Happy Birthday Scouts!

100 years ago today (2/8/1910) was the day the Boy Scouts of America was founded.

Today all of our boys went to school wearing uniforms to celebrate and talk to their friends about scouts and scouting.

This is a big year to be a Cub/Boy Scout with the Centennial and we're doing lots of fun activities to commemorate the 100 years of scouting.

B

Catastrophic Gear Failure

After posting yesterday, I went out for a hike.

I had a catastrophic failure occur and now I'm down one piece of gear. I have no doubt it'll be fixed under warranty but it's sure not working right now.

That piece of gear was my camera.

Funnily, the failure was relatively minor but in the setting and situation, it was catastrophic. The plastic housing that the tripod screws into came away from the body of the camera while I was trying to film myself "Survivorman" style.

Had that happened here in the house it would have been a minor inconvenience. Out in the woods, however, it meant the camera with the open viewer fell down, down, down into the snow and onto the frozen trail. CRASH! CRACK! POP!

I'm going to see if I can pull some video off of the memory card because I thought my dialogue was relatively entertaining and educational. Then you'll be able to judge for yourself. :)

The good news to come out of the hike is that I can start a fire with found materials, my firesteel, and my SwissTool without much effort. A small fire is all that was needed to consider the effort a success and I had that easily using dead twigs and some dry weed heads I found along the trail.

It's not really much of a challenge, the SwissTool actually has more and better tools than my Swiss Army Knife (SAK) and all the tools lock in place so there's no risk of closing a saw blade onto my fingers.

Still, empty pockets don't occur naturally in my pants...it's good to know that I can accomplish such a basic task with alternative tools and materials.

Thanks for reading,


B

Why I Do It

You may wonder why I sharpen so many of my knives so soon after receiving them.

Some of you may also put your own edge on a knife as soon as you receive it.

I finally ran out to Home Depot this morning and picked up a few supplies to speed up and finish the sharpening job on my Edmondson chopper and I'm about to head out the door to go test this new edge.

I only took it to 320 grit and then polished on a loaded strop. If the geometry is good then I'll polish it up to 600, 1500, and 2000 grit to really make it sing.

Now, WHY do I sharpen a new knife?

Because my body mechanics and muscle memory are set. I know how I sharpen a knife both at home and in the field. I can make minute adjustments to thicken an edge if needed but for the most part all my knives are sharpened to the same edge. Thicker ones will inherently be thicker because of the blade stock and the inability to lay it down as far as I'd like and thinner knives are more acute because of the thin blade.

Once I have my edge on a knife then it's easy for me to maintain going forward without too much extra effort.

Are my edges better than those of the maker? Probably not. I don't buy my knives based on which makers can sharpen the best. I'm not going to send the knife back every time I need the edge touched up (except maybe the Fehrman 3V which has yet to need anything but a stropping) so I might as well set them up the way I'm going to be able to maintain them.

When I buy a knife I'm looking at materials, design, geometry, and heat treat. A maker who can make a good design with good heat treat and good geometry is going to make a knife that will perform at a higher level. The maker's ability to sharpen just isn't that important to me.

There might be a bit of OCD involved in my desire to sharpen a brand new knife too but I'm going to go with the biomechanical argument. :)

Thanks for reading,


B

Slow and Steady

I've been working on thinning the edge on the Edmondson Chopper since Sunday night and it's going slow and steady.

My sharpening supplies have been moved and moved and moved again with the basement project so I'm left with a very small handful of equipment and nothing really suited to a blade as big as this chopper.

So, I go slow and steady trying to maintain my angles and checking and rechecking the edge. I've already raised the edge maybe half its thickness again. Murray Carter once said something to the effect of, "Thin the edge until it sustains damage during normal use and then thicken it slightly."

When I'm done, this knife should really sing. There's a clear compromise between the edge angle as received and a hair popping razor thin edge and I hope to find it.

Thanks for reading,


B

Edmondson Chopper Testing

(Click thumbnails for larger images)

Write-up coming soon...

Thanks for reading,


B

He's BACK!

Been out all day. Frozen!

Edmondson Chopper review coming soon!

Lots of pics.

Shoulders hurt. Hands all but seized up. Eyes burning. Smell like smoke.

Awesome!

B

Laying Low

I know I owe several of you an email.

We've got germs running through the house. Sarah and I came down with a wicked cold yesterday and Jake and Laura have it as of this morning. My wife is traveling and, so far, remains healthy.

I feel worse today than yesterday and have had about an hour of sleep since yesterday with all the coughing and staring at this computer screen isn't doing my head any favors.

I'll be back to you all soon.

Sorry for the delay.

Thanks for reading,


B

Night Hiking

Last night the Scout Pack went for a night hike.

We met up at Village Hall around 7pm and hiked into the woods for about an hour looking and listening. We had two rules for the boys:

1. Be quiet.
2. No flashlights.

Other than that, it was pretty much anything goes as long as you would stay with your trail buddy.

Of course, so many boys and their parents crunching through the semi-frozen snow meant that we wouldn't hear or see any nighttime wildlife but we could still make out tracks and scat by the light of the moon. Differentiating between dog (pet) and coyote was difficult because of the location alongside the trail but there was definitely some opportunity for tracking with the ground conditions.

It was icy too.

My first step out of the van was on to a sheet of ice and I had to do my best "Happy Feet" impression to keep myself upright. I managed to tweak my back a bit and spent the night last night wishing that I'd done some stretching and warming up prior to exiting the van (even though that would have been more than a little strange.)

I kept asking Jake if he wanted to ditch the rest of the Pack and head deeper into the woods to find a place to shelter overnight and he had NO interest. All he wanted was Subway, a cookie, and a fountain drink. My little outdoorsman. LOL!

Thanks for reading,


B