So it seems to be one of the most important things in a test like this. Is consistency? We’ve got to have consistent wood to get accurate outcome right. How much more consistent Can we get then two rounds from the exact same tree? So let me fire up the chainsaw, We’ll cut out four rounds here, We’re going to try to splitting methods We’re going to try Working around the corners, knocking the edges off and then we’ll do the traditional p ie method.
I think this is going to give us a pretty good on answer on which one is the best bits best splitter. I Was thinking on the way down here, one of the funniest things, one of funny stories I ever heard I wanted to share with you guys all the fighting here was From some of you guys from the old days of Wrangler. Barn blog will remember my old hint, a neighbor Henry Henry was in his late 80s Early 90s Get, but he was a logger.
His whole life up on Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens up in that area Worked as a mechanic as well, and he was one of the most brilliant guys. I ever met smartest guys Mechanical genius. He never learned to read So he was telling me a story. His wife Marion they used to she used to do a lot of canning, and so she was doing this water bath canning in her kitchen, and she was Had this big metal jack.
You know the jack the game used to play where you drop the ball And you pick up the jacks. You know they kind of look like a cowl trap, those little metal things with the balls on the ends. Well, she had kind of a novelty one. It was a great big one here, several pounds and she had that in her kitchen And she would use that to wait down the jars, because when your water bath canning, You know they want to lift up.
You got to keep him down, so this Jack had been sitting in this boiling hot water for a long time. You know like half hour, so it was hot. You know hundreds of degrees. Well, She she had oven, mitts or something she would take it out And she sat it on the counter right when she set it down the counter one of Henry’s friends came by To visit and he came in and sat down at the counters, like hey, Marion How’s it going Where’s Henry at and He looked at this great big jack and he reached over.
He granted It Just come out of this boiling hot water. He reached over his bare hands, picked it up and set it back down. I looked at Marion and said: don’t take me long to look at something Told me that story. I thought that that was That I ever did here. You know he didn’t haul her or hoop or yell. I mean that’s the epitome of that’s a tough guy right. There Don’t take me long to look at. I thought that that was pretty funny here, All right.
Let’s get this sharpened up and we’ll make that last cut and we’ll get to Get this article moving along. Alright, alright, let’s bring out the first the first round. Alright, let’s talk about two radical different schools of thought right here, So first off This is this: is my go-to right here? This is the Prandial. It’s called. I call it the Bismarck because it looks to it. It reminds me of everything: It’s German, big, strong, overbuilt Powerful, lasts a long lifetime It.
This is my go-to. When all else fails It would I really get something: that’s gnarled and and big. This is my biggest heaviest sledge And there’s a lot of really cool features of this. You know you take it for granted. You most people just look at this and think oh yeah Sledge is a sledge is a sledge, but it’s not there’s so much evolution. That’s went into this Perfect example. This is rare to see this on an edge this here.
That’s for hooking, That’s having two tools in one you notice earlier. Maybe that I was using this to move those rounds around. You can use the tool to bite into there because of that little beak That sticks down and move things around very rare. You don’t see that on big box stores, You don’t see that hardly anymore, That that’s really a nice attention to detail a long taper. Look at that beautiful taper.
In this thing It’s got a long taper, so you don’t have a great big bulbous And on it that when you strike into something wet would you’ve had malls it just bounced out very frustrating. You don’t get so much of that here because of just the superior design and shape now this over here, the the Chopper one. This is a very different school of thought here. This is more of A splitting axe rather than splitting maul.
What’s the difference? Well, the handle for one you can see: it’s got a traditional style, a handle there We’ll cover that here in a minute, But a little bit faster swinging speed a little bit different concept. Of course, the the chopper one has this mechanical advantage. When, then, that’s what we’re we’re here to find out today is this going to be superior to The traditional heavy maul as he sort of wings flip out there? Is it going to below this waterway It’s going to knock it out, So that’s well find that fight.
That’s what we’re going to find out today, let’s cover the handles real quickly and then we’ll get into the test. So not only do the heads share a Completely different school of thought when it comes to splitting wood, So the handles you want to see two perfect examples of how handles should be done right here. Oh so so much this I could go on and on about this all day again to the casual observer, You’re just going to Think as a handles and handles a handle right, no man, this brandy, I I wish brandy axes were available in the States.
Instead of just a Europe because man, they are the more that I use them, you know they have become Next to grab force, Brooks my go-to axes, the ones that I keep. I access coming through my hands all the time, The ones that I’m really reluctant to give away are these. I just love them They’re, so much good to say about them. Just the handles alone would be a article look at this strong Heavy handle right here, But it what it does is it gives you that strength up here where you have a tendency to over strike.
We’ve all done that you’ll look at malls and they’re beat up right. There gives you some longevity there. It gives you a few. If you miss, you can make a few mistakes on it, not break your handle and Then it tapers down here to where your hands are going to be working into a nice comfortable, more manageable size. This is too fat. This is just right, But they don’t stop. There and here’s where the rubber meets the road and what you don’t see is it actually has a little palm Swell on it that that really helps with fatigue, and it’s it’s not typically done, because it costs more money.
You have to start with a much bigger piece of wood to end up with that, and then they I mean there’s so much this Hand. I can’t even tell you from the way It’s hung to the eye. It’s really really well done, but it’s a straight handle. So and that’s what you usually get from a mall now, this here is a Splitting axe. Now these are more popular, They were certainly more popular out west, especially There’s guys that used to split wood all the time.
Even I think, when my dad was in high school, There was some guys to have the paper mill. Young guys would work down there And that’s what they did all day. Is they split firewood for the wood boilers and he said they look like look like Mr.. Olympian, bodybuilders yeah the shoulders in the back. Imagine having a job where you split wood all the time, but they preferred a splitting axe and that may have something to do with.
It could be regional as well as The type of wood that we split, which would have been Douglas fir at that at that mill. But look at this. This is Handle perfection right here. It is got a beautiful fawns foot with a little kick on it. It has a nice curve to it. It is so good. I’ve looked at it and felt it and studied that I am going to use this as a template for future splitting axes. It’s really that good.
I mean look at that. It’s got a nice big swell at the end of it. You know if you can see that or not right. There comes down fits the hand really well beautiful. Sweeping sweeping arc really Just really works with the body. It’s I just man, I’m ranting. I could go on and on about these head, let’s split Good grief of going on about handles and go on all day. Should it’s a whole article in itself there? Okay! So I changed my mind: we’re going to We’re going to use this one piece: We’re going to Chop opposite sides, because it’s so symmetrical that I think that that’s going to give us the best best test so Plus and run out of daylight, been messing around so Long, okay, So, let’s start with the chopper one chopper one here will work on the right-hand side and then we’ll work over here on the left with the HMS Bismarck.
