend a few hours outside. What I'm going to do in that time like I say just show you just how to carve one of these fungus out and also just run through just the things which I'm going to bring out with me when I do these kind of things but also just talk about a couple of the knives. So the knives in particular here not very expensive anywhere between £15 and £20 you can pick these up from pretty much any kind of bushcraft store or Amazon, eBay wherever it may be. So we've got the 120 and the 105 you're going to pay around about £15 or £20 for them like I mentioned but there's slight subtleties in between the two different knives. So just starting off with the small knife out of the two and this one here is the Mora 120 so anywhere between £15 and £20 just depending to where you're going to buy it from and these are available for most bushcraft shops eBay, Amazon all them kind of places and the blade length on this one is around about two and a quarter so any kind of fine work that it is I want to be doing this is the kind of knife which I tend to go for. So the handle shape on it is what's referred to as the barrel shape very very plain very simple and fits a lot of hands and it's made out of a nice little piece of birch here you can just sand it down just to get it how you want it and if it is you just want to restain it I'll just put a little bit of linseed oil on this just to protect it you've got that option there. When you do buy them the sheaths are pretty crappy I think it's another knife sheath and they've actually just used them for these so in the past I've actually just made a little sheath just out of birch bark but for these now I've just made just a little bit of a leather mask for them so if it is that you just want to keep them short and that's probably the better option but again it does come with the sheath if you're going to use them. The larger knife out of the two this is the 105 and the blade length's a little bit longer so we're going from two and a quarter inch blade length to three inch blade length so again if it is I just want to cut bigger pieces of wood off or perhaps I'm carving just a larger item I perhaps use something like the larger knife a bit more of a different handle shape just a little bit more comfortable just a little bit bigger and again the steels on both of these are the same it's a laminate high carbon steel very easy to shorten Scandinavian grind I've just had to just put these on the strop and the knife profile itself reminds me a little bit of a filleting knife but just a little bit thicker around about three mil in thickness so if it is you want to be picking there's less chance of actually just bending that point there and you've got a nice little sturdy knife to use. So just running alongside the knives you will need some kind of saw so anything like your lap landers or your pocket buoys will do fine perfect for harvesting the wood in the first place but I do find them teeth are a little bit aggressive for any kind of fine sawing that I may want to be doing so for that task I use one of these little saws here very very fine teeth on if I can just get the camera just to pick that up there and these are made by Trend I'm not sure why they're so expensive I've noticed with the diamond stones which are quite as well you know they are very very expensive but it is a nice reliable saw folds away just the same it's got multiple positions on it just like the pocket boy has and again half the size half the weight very very fine teeth on it so it means I'm not leaving cut marks and wood so if it is I'm not sanding this work down these kind of things are going to be perfect for it but again like I say you know you don't have to spend a fortune one of the pocket knives which I do carry quite regular is the former and on this it has got a saw again you know for cutting these little pieces of work down it's also got a nice utility blade there just for any kind of fine carving that says I want to be doing so again you know just showing you don't have to spend a fortune but I think you know the more you get into it the more you want to progress you want your pieces of work to look nicer and also you just want to make the job just a little bit easier and that's the reason why I've started building up one of these little kits here so the wood which you're going to be using to carve one of these little mushrooms out is just a little piece of sycamore there's loads of sycamore down in these woods and this was just a little piece of down sycamore which I've just had to just cut this off and again you could use green wood you could use dry wood you could use anything that you want to use and also the beauty about carving mushrooms or fungus out is the fact there's that many different varieties you can carve it out how you want and I'm sure it's going to replicate something but these kind of things here they're just pretty much little caricatures it's just a silhouette of a mushroom if you wanted to you could spend a lot longer on it put plenty of fine detail in it but again you know the beauty about these is you can give them away as gifts every now and again I'll probably just leave one or two on the path just see if they're there next time I come down to the woods and as daft as it seems I've actually seen these kind of things for sale at game shows and also the bus crash show and people want quite big money for something which is going to take you So the first thing which you've got to do is decide what size you want your mushroom obviously you can make them quite large or you can make them quite small and what I tend to do is just