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Let’s Make a by Dude McLean Sure, you can flake off a piece of rock to create a crude knife — a discoidal blade. You can skin a critter, cut a notch in your fireboard. You can cut up meat and plant fiber, gripping the discoidal knife. However, after you have used one of these discoidal blades for awhile, your hand can cramp and your fingers get sore from scraping over whatever surface you may be cutting. It works, but with a little help, the discoidal knife can be improved so that it is easier to handle.
The Hoko Knife If you do not have a cedar or spruce handy, you can substitute many kinds of wood. Willow is found almost everywhere and is easy to work with. Any wood, where you can control the split, will work well. The Hoko knife can be crafted in many sizes, but as a tool for fine work, it shines. Plus, it has an advantage over the discoidal blade — leverage. After all, that is what all handles do.
The Hoko knives that have been found had super tiny blade/flakes, with a length of the wood handles at about 5 inches. The blades were the size of a quarter or your thumbnail. They appear to be just the right size for skinning small critters or gutting fish or cutting small pieces of meat. My experience with the Hoko style is that you work it with a slicing and a sawing motion. We may never know what these simple knives were really used for, but logic and common sense have not changed over these past thousands of years.
How to Make the Hoko Knife
Cordage
A Tiny Flake, Chip, Discoidal Blade
We have our materials… let’s do it. Tie a knot on the end of your cordage, then place the flake between the split wood. Slip the cordage just behind the flake and press down with your forefinger and thumb, pulling the cordage through until the knot binds against the split handle/twig. Now wrap the cordage around and through the split twigs, tying it with half hitches.
Options I prefer to wrap my cordage from the flake to the end of the handle. This gives the knife a pleasing look and feels good to me while I work with this tool.
Make a bunch of Hokos
You now have a real ancient and primitive knife you can use.
Add it to your primitive tool kit. Do not forget to thank
those villagers from long ago on the Hoko River… that’s the
wilderness way. |