Okay, you ready We’re going to Just do the side chop method here, Oh Didn’t! Stick! Let’s give it two hits Three Four: Okay, five! Well, We have five right there to knock it off the side. Nice thing about it. Is it didn’t? Stick right, We don’t like sticking. That’s Creep makes us gives us a lot of extra work. Okay, now the Bismark. Try to do a hit in the same place here, Both those split in the same okay.
Let’s move the camera and they’ll work. Don’t hit these two side. I guess we could do it right here. It’s a little bit tall for me, this chopping block, but That’s alright, We’ll make it work. Hopefully we’re going to focus okay, so we’ll do the right here With the chopper one. Oh man, that was a good! Oh Yeah! That’s two: oh, if I would have hit it that would have been the third one would have knocked that off there, That was User error.
Oh man, the pressures on pressures on for the Bismark Got the same piece of wood, pretty consistent here. Oh, that was a good one, felt the crack. Oh again, the same thing I’ll back up a little bit okay, so we got three again three again, So you remember, we talked about the fibrous Fibrous. I wonder if that would have that Chopper would have knocked that one off if I would hit it right. Okay, Now We got two more splits here.
Can this? Can we do it in one with the chopper one? Here we go. Oh Yeah, look at it blasted apart, no fibres remaining. Alright, That’s pretty good we’re were we were on the top there yeah right there Will the Bismark Will let chop And one here, Oh Even with more authority, if I had to admit it, Okay. So, let’s do a quick: Let’s do the pie method. I’d say that was a push That was a push Man. Is there anything better then out in the forest, splitting Doug Fir In the cold autumn day 27 degrees.
Today, Okay, now We’ll try the pie method, We’ll see what happens, who comes out on top and I’ll, give you my conclusions here, I’m forming opinions right now So last time we did the slabbing method right, where we take it and knock the four corners off and Then usually one billet left in the middle, you can split it We’re going to do the traditional way, the pie method, this time and I’ll just I brought you a little bit closer And then we’ll alternate.
So, let’s start with a chopper one, We’ll see how many times It’s going to take the split here so ready. Okay, one two, Three, Four: Five! Oh! I missed six, Seven, eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven twelve thirteen Fifteen. Sixteen come on It’s complete split over here. I would, of course I would have moved around with the split, but I wanted to see if I could split it. I Lost track We’re going to we’re in it now come on, come on Getting personal.
What was going on there? It wasn’t any there’s no nod or anything there really Man that that was not very good. All right, That’s well another one on See what the Bismarck can do, man How to get you out, Get you in shape. So this is Actually the Bismarck set a bit of a disadvantage here, because this one’s even bigger This one’s, even bigger, We’ll see we’ll see what happens same tree. These two were connected to each other side.
Whoo All right, I don’t know how how scientific this is. Let’s just We’ll get others a knot right there. There wasn’t a knot. There wasn’t a knot with the chopper one well come on with German power they can overcome. Oh, I feel solid one, two Three, We might be here for a while I’ll. Let you guys can’t worry about All you hardwood guys. Tell me all the time how easy this stuff is to split. We work for our Steel Whoo.
That’s a heavy Malda split! I just wait. We got a crack, that’s it! It’s Curtains now matter time. Oh Yeah! I love it, love it CrossFit CrossFit. Does it counter if I pry it apart, We keep at it We’re not going to give up Yeah Come on one more All right. I wasn’t Counting give me a Give me the count in the comments. Man. I think I need to get out and chop some more wood all right. So, let’s wrap it up with my conclusions, All right friends, So I Wanted somebody go go back and if you can reread that put the comments, how many well, how many swings did it take for each one? I Guess is that definitive, but it was a tie on the first one.
It was probably pretty close to a tie on the second one, so it’s all going to come down to user experience. How about that user experience because they’re, obviously they both work. I have to say That I do feel a little bit of I don’t know if I’d call it pain or discomfort In my hands from the mechanical motion of the vibration coming from those jaws slapping up Transferring through the handle. Even though There’s a good hickory looks like a Hickory handle my hands, They hurt a little bit.
I don’t. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just soft, but I don’t think that it would be of wise or a guy would really want to. If you were say one of those guys back in the 60s that split wood for a living, If you’d want to swing this all day, you know I don’t know – I haven’t done it, But I kind of feel like that may could be a problem. Now is that going to be an issue for the rest of us who, you know maybe go out and split wood for 3-4 hours in the Morning or until lunch not probably not, but it could be.
I don’t remember, I split a lot of wood and I don’t remember feeling that that pain in my hands and I think That it’s a direct directly to that. I knew it now. I know when I went into the wood I could kind of jarred me. It’s kind of that’s kind of uncomfortable, So I’d say that that was a downside. It there’s no such thing as magic. Of course We knew that, but I can pretty much say From my experience so far that it’s not a toy.
It is not a toy, and – and – and this is This is a one specific Type of wood – will it work better with maple or with beech or with oak or Hickory. You know, I don’t know that’s up to you. Would I recommend it over something? Like the Bismarck, No, I don’t. I don’t think so. I don’t dislike it at all, but that that pain From the vibration is a big problem for me, even though I do like a lot about it, but you’re going to have some added maintenance issues there Possibility these things breaking.
I just don’t know I I just haven’t seen an advantage that would overcome The kind of the hand pain factor over the ee old Bismarck right here. This is a good one right here. That’s That’s pretty hard to beat a little easier to swing this one. This was a little bit lighter, But I think that’s enough. I think we you draw your own conclusion, so appreciate the Appreciate you guys taking the time to read.
If you don’t mind, take a moment. Click the thumbs up, I’m working hard out here for you guys, So it’s what you could do to way. You could say thank you. It helps the blog out and so another article I wanted to do that. I thought we maybe will do real quick, while I’m out here is Maybe test the Bismarck up against a wedge after wedges I’ve got two style wedges I got the prandtl’s Versus the regular wedge And I’ve always been curious to see.