use my fingers for measurements so this mushroom here I've gone with three fingers and I've gone with three fingers and this one at the top here I've gone with four fingers and I've gone with four fingers so again just making things just a little bit easier you don't have to bring any kind of measuring devices out with yourselves and again just carving these freehand just going to make each one a little bit more unique than the other so again just using just a thinnest piece of wood like this just checking the diameter so it's two fingers I'll probably go something like two fingers and then two fingers down to give me a total of four fingers just in the length and then you can just decide why do you want these bands just around the top and around the bottom but the first thing we're going to do is just put a little stop cut in and that's something again you know when it comes to carving these little mushrooms out you're just going to get used to using the knife it's going to get used to using the saw just on delicate little pieces of work and again for when it comes to carving feather sticks out just learning all about the angles for the blade grinds and everything like that it's just going to make all your jobs around camp just a little bit more easier so once you put your stop cut in there it's nice just to make sure that it does actually join up and then just getting the blade and just working your way around again just kind of check that you've got an even depth all the way around you can actually just you know compensate just as it is when you're carving it's just nice just to get it right just in the first place and then when you start carving the little stalk out it just means then you haven't got to start chopping away just a bit more at the top here so we got there now that's a stop cut all the way around nice even depth like i say you know if we just want to go a little bit deeper in a second we can just do that so the first thing we're going to do now is actually just start carving away just around top and i like to start from the bottom just doing one cut from the bottom two just a little bit further up three and then four then it'll just taper its way just nicely just up to the top here so just before we start making the first cut the first thing we're going to do is mark out just where i want the band so you just get the knife and you just score just the bark just by rotating it around like so very easy but if you want to you can actually just get your knife and then just move it up and just strip that bark off just making sure that you've got a little bit of band there between the saw mark and just where you've actually cut and i'm just going to work away just all the way around not taking much off first of all i just want to remove this bark and then we can start working away just up the piece of wood and then once you've started to get it tapered out just like that and then we can just start rounding over just the top just making sure that everything's safe as you notice here i'm just carving out to the side on me last thing i want to do is get a bad cut certainly out on my own down here in the wood so just making sure everything's nice and safe because these knives are razor sharp so when it comes just now just rounding that top over again i'm just going to cant just that knife blade end i'm just going to chew away around the top just crowning it all the way around till eventually we can actually just form a dome just on top of the top of the mushroom there and again it hasn't got to be perfect you know once you've actually got just the basic shape carved out you can spend as much time you know just to smooth things out and get rid of the knife marks and just get the exact shape that you're looking for like i said just make these quick make them as easy as you want to make them make nice little gifts and also just leave out on the paths as little presents for people that may walk by you know we do get quite a few dog walkers just a nice little gift for them and again you know this time of year now you could actually just make them as little christmas gifts just start carving them now give them a little bit of time to dry out and then you just apply some kind of oil or some kind of a you know wood conditioner just to make sure that the waterproof again you can't just keep them out in the garden they look quite nice or just put them in the kitchen somewhere like that or something that you've just made yourself so as you can see now we've got that domed little shape starting to form and this is probably the time to swap over knife what i'm going to do is just chip away just nice little pieces just off the top here and if you notice there with the length of the blade there's a good chance of actually catching the finger so if you're just looking at the piece of work and not concentrating on the end of the blade hence the reason just for having a small little blade so just moving over to the smaller knife and when it comes to now just to chipping them little pieces away as you notice there there's going to be no chance of actually cutting my fingers so again just having a couple of little knives like this makes the job a lot easier and also just makes it a little bit safer so once you're happy with the shape of the mushroom head it's just a case now i'm just actually carving into the stalk so we're just now going to meet up with that stop cut which we've made and if it says you want to refine this down a little bit more you know obviously you can take as much time as you want to do with it so just using just a shallow angle just making sure that