The bark of white birch is the traditional sheath material of Scandinavia. The method described in this chapter is a slick way to make a quickie sheath for anything: knife, scissors, chisel ...

Birch pitch, made by heating the tree’s bark until it forms a black ... for instance to stick arrow heads to their shafts or knife blades to their handles. Small lumps of pitch have been ...

In his rustic cabin in the forests of southern Finland, 87-year-old Erkki Pekkarinen carves delicate strips of birch bark with his knife, before intricately weaving them into beautiful objects.