Foraged Wall Hooks

Ok, so the post is actually about hooks for poles, and they're not on a wall, but the idea could be applied widely. I wanted easier access storage for my poles, so I'd been playing around with attaching some scraps to the back of my rolling boat rack. At first I was using some trim to support the length of the pole and hopefully reduce warpage, with mixed results. I felt like scrounging around in the scrap bin resulted in passable results for the first attempt and not so great results for the second. I was contemplating buying hooks at the hardware store.

Then I remembered seeing how branch junctions could be used for a rustic hook. Here's an example from Eric Sloane's "A Reverence for Wood", but I'd seen this done to good effect in some Adirondack cabins.


There's plenty of dead red cedar in the woods around here, so off I went. I found a few sections, split them with my Silky hatchet and froe club, smoothed the backs a bit with drawknife and spokeshave, and voila! Ideally I'd have sanded and oiled for aesthetics, but poling season is here and I needed functionality now. Hopefully I'll find time eventually to make em look nicer, but the rack is already a Frankenstein's monster and I needed the poles off the floor.


(In the last pic above, the middle pole hook was the passable scrap attempt, the bottom is the failed attempt, which I still hope to salvage when I have time, and the new top hooks are from the red cedar splits.)

My Scandinavian ancestors on my mother’s side of the family, made these hooks in the old country. They carved them with intricate designs and painted them in bright colors.
Up here where I live, we tie our vehicles up as soon as we stop, just like people did with draft animals in the horse and buggy days. We don’t tie them up to keep them from going astray, we plug them in so that the circulation heater, oil pan heater, battery blanket heater and trickle charger will allow them to start in the extreme cold. At home I have the extension cords hanging from these sturdy hooks, near the front of each vehicle.
The book ‘CELEBRATING BIRCH’ by the North House Folk School in Grand Marais Minnesota, has a chapter of the colorful ones of my ancestors and more rustic ones. My friend John Manthei’s Week in the Woods camp in conjunction with The Fairbanks Folk School has tutorial on their web site. John calls them Y knots.
Thanks Tsuga8 for reminding me to to keep my eye peeled for nicely shape limbs while harvesting firewood. These make great gifts, being hand crafted makes them extra special.

I am now inspired to forage for some crooks to hang my axes on the wall instead of standing on the floor.
Jim

My father’s 1873 Winchester rifle was hung on two crooks above the front door. My replica of a .62 caliber flintlock Northwest Indian trade gun, hangs from two boat soup oil soaked birch crooks, above the living room window.
As soon as I get my Billäs axe I will hang it outside above the main door like the Finnish people did and maybe still do, for warding off of evil trolls and other superstitions characters. Couldn’t hurt these days, might even ward off regular evil doer’s, like dog catcher’s, shyster lawyers, robo caller’s and other assorted riff-raff.

Modern technology is awesome sometimes. Sometimes the old ways are just as good or better. It's nice to find traditional practices that still work great today.

That axe might ward off the lawyers....let me know if you can get it to stop the robo-callers!

The last cabin I stayed in also had an awesome free-standing coat rack made from a whole small tree with the branches trimmed and rounded off, and a lumber base added. All sanded smooth and finished nicely, form and function. My hooks are all function and no form now, but functioning is a start.

If you bring the axe down quickly near the middle of the phone that should work. Or take the axe and head out to where there is no signal, that would work too.
Jim

Another advantage to back-country tripping.