Solo A Case For Needles

[Fallan Windchaser]

55 Fall, 513AV

With his new pouch complete it was time for Fallan to make a new needle case to complement it. Needles were not just important for his leatherworking they were an essential item out in the grasslands to make repairs not just to leatherwork such as tack and boots but also for clothing and the like. The needle case contained both needles and thread for such work and with the awl that was also contained in the pouch enabled him to make and repair almost anything in his kit or clothing.

The needles themselves were made of various materials including bone, copper and other metals though of course iron or steel were the most prized. The case worked very simply and some wore them hanging from their belts, though Fallan preferred the additional security of placing it in his pouch. The needles were inserted into a pad and that pad was pulled inside a large piece of bone and secured there so that the bone protected the needles from damage whilst plugs prevented them from being lost even if they came free from the pad.

His starting point for the project was a thigh bone from a cow, which had a suitable sized space inside of it to hold the needles. The bone was far thicker and heavier than it needed to be just to act as a container but that also suited his purpose as it meant that he would be able to carve it down to a smaller and more decorative profile.

With more imagination and as a future project he had other ideas in mind, but this would serve at least for the time being both as practice as he felt the need for it and because what he was contemplating was somewhat speculative and might not work as he wanted. So this would be simple and practical and would serve its intended purpose very well.

He marked off the bone by using the needle he had as reference, each slipped into a piece of leather that was rolled over so that a number could fit into the container. A saw would have made short work of cutting the bone to length but since Fallan did not own one and did not want to ask to borrow one, he took the longer route of marking the cut mark with his knife and then slicing down to it from the waste ends of the bone. As the sliced cuts reached down to the bottom of the cut then he’d roll the knife around the bone a few times and make the cut deeper. Bone was a little tricky to cut in this way as it was hard and the knife slipped easily on the hard surface so he made sure that he held the bone carefully even though it made the cutting a little harder, but at least it meant that when it did slip the blade did not then slice into his fingers.

With the first cut made he trimmed the edges but did not attempt to make the second cut for the remaining bone would make a useful handle for the next stage of the work.

[Fallan Windchaser]

The case that he had in mind for this would be a simple one which was slightly oval in profile so that it would not roll on a hard surface and to make this he would carefully select the most appropriate cross section of the bone which was not perfectly circular in any case. At the ends he planned to cut rings or ribs which would stand proud of the surface and which would give some grip when pulling the container closed. For the ends he intended a plug with a hole in the centre and this would be something of a challenge to create properly and for the bottom a flat plate of bone which the thong would pull up and tight to seal the bottom. Towards the bottom would be a larger indented ring carved which would allow the thong to be tied around when it was pulled into the closed position.

With the design in mind he examined the bone carefully, noting which end was wider as this would be the bottom and which profile was already the most oval in shape. The first step from there was to start by emphasising the oval nature of the bone but not to cut too deep as yet. With that roughed out and since the cut end was the wider one he worked to thin that end down to the width that he wanted the ribs to be then extended that width up the bone so that he had a flat oval band a little wider than he wanted the ribs to be then continued the oval profile at that thickness up the bone. Since the bone narrowed a little as it went up, though not by a large amount, it did mean that the bone at the top would be slightly thicker than the bone at the bottom. This he decided served two purposes as he thought it looked neater and also it gave a little more thickness where the internal plug would be so that the bone did not split.

At the top he marked where that set of ribs would be and that left the centre section which he could now start to thin down. Once more he worked carefully to ensure that a slipped knife blade would not slice into his fingers and for this the still connected bone worked well for it allowed him to tuck the end under his arm and stabilise the work. Anywhere but sitting round a fire in a tent and he might have the luxury of a wooden clamp, but even though he might be able to make such a thing here it would be too heavy and cumbersome to drag from one camp to another even loaded on a wagon. If this were his trade then it might be different, but it wasn’t and there were only so many useful things that could be owned.

With the centre section thinned down roughly he could start work on the ribs and marked the centre lines for the gaps between them and carefully pared down on those lines creating tiny valleys which he could slowly widen and deepen so that the gaps in between the valleys became a series of rolling hills. Honing his knife quickly he then marked the deeper cut for the thong and trimmed down to create the first pass of a flat bottomed groove there wide enough for a thong to be tied.

The rough and heavy carving had now been completed so it was time to now separate the case from the bone and he carefully made the cut in the same way as before.