Is it? Is there an advantage which one would be better Which which is going to be faster and more efficient? So if you’d like to see that, let me know in the comments – and we can I’m going in it’s going to be suppertime here But come back out tomorrow and do it. So thanks for reading and we’ll see you guys on the next article
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Se obrací na sociální sítě jako, je Instagram Facebook YouTube aby, začali cestovat, My jsme ale, začali cestovat bez použití, jediného z, těchto online nástrojů, Můžeš být normální osoba nikoliv hvězda na socální síti, a vydělávat peníze na cestách Když jsem opustila, domov, tak, jsem, začala cestovat na plný; Úvazek ale za cenu pracování 24/7 Vedla jsem tůry v, Africe a byla to úžasná zkušenost Všechny moje výdaje byly pokryty, a měla jsem možnost vidět, hodně z, tohoto kontinentu, Byla to úžasná příležitost ale, měla, jsem, daleko, méně, svobody, než, jako, digitální, nomád, Laďa, přistoupil k, příjmu a Cestování naprosto jinak On cíleně vyhledával, práce, v, různých odvětvích v, zahraničí, o kterých se chtěl víc naučit, a takhle se vystavil velkému množství řemesel, a komunit Rotoval práci, a cestování což není ideální protože jsi pořád, uvězněný v, práci aby, sis, pokryl, další, výlet, Jak, si tohle uvědomil; Tak začal pracovat na online videjích, o všem spojeném s, focením Jako, Photoshop retušování, a následně, je začal prodávat na jeho webu Tohle, mu, dalo, daleko, větší, svobodu, cestovat, Jakmile jsme se rozhodli žít, spolu, život, v, dodávce pro nás byl nejlepší kompromis, pro levné snadné, a mezinárodní cestování Dále se soustředíme na práce které můžeme, dělat z, našich laptopů, My aktuálně žijeme, a cestujeme v naší vyrobené dodávce takže naše životní náklady jako, páru, jsou, někde, okolo $ 1200 USD Život v, dodávce umožňuje snadný, a praktický způsob cestování, Plus můžeme zůstat komfortní produktivní, a udržet náklady Nízko Pro pokrytí našich nákladů na cestách, pracuji 15 hodin týdně vyučováním angličtiny na internetu Mám placeno zhruba $ 22 na hodinu, a firma pro kterou pracuji se jmenuje GoGoKid studenti jsou z, Číny, a my article, chatujeme přes online systém firmy Tahle práce mi umožňuje tvořit, si svůj Vlastní rozvrh což, je zásadní když cestujeme Takže jak to funguje že si buď mám několik dní volna, a nebo si vezmu víc hodin jestliže chci mít větší výplatu Pro přístup na internet si kupuji lokální sim karty, a naplním je daty, Je to překvapivě velice levné když, si Kupuji turistické balíčky Vytvořím si v telefonu hotspot přímo do laptopu a použiju, auto jako pojízdnou kancelář Připojení, je dostatečně silné s 4G nebo LTE abych mohla mít, tyto, konverzace, živě, Je to opravdu ideální mít, možnost, být, v, pohybu zaparkovat pracovat, a pokračovat v, našem týdnu Kvalifikovat.
Se pro tuto práci musíš být, buď z, Kanady, nebo, USA, Musíš taky, mít 4 roky na vysoké škole Nemusí to být pedagogická ale, zkušenost, je pro ně důležitá takže tě ocení vyšší hodinovou mzdou Pohovor, je docela rychlý, a dostaneš všechny podklady potřebné pro výuku Pro mě tohle Není cílová práce ale, spíše, přechodná, Rozhodně, je ale, velkým požehnáním, a pokrývá nám náklady už delší dobu Pracuji pro GoGoKid už asi rok, a jeden z, nejlepších aspektů, je neuvěřitelný kompromis života, a práce Umožnila nám mít tato cestovní dobrodružství, a hodně času na relaxaci, a cenu obětování Pouze 15 hodin týdně práci Jestli máš zájem pracovat pro GoGoKid nebo se, o tom více dozvědět napiš mi zprávu na Instagram @ curlyhaircamping, a já ti dám všechny informace, o kterých vím včetně celého přehledu, o průběhu pohovoru Nechám, můj, kód, můj, referenční, kód, dole v, popisu videa, Včetně referenčního odkazu Vždy preferují lidi na pohovory kteří byli doporučeni Teď, když, máme, hlavní, náklady pokryty se můžeme věnovat odvětví, pro které máme, největší vášeň, Pro nás to vždy bylo focení videa, a vzdělávání Tenhle životní styl nás určitě inspiroval, a motivoval, a my ho chceme sdílet s.
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My si na YouTube nevyděláváme na živobytí ale rozhodně to je krásná pomoc takže prosím nepřeskakujte reklamy na našem kanálu odměňuje nás to za dobře provedenou práci Dlouhodobé cestování bude pouze fungovat jestli si to budeš přát, Je nepřeberné množství možností jak online; tak, v, zahraničí a není to Pouze digitální marketing, Ať už pracuješ pro sebe ostatní nebo od obou trochu buď kreativní, a uvidíš svět v, krátké době Moc díky za sledování Jestli máš zájem, zjistit, kde, právě parkujeme, a něco více, o životě v, dodávce ujisti se že mě budeš sledovat na Instagramu, pod jménem, Curlyhaircamping Jestli chceš vidět zákulicí videí jako, je tohle focení, a elektrických kolech; tak sleduj Laďu jako Panorama_mann Jestli, máš, navíc, nějaký extra čas, tak mrkni na nějaká další videa na našem kanálu Díky, moc, za, sledování, uvidíme, se, v, dalším, videu,
Have you seen these? These are not my Michael Jackson, Thriller gloves these are level-5 cut proof gloves, but can they protect a cut from an axe? These gloves are really bizarre and I really felt I don’t know what makes him makes him to work so well. But when I received them, I thought that they were going to be some sort of a metal fiber in their. You know like maybe like medieval chainmail type of thing, but they’re, not that at all.
I got a magnet on here and there’s something else in there. I don’t know what it is these, according to the advert or level 5, which was according to them the highest level of protection, and they claim that they are entirely cut proof. I can’t help, but thinking that ona in the gang from the novel, Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle, if you haven’t read it to must read, probably, would have really liked to have a pair of gloves like these back in their the Meatpacking days, but interesting, interesting things.
So I thought we’d do a little fun test today and we’ll start we’ll start escalating and see how tough these these things are. We’ll start with a knife we’ll try some big industrial shears. I wonder how they do on a small saw and then we’ll finish off with the axe test and see if we can chop them without my hands in them. Thank you very much all right. So, let’s, let’s take one off, I don’t have that much faith in them to be honest with you and see if we can, with all my strength, lop off a finger with this bench, made crazy stuff what man can devise.
I find this hard to believe that I can’t, with all my pressure, lop off a finger of these nice clothes. Well, there yeah that’s so lame. I was expecting so much more. I was expecting a challenge there, but that doesn’t work at all. So I’m assuming that you want there having some flexibility in them. You know with the human flesh, is going to be I’m not about to cut my hand with those things on there.
Okay, I have to say that that is not at all very cut proof. All right, so, let’s switch it so it don’t fit to this year’s all right. Let’s see, can we you know that is offering certainly a bit more of a challenge there IKEA’s okay, so I said well, no, I can’t I cannot cut this with the shears. I’ve got a little bit of a bration right there, but no, I can’t you know if, like maybe if I could pull them tight a little bit.
Let’s try that pull a little trip pressure on there. No I’d say: you’re safe. If you’re using your big upholstery shears, you can probably not lose any sleep at night, but if you’re using a bench made, beware certainly be aware of that. Okay, so let’s see, can you say it? Let’s stretch it over here, can you saw, will a saw Taron? I would imagine the saws going to I’m going to really tear this up. It’s going to snag, pulled some tension on there and see.
