Split Handle Hafting

This is a trick I learned from the perfectly preserved Saqqaq Palaeoeskimo tools in Greenland. If you make knife handles in two halves then its relatively simple to carve out the socket.

I get the blade to fit in the socket and make sure that the join between the two halves is flush before carving down the outside of the handle.

You can see in the illustration next to the reproduction that the final step is wrapping a lashing material around and around the handle to hold the two halves together.  The Saqqaq people used baleen on their knife handles, but you could use any type of string, leather or cord.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Labrador-style Snow Knife

Whalebone snow knife reproduction.  This is a piece that I made few years ago for The Rooms.  Its based on Thule Inuit snow knives from Labrador.  I can't recall the exact dimensions, but I think it was around 16-18 inches long.  Its flat on one face and slightly convex on the other - kind of like a plane's wing in cross-section.

This is one of the knives in the collection at The Rooms that I used as a reference piece.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Sea Ice

These shots were taken along the coast of Baffin Island in June of this year.

A Lead Forming

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Beothuk Bone and Ochre Sampler

An assortment of  red ochre stained Beothuk Bone reproductions, including combs, pendants, needles and gaming pieces.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Woolly Lousewort

Woolly lousewort, Pedicularis lanata

A tiny tundra plant.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Arctic Sippy Birds

Sandhill Crane.  

They remind me of those little plastic sippy birds

They are just missing the top hats.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Baleen Plates

This is a section of baleen plates from a beached humpback whale.  These plates are about 2 feet long, but on some species of whales they can grow 5 or 6 times that length.

I pull off one plate at a time as I need them for reproductions.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast