For the first two days, I sat on a log around a big tarp, holding a rock in my right hand and a flint core between my legs, padded by leather, as I learned from experimental archaeologist Antony Whitlock how to knap the flint to make knives, microliths and hand axes. These would have been used before metal for cutting hides, food and taking down small trees. Day one was spent creating a large mound of artisanal gravel. Miraculously, after waking from a deep sleep, I could create good flakes from my strikes. I pressure flaked the leading edge of one, using an antler tine to form serrations. At the end of the day I set it into a piece of spalted birch with pine pitch and birch tar mixed with charcoal, bound with nettle cordage.
On the third day with prehistoric survival teacher Will Lord we built a bronze furnace from mud, straw, horse dung and horsehair. We smashed malachite with rocks to smelt in a crucible, and once we had obtained copper from the bright green rock, we added tin to make bronze. Hide bellows made the charcoal glow hot enough to form the alloy. With beeswax I made the crescent shape of a ceremonial knife and covered it with clay to form a mould, then poured in the molten bronze to take its place and form a blade. Sharpened and polished, I set this into a small piece of birch and oiled it to bring out the grain.
There is no place for a tentative touch in the forge.
There was also time to make a sword called the ‘Ewart Park Leaf ’, a replica of one belonging to the Iceni, a British tribe from the time of Queen Boudicca. Such swords were raised against invading Romans, but the professional soldiers of that empire had already marched into the iron age, and their similarly-shaped swords could cut clean through the softer bronze.
In blacksmith Dave Budd’s replica Saxon forge the last two days were filled with working huge bellows and bringing a hammer down on the anvil. Hitting steel hard while it was still hot enough to transform proved hard. This was my first week working with stone and metal, my hands used to handling the softer materials of fabrics, paper and paint. There is no place for a tentative touch in the forge. When the blade was good enough, I plunged it into tallow to cool, and later into water to quench it. To temper the blade I heated it in the fire until it showed a specific series of different reds and purples, difficult to discern against the falling light of the fifth day. It lay on a shelf all night cooling and resting, as to haft it now could cause it to shatter.
Finally, I chose a piece of pear wood and shaped it with another knife and rasp for a handle, burning a hole for the tang with a small red-hot rod of iron. Heating the tang, I burned the knife into its housing and set it there with a little glue, then polished the wood and oiled it. Once home I made leather and buckskin for knife sheaths for the two metal blades, and neck cords from which to hang them when in use.
When I transform natural materials into what I need, I find myself transformed.
I want to make everything once. When I transform natural materials into what I need, I find myself transformed. When I cut away what is unnecessary, I am also shorn of the inessential. When I take care to finish carefully what is roughly made, some deep part of me is fulfilled. Perhaps it seems simplistic, but it is a method which works: to make metaphors real with practical action, craft and hand work. Then, magically, they are no longer terms of speech, or nice ideas. My sword is real, my knives are sharp, the leather is supple, the cordage holds fast.
Dark Mountain: Issue 25
Our Spring 2024 issue is an anthology of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, interviews and artwork inspired by the struggle for land rights, and by the living land itself.
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