Can you see that see if it okay, sorry, I was out of frame there. Let’s take a look and see how how well it does with the saw so the saw will be using here is the it’s actually, the pretty nice bahco laplander, no silky, but it doesn’t reflect the silky price either. A pretty good saw, not everything they think is bad okay, so we are sawing and I have to say, that’s pretty durable stuff. That’s really amazing! Isn’t it whatever that weave is I’d like to know what’s in that to make it so tough man? I wouldn’t think I couldn’t think of a fabric alive that could withstand a sawtooth like that much pressure on it.
Well, you can eventually get it starting to break down. You could eventually get through it, but oh look at that. Another character mark on that. My favorite axe, that’s the new handle okay. Well, I I would say that it is not saw proof but you’re going to take some work to get through it. It’s certainly not bench made proof. I can’t they believe that is that wasn’t really that easy to cut through.
Let’s see, let’s do that again: hmm! Well we’re going to have a nice set of fishing gloves here before we’re done with that all right, let’s see it’s, it stands up to the axe. Blade, if I’m going to be completely honest, that I do not have a whole lot of faith in this right here. So what we have here is we’ve got the grand forest Brooks small forest axe, viciously sharp, very, very sharp and we’re going to do a test and we’re going to find out here.
If it is indeed cut proof, it is not no surprise there try one more time a little bit harder see what happens yeah. You know I mean it. Does it’s somewhat resistant, but it’s not cut proof. Can we cut through the handle all the way there with a few chops? Let’s see one two three yep, definitely not axe proof, but it’s tough whatever that stuff is. It is very tough. You can’t Holly tear it. I don’t know what that is it Kevlar.
I mean that is so tough, that’s stuff, very interesting. Okay, let’s, let’s go to our conclusion. So what’s my conclusion of the level five cut proof glove? Well, I think we we definitely pushed it outside of its design specification. However, I think what it’s intended for, of course, is just this type of cutting. You know I mean if I take the glove here and I go across it, and this knife is razor razor sharp.
It’s going to protect me. So if I’m, I don’t know cutting meat, maybe I’m processing you deer or an elk. You know something like this. It’s kind of definitely seems like it protects you from any sort of a cut, but when you get really start pushing and pressure down there and put it against a hard surface, you know there’s no such thing as a miracle, and I knew that I probably I Knew exactly what these things were going to be, but I thought it was kind of an interesting test.
Another thing that they do not test against this is any sort of a penetration or poking. The fibers do spread and they’ll go right through there, but when you the knife’s edge is held up is distributed over all of the fibers, then it seems to offer plenty of cut protection. It is very disconcerting I’ll tell you just those pictures are grabbing a knife. Like that are, are bad might be pretty good in a medieval.
Would it work in a sword fight, you know those guys at catching the sword. I don’t know I don’t know, I guess it’d be better than nothing, but that’s it. That’s my review of the level 5 cut proof gloves and we’ll see you guys on the next article.
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What I wanted to do today was continue in our article series. We talked about yesterday, my humble opinion on knives, and I want to talk a little bit more and expand on some of those things that we talked about. Yesterday and show you some techniques and also again talk about some nonno’s for knife use. One of the things that we talked about a lot yesterday was using a baton with your knife, and basically, a baton is just a piece of hardwood and again I, like mine, you know about arm length from my armpit out to you, where the crook of my Wrist is, and it needs to be made out of a piece of hard wood that you can make contact with the back of your knife to create a better cutting tool out of your knife and give it more force.
If you don’t have an axe and you need to cut something that you can’t just push your knife through. Obviously you don’t want to chop with that knife, and we talked about that. So this becomes the thing that you swing and the knife becomes a solid point of contact that becomes a blade for cutting. So this is an extension of your knife. If you don’t have an axe now, if you have a saw, you may still need to baton.
But if you have an axe, you have no need for either. The problem is you’re not always going to have an axe in every situation and that’s why you need to learn or understand the limitations and capabilities of baton in your knife. So we can use any sized knife from the TLC that we talked about yesterday. All the way up to and including, like the Pathfinder Scout, with a big six-inch blade to baton, we can use the mores if we have to.
But again I tend to stay away from baton knives that are not full tang for fear that they may break at the rat tail and you may go for years without ever breaking a rat tail tang knife, but the time you need it. The most is usually when your equipment fails and I’m not going to take that chance and that’s what we talked about full tang knives. So what we’re going to talk about today is a little bit of do’s and don’ts with your knife, how to use your knife properly with a baton, how to not use your knife properly.
Obviously we talked about you never use your knife to swing like in hacks, because it’s very uncontrolled, it’s very unsafe and it doesn’t take maximum advantage of that blade. I can take a lot more advantage of that blade as a cutting surface by using it with a baton, then I can ever take by sewing it with my hand. The other thing I would never do with my knife is tie it to the end of the stick and make a spear, and I had a couple questions about that.
I’ve had people ask me about that before. Why don’t the knives that I use have the ability to be bolted on to something else as a spear? Well, if your knife is your only tool, why would you want to attach it to a stick? It could possibly come off of and now you’ve lost. Your only tool goes back to my same mentality of throwing knives. Why would I ever want to throw a knife and throw away the only tool that I have? I would never do that.
So I’m not going to use it for a spear at the same time by swinging it as something like an axe. I take a chance on doing damage to that knife for damage to myself. That’s unnecessary. If I can better control the way that knife cuts by using a baton and that’s what we’re going to talk about a lot today, stay with me guys, okay, so what I have in front of me is: I have a hickory sapling and this sapling is about Three inches in diameter at the bottom.
It would be something that I may use for a ridgepole or a construction portion of my shelter. If I were having to build something primitive, it’s a pretty tall tree, it’s probably over 20 feet tall. It’s got a lot of limbs on it. It’s got like I said about a three inch base. So let’s talk about how we would use our knife to process this tree depending on what we’re trying to do. Okay, so the first thing I’m going to do is I’m going to bend this tree over and decide how much of this tree? I don’t need because I’m not going to need the top of this tree for my shelter, although I may use the branches and things like that.
That’s why we’re going to limit, but I’m not going to use the top most crooked portion of this for a construction element, my shelter, so I need to get rid of part of it. Okay, so, as I said, we’re going to have to limb this tree, someone there’s no reason for us to use our knife necessarily unless we have to. If I’ve got a baton already, I can probably beat on many of those limbs off of there by striking against them and down and just pull them off.
If they don’t come off. That way, then I’ll use my knife with the baton, but I want to save that knife as much as I can first remember that in a situation where you are truly stuck down to one tool and that tool is your cutting blade, it’s your most important asset. So the least you have to use it the better off. You are okay, so I’ve got the one here that doesn’t want to come off. What I’m going to do is I’m going to straddle this tree and I’m just going to cut it off with my knife.
