Wednesday 30 July 2014

Fox and Geese

A few weeks ago, my wife, daughter and I travelled to Tiverton, Ontario for the Baron's Brouhaha, an SCA event put on by the canton of Northgaedham in Ramshaven. Our gracious hosts, Their Excellencies Penda and Sibylla, put on quite the event at their farm, and apart from a vicious windstorm that blew down half the tents, things went very well.

Perhaps because there was so much action packed into two days (including a modified version of Buzkashi that had armoured lords and ladies chasing each other around in pursuit of a plush sheep - just as awesome as it sounds), one of the more interesting parts (for me) of the event was nearly overlooked. The intention was to have a Fox and Geese tournament, but I think the only people who ended up playing the game there were my wife and I and one other couple.

I'd never been exposed to Fox and Geese or any of the other games in the 'Fox games' family (Halatafl, Asalto, etc). For those that have never played, the game is relatively simple. The version we played had one fox piece and 13 goose pieces. One side plays the geese, whose goal is to trap the fox so that it cannot move. The other side plays the fox, whose goal is to capture enough goose pieces (by jumping the pieces, like in checkers) that the geese can no longer effectively trap the fox.


The cross-shaped Fox and Geese board, with fox and geese arrayed in their starting positions.




The game is asymmetrical, and that's what makes it so interesting to me. When one plays as the fox, you have to move to disrupt the geese and isolate them so you can pick them off. When one plays as the geese, you have to make sure your pieces move as a single mass in cooperation, constantly supporting each other. It's easy to imagine a mob of geese chasing a cunning fox around a barnyard in this game!

Shortly after I got back from the Brouhaha, I set about making a Fox and Geese game out of leather. I patterned the board out on bristol board, including all the connecting lines.



Next, I cut a 9" x 9" square out of 3/4 oz vegetable tanned leather. Once I had this square, I took the pattern I'd laid out on the bristol board and laid it on top of the leather.

 I took my scratch awl and poked holes through the bristol board and into the leather underneath, leaving a small indentation in the leather at every line junction. Once that was done, I took a wet cloth and dampened the leather all over to prepare it for tooling.

The cased leather. It didn't take much water for such thin leather.

Once this was done, I waited a little while so that the leather was damp, not overly soaked, then began tooling.

I don't have a lot of experience in tooling or carving leather, but in this case it was pretty straightforward. All I used was a fid awl (a blunt awl used for widening lacing and stitching holes) and a ruler. It was as simple as connect the dots!


Good thing I washed behind my ears before these pics.


One thing I found was that going over a line with multiple strokes not only left a deeper impression, it burnished the leather slightly and darkened the lines better.

The tooling completed


Now, on to the pieces! These were pretty simple. I made these out of some scrap 8/9 oz veg tan so they would be thick enough to pick up easily.  I have a large, round punch that I used for the goose pieces. The punch was pretty dull and I didn't sharpen it much, but by dampening the leather a little before punching I was able to get through the leather. For the fox piece, I tried to give it the look of a stylized fox head, angular and menacing. My wife commented that it was "cute". Meh, close enough.

I dyed the fox piece with my "iron black" dye - made in a high tech fashion from specialized materials (a jug of vinegar and some steel wool). There's a bunch of names for this dye (vinegaroon is more common) and there are better recipes than steel wool and vinegar (using copperas, copper sulphate and water achieves the same thing, apparently). The way it works is the same - the iron oxide in the solution combines with the tannins in the leather and turns it black. Adding some concentrated tannins beforehand keeps the dye from sucking all the tannins out of the leather and destroying it.


The finished pieces.

Once the pieces were cut out and the leather had dried, I made a little pouch for the pieces out of some scrap kipskin. Finally, I applied some beeswax and olive oil leather finish and the rest is history.


Or at least historical.


I've played a few games since and I think I've finally got the hang of playing the geese.



All in all, this was pretty straightforward. Unlike most of my leather projects, most of my time was spent laying out, measuring and double checking, rather than handstitching. The pouch is hand-stitched, but it was small enough that it didn't take much time.


If you'd like one of these games for yourself, you can find it listed here at my Etsy shop.


Thanks for reading!

Jake Diebolt








Tuesday 22 July 2014

First Post, and Welcome to the Blog


Welcome to the Sparrowhawk Leather blog, where I'll talk about new projects, learning experiences, upcoming events I'm attending, tutorials, and anything else that's even remotely related to leatherwork.

That's right, even remotely. You've been warned! My interests wander from writing to archery to SCA and historical reenactment. Anything that's really out there will be tagged as off topic.

If you're interested, head over to my Etsy Shop to peruse the items I have for sale there already. I'll likely be making some posts about them in the future.

Thanks for reading!