Fatwood, firemaking, chaga and brain mushroom

Saturday was a warm day in Inari. Good day to spend time in nature. My dog is arctic race, so it like cool weather more.

 Luckily we have a lot of clean lakes in here. Usually water is very good to drink. As well as lakes have very much fish.

Puppy is my brothers karelians bear dog.

 It's nice to swim when weather is too warm.

 Dead pinewood. It's a local fatwood and very good fire making wood.

 There is fatwood everywhere. So I don't carry any wood in my backpack.

 This is my usual way to make fire. I have usually axe with me. You can see a traditional finnish axe in picture. I have fixed up blade of the axe and carved a new birch handle.

 First I make little pieces of fatwood.

 Carving feather sticks. This wood included less tar.

Then setting feather sticks on fire.

Then I add little pieces of fatwood on the feather sticks.

Then bigger pieces of fatwood.

 This polypore is chaga. Very healthy tea element and good tinder.

I  clean birchbark and dry chaga carefully. I have chaga for sale also.

Now is a brain mushroom season. You must be careful with this mushroom because it is extremely dangerous if you don't boil it two times. Boiling time is ten minutes and mushroom must flush with running water both after first and second boiling.

After this kind of process brain mushroom is safe to make food. This mushroom is very delicious.

Forging a flint striker and a belt buckle at the same time

I forged a belt buckle which is a flint striker at the same time. It isn't very practical to make fire for this product, because you must open your belt first. But it works as usual belt buckle although it has extra operation. 

                                                  File.

Little forging.

Cutting little bit of file steel.

File steel bit and usual iron bar.

Forge welding. White powder is borax.

Forge welded stick and usual stick.

Riveting.

Normalizing.

Hardening

You can see that hardened part is lighter than other part.

Finished belt buckle.

And it works than usual flint striker...

Something works of mine

This is something works what I have made. Almost all works are sold earlier.