The best way for me to effectively do that now that I’ve got it ripped down, is just to put my knife on top of it and hit down just like that and cut it off now. If I’ve got an area where I can’t get the limb off for some reason with my baton, then I will choose to baton my knife through that limb and we’ll talk about that next. Okay. So if I have a limb like this one and this one would come off just by smacking it with this baton, but for sake of this demonstration, we’re going to use our knife, what I’m going to do is I’m going to put my knife in the crotch Of that limb, just like this going down the tree, I’m going to use this area of my knife and again the majority of what you do is going to be used is going to be using this portion of your blade.
So I’m going to get that thing as close to the bottom, as I can and just cut it straight off, just like that with my knife. If I get to that point, I’m good it didn’t take, but a couple of small taps to get that done, and I wasn’t swinging and flailing my knife around like some kind of an axe and that’s the point. Okay, now we’re to the point where we’re going to take the top out of this tree. The best way for us to do that is to bend the top in toward us and push down what that does.
Is that put stress on the bend right here once we’ve got that Bend stressed, we can then safely cut it and as long as we’re standing on it, it’s going to flip out of our way. So we’re just going to take our knife and push down in toward the material just like this and we’re just beaver chewing in just like this, with our knife and sooner or later, even on a live hickory we’re going to get that off of there.
Now we have no top on this tree. All we have is this point. I want to get to add a little less dangerous and just round it off a little bit and then we’ll let the tree go back up. Okay. This is a very good example. This live hickory that were working on right now is a very good example of something that you would use for a spring poll you’re going to have to get rid of all the foliage on this tree, because it’s going to cause resistance when it tries to spring Upward, but a sapling like this – that’s nice and big nice and tall.
This thing’s still like 15 feet tall and has a lot of pressure on it. That’s what you’re going to have to have if you’re going to try to do primitive trapping, because something like this will lift an animal off the ground. Remember if you’re, using primitive methods to trap with you’ve got to get that animal off the ground. Something like this will do it, so that’s a very good technique to take the top out of a tree take a few, the branches off of the tree of the sapling, so that you can then use that for a spring Pole.
Okay, so again, this is our pole at present right here. This is a heavy-duty pole. I’m going to pull this thing down and let’s string up one more time on you about where it would be if it were a trap, spring device, and you can see how heavy due to that piece of hickory is. That makes a great spring pole you’re going to need something the size of that if you plan to do primitive trapping okay. So let’s look at this pole as if we’ve decided, we need to take the whole thing with us now.
Maybe we’re going to use this as a structural pole for a shelter or a travois or some type of a device for dragging someone out of the woods if we needed it like a like a mature of some kind that we can drag like a trip away Or we’re going to use this whole thing for a spring poll, but we didn’t happen to get lucky enough that this great spring poll was right by where we want to set our trap. So we got to take this with us to jam it somewhere else.
In a log jam or bury it partially in the ground or lever it somehow so that it will work the way we want it to work at any rate, when we cut this down, we don’t want to leave. You know a three-foot stump sticking up out here. That’s going to be a killing device if somebody trips on okay, all we’re going to do with this tree is we’re going to pull our knife out. So I figure out which side of the tree I need to get on for you guys to see this.
The best we’re going to come down at a low level of the tree and we’re going to cut ourselves a v-notch in this tree a little bit of an angle. And I want to cut that in there. With the belly of my knife, or just behind the belly, and then I want to come in cut that notch out just like that and if I’ve gotten myself half way through the tree. At that point, I should be able to bend this sapling over and it should break.
If that doesn’t happen, then I’m just going to move over a little bit and I’m going to cut a bigger chunk out off to one side, just like this again trying to go half way through the tree trying to control this. Let you guys see it at the same time a little bit sure, but that’s okay! Now it’s going to come straight over now. I can take my knife and shear it off just like this, and if I get some stubborn bark I’ll just run that over the top and go straight down on it and now that tree is ready to go.
I just beaver tune around it until I could push it over and then chopped it off, get it all with my baton, the first two-thirds of my knife and never had to swing anything except this, which is much more controllable and less sharp than swinging this. Okay. So, let’s take a smaller tree in this example, is something that we’re going to harvest. We’ve got a triple triples coming out of the ground right here.
All we’re going to do is bend this down and find our Bend and then we’re going to be virtual with our knife. If we don’t have a big enough knife that we can beat on it, oh we’re a little bit leery of batana our knife. We can always be virtue this thing down and I’m going to show you how to do that right now. Okay, so maybe the knife that we have is not optimal for batani, but it’s still plenty sharp.
Well, that’s just going to dictate to us what size trees. We can pick on a little bit, but we can still get the job done. We just need to figure out where this tree is flexing. You can see it flexing right there and that’s what we’re going to use our knife we’re going to take advantage of that Bend and we’re going to start to cut into that Bend. Just like this, you see how that just bent right over and busted with just a couple of cuts once I’ve done, that I can be virtu my way back around until I cut that completely out.
Just like that. Okay, again we’ll go back to our small knife for a minute and say that we want to process this down to a certain length, we’re going to use it for a tripod stand. Whatever the case may be, we can’t sit here and hack on this thing. For a half an hour with our knife trying to chop it, or we can just take our baton and make a V cut in here over halfway through on this side, turn it over and do exactly the same thing on the backside.
Having problems getting to lay the way I want to house it in top it first, that’s okay, another advantage to topping the tree beforehand is easier to control, and then you can see. I just cut that to length with two cuts very easily snap that off and that things cut to length I didn’t have to swing my knife. All I had to do is very controlled and use my baton very simple, okay, well we’re sitting here with this.
Stick in her hand, let’s talk about another reason or another way that we can use our knife. Now that we know we have a ninety degree spine on that knife again, we’ll go back in a smaller knife, the trap line, companion and if I want to process this thing, maybe this is a dead limb and I want to process this bark for use. As a tinder bundle, I can’t scrape the bark with my knife just like this on the back side, or I want to just remove the bark down to the inner bark or down to the sapwood.
I can do that very easy. With the back of this knife – and I don’t have to sacrifice my blade to try to do things like the bark removal – I can do that with the spine of my knife just like this, and you can see how good that 90 degree spine removes that bark. If I want fine shavings, I can get those as well, and this will work the same way for dead wood as it does for green wood. That 90 degree spine allows me to get very, very fine shavings if I need them, and that is exactly what happens with your ferrocerium rod when you scrape it you’re, taking those fine shavings of magnesium and other materials and removing them, and they spontaneously combust with oxygen And ignite, and one of the things I was talking about yesterday in my article, was about not worrying about carrying a downes bar because you wear out the mat, the mag board.
You wear out the Ferro rod long before you’re, going to wear out the magnesium and what a lot of people don’t understand is because these rods have so much magnesium in them. You can’t always just scrape the rod to get a pile of shavings and those shavings are going to be highly combustible. You just got to be careful about it, so that you’re not creating spark and then you’re going to get the same thing you get with magnesium.
