Re: Monday
Charles identified its relative as a bill hook, a landscaping tool. The bill hook tool is a combination ax, machete, grafting knife, brush clearing, and woven fence tool used throughout Europe. They come at least from Roman times. They are magic in use if viewing someone knows how to control this six pound weapon. Actually Charles gets a very large gold star because his answer is better than mine. Fascine Knife. I�m not sure his term predates mine, but the pictures are easier to come by. CONGRATS!!!! You will find that a fascine knife is very similar in appearance and use to my answer. They may be the same thing.
The knife in my picture is known to me as a WILLOW KNIFE. It is used in the basket making craft/ industry. Until recently (1970�s) knives like these were used to harvest three year old willow shoots on farms exclusive for that purpose. They are still used to harvest willow reeds along creek beds and wetlands. When not used on 1/8� diameter reeds, at three years the willow shoots are straight with a main stem about �� and about eight feet tall. The knife is used like a heavy sickle to cleanly cut the willow about 6� from the ground after which they are collected in 1 foot diameter x seven foot tall bundles and taken elsewhere for stripping and splitting. In ancient times the bundles were planted along stream beds where they not only helped with erosion, but they rooted and formed a living barrier for the future. Bundles were also stacked and wedged in with uprights to form livestock fences.
On larger willows the knife is used for cutting roots as well as branches, and the curved pointed section is used to split the bark for stripping. The knife is also used for cleaving the root or branch to form strips wider and flatter than the round reeds. The bark is pulled back in as long a strip as possible. Rolled up and carried home. As to the tool, the back of the blade is flat and can be used as a scraper using both hands to get rid of the outer bark so that the fibrous inner bark can be gathered and woven to form very tough fibrous cordage. Willow reed is used in laundry baskets and also fishing creels. In Europe where home shopping is done daily, willow strips are formed into useful and tough grocery baskets. See pic.
Notes: American Indian women were particularly adept at getting the greatest length of bark from a tree without it running out, and as a result the length of a willow strip is one of the factors affecting price in the American Indian antique basket market.
Away from the pejorative sense, the term �underwater basket weaving� may have had some reliability as truth as willow is almost always made more flexible by submerging the willow reeds or strips in water and sometimes even working it while hands are in the water. Source: Wikipedia
A fascine (Which is supposed to denote unity by the gathering of many) with an ax in the bundle was the symbol of fascists in Italy in WWII.
Main source is Alvin Sellens: A Dictionary of American Hand Tools, pg 269 (Illustration and brief definition)