[Fallan Windchaser]

Now that the case was separated from the bone he could at last turn it over in his fingers and decide exactly how he could finish it and make it into the case. He quickly realised that his plans for an internal pug were not going to work for the hollow inside the bone had narrowed towards the top and he doubted that he could get a plug with a leather thong through it in place. It meant some rethinking of his plans but in the end he decided that it wouldn’t matter too much. One reason he’d wanted for the plug was to help seal it, but since it would be in the pouch that shouldn’t matter too much.

With the making of it simplified somewhat he could move on and finish it quicker than he’d expected. The starting point was to finish the outside which he’d roughed out before, making finer cuts and scrapes with the blade to remove the rough knifework from before and to get the ribs looking neater. Once he was happy with the standard of the work then he decorated it by making small outlines of horses with the tip of his knife. These scratches were then deepened slightly in places and other finer lines added for shading to make a more detailed sketch. Eventually these lines if left alone would collect dirt and grease which meant that they would darken and make the design stand out. Fallan however like most of his fellows simply short cut the process by mixing some burnt charcoal from the fire with some grease and wiped that into the bone, working it into the crevices. Of course it did not just show the designs but it also showed any deficiencies with his knife work, though some of those he could then correct with some careful scraping.

He had two more items to make from bone and then it would be a change to leatherwork. Both were to be made from the remaining bone but as each were finer they required a little more care in the making. The first was the toggle to go on the bottom. Now that the case would not be sealed it meant that the toggle could be less practical and more decorative. The way that he had cut the case off meant that the remaining bone had a cone shaped end which didn’t suit his purposes and he had to trim that back to flat before he could cut off a new ring of bone. This ring which was half a finger in length he then split into half and then quarters with his knife and this gave him some bone which he could then carve into a flattened plate.

With something which was roughly flat, and he was no longer concerned about it being so, he then carved it so that it was round and then drilled into it with the point of his knife, not only so that the thong could be attached but also so that there was some pattern there.

[Fallan Windchaser]

In order to hold the thong tight he needed a slide which was a piece of bone carved into a figure of eight shape. This was made by the same process as the toggle but since it was smaller and finer still, required more careful work to create both larger and smaller circles butted up against each other which would serve to hold the end of the thong tight and hold the case closed.

Carefully wiping the case clean, he now placed the three carved bone items together and double checked how they fitted together. The slide had a slight curve to it which helped it sit flat against the case but otherwise was quite plain.

Assembly was all that was now required and this was a simple task but one that required him to dig out his leather gear and to find a suitable scrap of leather and one of cloth. The leather needed, with the cloth sewn to it, into which the needles would slide to roll and fit inside the bone whilst the end of the leather needed to narrow down and slip out of the top of the case. The toggle was sewn to the bottom of the leather and then the cloth was sewn to the shaped piece of leather. When pulled up the toggle would act to stop the leather with the needles inside the case and the top of the leather could then be tied off.

To protect the leather from fraying where it slid though the top of the case he used the knife to round out the top of the hole and then slit the slimmed down top section of the leather thong, above where the cloth was attached, into three parts which he then braided tightly, carefully ensuring that the softer inside remained on the inner part of the braid. The end of the braid he put through the larger of the circles on the slide and then through the smaller. With a knot tied in the end it now would not pull back through the hole leaving a loop of braid which could be looped around the bottom of the case in the recess carved for it.

Of course it was not quite finished, but now that he had it assembled, he could now make the final measurements on the braid and make some allowances for stretching, could make where it left the top of the case. He tied a knot in the braid as an additional security in case the toggle on the bottom were damaged. The knot would block against the inside of the bone much as his original idea of a plug would have functioned so that both knot and toggle now acted as stoppers, one at each end. He considered now that if he did this again then he could have improved it by making a leather disk to sit inside the bottom above the toggle and so seal the bottom too, but that would be something for the next time. It left him with the top section of the braid which now served mainly so that when the toggle was pulled the needles would be released from the case the braid would pull through. When it was sealed then the braid could be tied off on the base of the case or it could be looped over something, such as a belt which it could be secure.

[Taylani]

XP Award!

Fallan Windchaser:

XP Award:

• +4 Bone Carving
• +2 planning
  
• +2 leatherworking

Lore:

• Bone Carving: Careful of knife slipping on hard surface.
  

Notes:Feel free to PM me with any concerns about your grade. Don’t forget to edit/delete your grade request. Thanks!

TAYLANI