So I wouldn’t carry the downes bar because it has magnesium on. I just care extra feral rod, okay, so real quick. Let’s talk about “’but awning wood as far as processing firewood goes now. This log is about four inches in diameter. If I have a saw, I can cut those logs, but I’m going to be here all day trying to do this. So it’s a lot easier for me to baton this. If I don’t have an axe, if I have an axe, I can forego all of that.
But I don’t have an axe because I’m down to you know I just carried a saw and a knife because that’s all I thought I was going to need or all I have is you know well I’ve got then I may have to beat on wood and That’s all there is to it, so there are ways that you can beat on logs like this properly and there’s ways to do it, I’m properly or unsafely, and one thing that I want you remember is like I said this is a four inch diameter long and That is one of the reasons for the length of this knife.
Okay, and this is about a five inch log. Actually, so there’s barely any stick out on the edge of this log. So when I get this knife down into here that this log hasn’t split for some reason, I still have something to hit with my baton. Besides the back of my knife or the back of my hand, that’s the reason for that blade length. If I have a four inch blade and I’ve got a vlog, this big once I get down to the center of it now I’m either banging on the back of my hand or I’m banging on the handle, and I don’t want to do that.
So that’s another reason for the five to six inch blade length, because a four inch log is good fuel size. It’s also good size for shelter, building material. You should never have to process anything bigger than four inches in diameter in a woodland emergency or a wilderness emergency scenario. You should never have to process anything bigger than that, so big choppers and things like that in eastern Willa’s aren’t necessary.
You really don’t need them. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to lay our knife on the log and I like to split the center first and you want to you: don’t ever want to do this, you don’t want the belly of your knife or the point of your knife. Going into this piece of wood remember that this area is going to be used for skinning tasks, find carving tasks and all of those types of things, and it’s also the hardest to resharpen that area in the field.
That’s important thing to remember that some people, don’t realize, is a straight long flat like this is much easier to resharpen than a curved edge right here, even in a controlled environment. That’s the part that most people have struggle with. So in the woods it’s really going to be a problem, so I need to conserve that area of my blade, the best I can so I’m going to push my knife, no matter how big my log is all the way to the edge of that blade.
Now this one just happens to be wide enough. Then it’s going to take up some of that area. I don’t want to use, but I have no choice in that with this long. If I had a choice I wouldn’t be doing it, then I’m going to get I’m going to hold back on the handle a little bit to make sure my hands completely out of the way and I’m going to take a seating tap. I’m going to make sure that knife is seated in there very well, then I’m going to take a harder smack if my knife gets cockeyed I’ll, move off to the side a little bit and continue now you can see I’ve went down through this log and it Did not split it completely out.
Part of that is blade, grind issue. If this was a Scandinavian, grinder or a wedge shape, it would split this much butter. This is a flat grind, which is a narrow. It’s a full flat grind, which is a narrow wedge, not near as good for splitting wood, much better for processing meat and game again trade off. If I had the Pathfinder knife in this thing, it would have split wide open. So now I’m at the mercy of smacking on this tip, but if this tip wasn’t here, what would I do? I need there to be swinging this down to try to bust it and flail around my knife, or I’d have to try to pry it out of there start over again, alright be smacking back here on my handles so by having that little blade length out there, I was able to effectively split that log open.
If I quarter this, that’s going to be more than enough for fuel, that’s going to be enough! Cutting down of that material to make fuel! This is long burning fuel. If it’s hard wood, that’s going to burn a lot faster. If I’m trying to make fire material for starting my fire like a kindling pile, then I’m going to have to split this down considerably more because kindling to me is something the size of a pencil or less.
So now I’m going to have to split that down again into eights. Then I’m going to have to drop down and split it into 16 crossways. Then I’m going to have to split that down into 30 seconds. I don’t have to get out of control with this. These pieces here are going to be good kindling. That’s an important thing to understand, especially if you’re in a wet weather situation you can’t find dry material oftentimes breaking inside a log is going to give you the driest material.
Now you could choose to go down. One step further with this: no problem, if you were really in wet conditions, you want to insure yourself a lot of surface area. You could split that down it’s a little bit more to stuff like this and that’s going to be more highly combustible. Now, if I were really really worried about my fire and I had really extremely wet conditions, then I might take a stick: the size of this one that was going to be kindling, and I might take that and use that to make a feather stick and again, I’m just using my thumb for a guide here.
This is hard wood, so it’s not going to shave down near as well as a piece of soft wood, wood, soft wood wood, but I can still get their surface area increased dramatically by putting some fine shavings around this piece of wood. Just like that, I knock them off. They don’t do me a whole lot of good. I really need to stay on their partner. That’s a function of this wood being dry, but these kernels are going to give me increased surface area for the flames and again you know this is a pretty good sized knife.
This is no Maura. This is a big butchering knife that we’re using, but it’ll get the job done, not as well as a Maura, but it’ll definitely get the job done and that’s what counts. Okay, folks! Well, I hope you enjoyed this article today a little bit more about knives. My thoughts on knives, what you can do with your knife, if you got the right skill level, how to use your knife to process different types of wood, and things like that, you may need to do in the woods and the safest way to do that.
I appreciate your time your support, your views, everything you for me for my school and for my family I’ll be back to another article. Soon, as I can, thanks guys, you
Knives and daggers are awesome! Plain and simple, right? Let me say, I enjoy my dagger collection with a little music playing in the background.
Tell you what as an amateur, Forester and tool aficionado, I have come to love silky sauce. I just absolutely adore them the quality, the value that you get and just the incredible cutting potential of these things. Now, if you haven’t used, the silky saw well you’re in for a treat they’re, just they’re head and shoulders, above all the other ones that you have at your ace and your hardware store you even the Coronas, and all of that I mean they all look very Similar but the Devils in the details and the guys it’s silky, get these things right now.
What I have here are two extremely different saws. Now, what’s the application for these, you know what would what is what am I using them for? Well, we have a large piece of property. Forestry is a big portion of it, and what I have found is that these saws are so good that you don’t. I just rarely use a chainsaw in limbing type of operations. You know operations limbing, forest clearing, that sort of thing, wildland, prevention, they’re, so good, and the experience is so much better with the saw, especially when it’s hot, we don’t have the face shield.
We don’t have the hardhat, we don’t have the the chaps, the safety equipment, the earring preparing protection, the gas, the oil, the bar the expense, the noise on and on and on sometimes a handsaw is the better way to go now. My first silky that I bought was this one of the folding sauce, and this is the big boy, and I thought oh man, the bigger the better right. Of course a bigger saw is going to cut better, but I have not found that to be very good.