we don't cut too deeply into the wood and actually split off this rim i'm just going to work around nice and gradually just using the thumb and the back of the knife and that's one of the reasons why i do like these knives because they've got this rounded off spine it just means then that you can use these kind of cuts without that knife actually bending into your thumb and once you've gone all the way around just keep going around gradually but just try not make sure that that's too deep of an angle or else when you go and cut let's say from this angle there's going to be a chance then you're going to cut it off too much and actually split it out so again just nice and easy and then if you want to you can just start removing just a little bit of that bark just at the back of the cut and then once you've cut down deeply into that stop cut you can now start taking off bigger pieces of wood without any fear of actually ripping or breaking that lip off and again if it is that you haven't cut it evenly all the way around you can just get your knife just to tidy that up just by working it backwards and forwards just to cut them little strands off or again just use the saw and just cut it round and just get it as deep as you want it but again this hasn't got to be perfect it's your mushroom obviously you can do what you want with it but again just trying to get it in proportion just makes things look just a little bit more nicer and just a bit more realistic and as you can see now after around about 15 or 20 minutes work that little mushroom there has now started to form and if you wanted to you could call that done just cut it off at the bottom and that's pretty much a little mushroom ready to go or if you wanted to you could spend the next few hours just refining everything down just trimming it down getting it how it is that you want it but to me you know there's a little caricature of a mushroom that doesn't look too bad and again just using it on a little bit of a staff or a trekking pole they make a nice comfortable top but again you know we might put that in the garden or just leave it on the footpath just as I'm leaving the woods and just going back to what I was saying about the knife just carving this little mushroom out we've had to use this knife in around about three or four different positions we've used it in the chest lever grip little push cuts just by using the thumb we've used it just in the standard hammer grip and also we just reversed it round just to trim that top off so again just showing you a little bit about knife craft just carving something out as simple as this is going to make knife work just a lot more easier for yourself so just before I can call that done and make myself another cup of tea I have got a couple of small jobs which I need to do it's one of those is to strop the blades just to get them edges as clean as what they first were and the other one is just to put a bit of wax just on these mushrooms here so the strop itself you can actually pick these up from shark design or beaver bushcraft a nice little field strop around about six inches by one inch you're paying around about 15 pound for them if I remember rightly and again just having one of these in your pack is going to make sure that you can keep the edge on these knives at all times so again if it says that you want to raise a sharp knife for your carving or perhaps what I might do in a second I just shave some of those down get rid of the tool markings and also the dirty fingerprints it just means having a little strop like this at hand is going to make them jobs viable and have a lot easier so the wax which we're going to be using on these mushrooms is this beeswax and walnut oil so basically this is a wooden board chopping conditioner so it's non-toxic so again if you want to use it on your spoons anything like that this is the kind of thing which I've been using I do like walnut oil anyway but I do find that it tends to darken the wood down a little bit and it has got quite a strong flavor so just here there's a little spoon which I've carved out and this was actually carved out of sycamore just the same as the mushrooms and when it dries it does stay you know quite whitish and again just using a light little wax and conditioner like this doesn't darken the wood down too much very easy to use kind of put it on a rag or just using your finger just rub it around warm it up just to start melting some of this wax and as you can see there it just starts to solidify very quickly and then once you've got enough on your finger just in case you're grabbing one of the mushrooms just this little fowlery it'll do it's just a case then just rubbing it in just using your fingers put it on the bark and everything like it does darken that bark up and then just work it in and it doesn't change the color too much but it's just going to protect it again if you want to keep these things outside in the garden it's just going to stop them from breaking down a lot quicker just in the elements so there we have it guys just a bit about the mortar carving knives and just a very quick simple project I think one of them mushrooms you take around about 15-20 minutes and again it's just nice just to get out and just get a little bit of fresh air you know like I said the beginning it's far too easy to stay in the house this time of year and watch tv you know just having something like this just to do just helps just to get you outdoors so like always guys I'll just leave and say thanks a lot for you stopping by and watching the video like always until next time you take care and I'll see you again.