I don’t think that these big silkies like this, I I think I think that they’re they’re kind of they, don’t I don’t like them. How about that? I don’t I don’t like them. I think that they’re too big for the very reason is when you’re, cutting and working you need to have two hands right and this the ER goes on this and the way it’s designed and how big it is. You cannot with unless you’re Superman or The Incredible Hulk.
You can’t put a lot of tip pressure on the saw with the hand, it’s not very comfortable to hold. It’s definitely made for two hands. Well, I don’t typically want to cut two hands. Usually, I need to hold a branch but to have one hand to keep it from pinching and the other hand I want to cut with. I find myself getting very tired with this saw. I you knowing you when you have something in your mind.
You think this Sookie big boy, the mm, you know I’m a big boy and I need a big boy saw. This is going to be the best. But what I keep finding is, I start off with it and I end up not using it and no one wants to use it because it’s just too darn big, too darn big and too difficult to cut with you can’t get the pressure on it. Now, if you’re, the guy, that’s out there going to be cutting with two hands all the time? Well, maybe that’s for you go for it, but what we’re going to try today is – I just ordered this up.
This is the smallest one. This is the pocket boy and we’ll see if indeed this may be, a better cutter for the particular application, we’re talking about right there and then we’ll wrap it up. The folding saws are very nice because well the very reason that they fold they that you can poke them in a back pocket. These are sharp. You can’t put those in a pocket. You can’t work with them without a sheath, they’re kind of dangerous, and a lot of applications are not great this one here, but my plan is for it when it’s not being used in forestry is to I’ll carry this my dirt bike bag to cut any branches Or things out of the way and nice to have a folding saw you do not want a big open saw bouncing around in your backpack, so be careful when you’re buying these saws.
Also they come in three different teeth configurations. I made the mistake the first time I order one of these. I didn’t look closely at it and I bought one that had five teeth and the teeth were super fine. They were like grafting, a you know, landscape type of guy. You know he wanted to mr. Miyagi mr. Mr. Miyagi type of type of saw not good for her for fast cutting and for rough cutting in forest clearing.
So I sent that one back and I got not too even the media one about this super aggressive one. The one that has the big gnarly teeth it they’re, not that much different than the big one or the big boy either it has the big gnarly teeth as well feature that I’ve never really understood on this is that you can it’s got two positions. You can hyper kind of hyper extend the blade there. I you know what to be honest with you.
I haven’t really found it that useful it’s actually counterintuitive. I like to have a saw. That’s got even more curve than this, especially radius like this, because when you’re cutting overhead it helps to get the top of the branch cut these this design. The shape here is not super good for long reaching and cutting overhead. So enough talk, let’s take this over to a branch and see one-handed if the big boy or the pocket boy can keep up with the big boy.
So let’s see what’s what here, so we’ve got a a ponderosa pine here. This is very typical of the size of stuff that we’ll be cutting we’ll start with the big boy, the one-handed cut, because a lot of this stuff has twists and it’s got some. You know memory in it and it’ll want to twist up and it’ll bind and you need to kind of control it here with the hand. So it’s hard to be scientific with this, but what I’ll do is I’ll just cut my normal pressure, the best I can we’ll put a timer up there in the post, edit and we’ll see, but let’s uh I’ll kind of count the strokes here and we’ll see How long does it take to get through this with and what’s the experience with the big boy? Okay, so I’m counting 18 strokes, and what I have always noticed with this saw is its.
It makes my forearms. It kills my forearms because I’m pushing so hard against this and I don’t have any assistance from the air goes or from the handle, and it tires me out. I do not. I don’t like the saw, never have liked it now. If we take the same thing here with the pocket boy, it’s definitely choked up we’re going to be closer to the blade the air goes on. It are a little bit better, still not great, but let’s see 18 was the count.
Let’s see what we got here. Sixteen okay, so what was the experience? It actually cut in fewer strokes and I don’t feel so pumped out my arm doesn’t feel near as tired as this. So is there a downside? Is there any reason to go with the big saw beings? This is the first time I’m using I’ve used this I’m just kind of thinking out loud, but the other thing is is I can put two hands on here pretty comfortably.
I can wrap around here. So if I do want to get more pressure, so if I wanted to put two hands on eleven strokes now with the big boy of course, I could put two hands on it. I’ll go as hard as I can. Okay steak still takes a stroke more. I don’t think that there is any place for this saw and the type of work that I do. I it’s too big to carry in a pack. It’s too big to use with one hand effective effectively.
It is, I just think it’s. I just think it’s kind of ridiculous. I just don’t see I just. I have never seen that the need for it or the purpose for it, plus it’s twice the money. I’m surprised that this little one kind of cuts as big as good as it does pretty amazing. So I guess the question I would be asked I’d have to ask myself is, let’s say: you’re going to go out and you’re going to work in the forest for a couple hours you can take.
One saw with you, which one you’re going to take you’re going to take the the pocket boy, or are you going to take the silky big boy? Well, I’m not going to take either one of these. That’s all I’m going to take into the forest is not even a silky. It’s the Ichiban, the Ichiban is hands-down. The very best saw I’ve ever used. Yes, I understand silky makes some saws like this very similar. I would imagine the experience is going to be very similar but they’re expensive.
This is not expensive and, as far as I can tell quality-wise it’s it’s just as good, if not better and performance wise, it’s better, it’s better than these folding saws for several different reasons. Okay, first off, let’s talk about cost. This are right here. The big boy is going to run you I think. Now the prices are going to change, but I think that when I purchased this, it was about $ 55 $ 55.
And what do you get? Well, you get a saw, that’s going to fold, that’s the difference right, that’s very convenient to have a solid that will fold. This saw, of course, is not going to fold, but you need a sheath. What I have found, it’s so big that it doesn’t fit into a back pocket and whenever it when you’re working, it falls out of the pocket, and you end up going back and looking for it. You know a good thing that it’s yellow, so what you have to do.
Is you end up having to buy the big boy she’s right, the big boy she now you’re at $ 55? How much is the sheath believe it or not? It’s $ 24, which is very expensive for a plastic sheath. Is it a good sheath? It’s okay, it’s not bad. It has minimal reticular retention. One way what would be nice is if it was a head retention, both ways. I don’t know, because you never know which way you’re going to put it in it does have a quick release on it, which is very much appreciated if you need to get in and out of equipment.
You can leave this on your tin pants and then, when you go to work, you can just snap that on there I do like that. So the sheath is fine, but well we have 55 65 75 or at $ 80 right here for the big boy and the sheath well right here, the Ichiban, the samurai, this one about $ 35 and you get the sheath and you get an excellent sheath. You get a sheath that has not only the quick-release buckle like we like we like, but it articulates, and this may not seem like a big deal.
But when you’re moving around and and you’re bending over having that little bit of movement with the saw and the sheath helps you to get a hold of handle, and it’s really wonderful – it’s really appreciated so $ 35. You get the sheath and the saw there ergonomics on this thing are absolutely absolute perfection, and I know that because I have spent so many hours using it and I never get fatigued when we do forestry work.
This is the saw that is fought over. This is the saw that everyone wants, because it has that wonderful curve to it. Now, when we’re like in the previous article, we’re talking about you, know the importance of living things up, we’re limiting up our trees, our stand as high as we can. What you find is as you’re reaching up, because it’s got this curve. You get a lot of you get a cut on the top. It cuts the branch more on the top and it’s easier to reach and it comes down and it breaks cleaner where the straight ones they tend to pinch more often so the ergonomics on this and the shape and the weight and the balance and the size of It it’s just everything, that’s just right: it’s just perfect the handle the comp, the compound and the rubber.
The way it feels you never get any blisters on it. It fits my hand perfectly. They even have a little kind of a guard right there, which is nice. When you’re sawing that you don’t come back and rake your knuckles on it, I mean it’s really incredible. The amount of thought and attention to detail that have went into this went this went into this saw. I can’t help but think whoever it was that built this.
That came up with this design. They must have been a tree person. They must have have been familiar with saws used saws, because what they’ve come up with is absolute perfection and for thirty-five dollars with the sheath. It’s just unbelievable. It’s hard it’s hard to it’s. You can’t be beat, I haven’t seen anything out there now, every time I do one of these saw articles, someone comes out and says: well, the best saw out there is the great big silky that or they call it, the katana boy.
You know it looks like a it’s like a samurai sword. You could it’s huge, it’s ridiculous. I don’t know what what the purpose would be. You know I mean I guess to get to quote: captain man, narrating mentoring. I think we’re delving into the world of fantasy. While talking about katana boy style saws, you know saws need to be used with one hand, because sawing is a two hand procedure. You have to have a hand that sawing you have to have something that is controlling you’re, holding or working with the hand you know.
Taking care of bind or just moving the branch away so sawing me is not a two-handed sport. It’s a one-handed sport – and this is this – is the one sorry silky, but I’ve just that’s my experience. So how about this little guy? This was the first time that I’ve used it. I’ve spent an hour so of it today. This is a great little saw right here. So this what’s the price on this one? Well, it’s it costs even more than the samurai right there I mean this is thirty.
Four: thirty six dollars. Last time I checked this one here. I think I paid $ 40 for it on Amazon with shipping, that’s $ 40, but you get a folding saw and when you start looking at the form factor, well it just blows it away. If we’re in a condition where we need to be packing stuff hunting, bushcrafting survival again dirtbiking, you know I can’t I can’t handle this. I can’t I can’t take that it’s it’s it’s too big.
Now, if I knew if I was going on a ride – and I knew that we were going to be the first through after a winter blow down we’re going to have a lot of trees to contend with, I would take this saw and I would strap it To my chest, protector right, I fastened it to the radiator guard or something to this, to the to the bike where I could just pull it out and cut and not have to fool with the folding.
But if I was going to have something just just in case in case, I needed to clear the trail or a small one that was not necessarily going to be, in my hand, to be used all day, then this is a good way to go. This is perfect for your truck. This is perfect, for survival saw. This is perfect, for a hunting saw. Bushcrafting saw it’s, it’s really, wonderful, the big boy. On the other hand, I’m sorry I just don’t.
I just don’t think it’s a good design and – and just because it’s bigger doesn’t mean it’s better. We saw right there and I didn’t cheat and I didn’t try to make one win to the other. This one. This little guy cut in fewer strokes than the big one did with less effort, but neither one of them can compare to this. So this is a tool, that’s essential if you’re a homesteader, if you’re an outdoor person, if you like to work in the yard, I just don’t think that you’re going to you’re going to spend $ 35 better than this.
I get the question all the time. Hey we’ve got five acres; we want to do some clearing. We want to do. You know we’re in the urban interface we want to you. We have to don’t worry about fire. What chainsaw should I get like? Well, I don’t think you should get a chainsaw at all. I mean. Are you heating with wood? Are you? Are you doing that type of work? Well, no! Well we’ll get this one right here and get two of them.
You can get two for what seventy dollars. One for you, one for your wife or three. If you got family get one for all of you, you can wreak havoc on trees and brush and forest with a family with armed with these guys, they’re they’re, really really wonderful, there’s also, I should probably mention this. So the all the pocket boy did come with this, and a lot of guys were saying: oh, it comes with a with a scabbard.
This is not a scabbard. This is a display case for for a retailer with a hook on it could it be used. I guess if I was going to use this I’d, probably pop rivet, a piece of leather on there, maybe a little strap or canvas, and you could thread that onto a belt. Maybe just drill two holes and zip tie that little guy bends it out a little bit and thread your belt through there. It might be kind of handy, but it’s so small that you can keep it in a pocket.
The other thing I was thinking, I’m really conscious of wait. Am I like a my dirt bike pack, I was worried, you know with all the jostling. This is kind of sharp and that could cut a pack, but you know that might might be. Maybe that’s wouldn’t be a bad idea stored in there, but I can’t I can’t justify the weight. I can’t take all that extra weight at all. It all adds up, but that’s it that’s. My kind of my my take on saws get yourself an itchy bond.
I’ll put a link about Amazon store. This is not a paid endorsement. This is not I’m not affiliated with any of these companies. These were all purchased with my own money. This is my experience that I’m sharing with you guys so don’t forget to click your thumbs up, appreciate the the views and the support and we’ll see you guys on the next article.
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I have recently been involved in quite a few discussions and visual things on knives, and I want to put this in the basic series so that people understand why I choose the types of nice that I choose.
Why. I think that some knives are more favorable over other knives and then also I want to talk to you about things that you see on the internet, about different knives, and one thing that I want you to understand right off. The bat is, if you are reading a review of any piece of gear, it doesn’t matter whether it is a knife or what it is. If you’re reading a review, somebody saying I’m going to review this piece of equipment.
First of all, look at what conditioning equipments in if it’s brand new chances are they’ve, never used it. How can they review it? Number two look at that person’s overall skill level. Have you readed any of their other articles to see what their skill level is? As a woodsman as a bushcrafter as a survivalist, and that would lead you to believe either hey this guy knows a little bit about what he’s talking about or maybe not so much and that’s what you need to understand.
I see a lot of reviews on YouTube and I don’t read many because a lot of times I’d flat turn them off I’ll, be honest with you fi. If I pull up a article, let’s just take a knife review. For instance, if I pull a knife review up on YouTube and the knife looks brand new, I generally shut the article off if it’s laying on a table and it’s not in the woods or the guy’s, not using it to do something with and he’s just talking About the knife, I generally turn it off.
The other thing is, I look to see what the guy’s skill level is, while he’s using that knife, if he’s using it – and I will tell you now that if you take the crappiest bud, K knife on the planet and you put a good sharp edge on It and you take a nice Mora that cost 20 bucks and you put a good edge on it and you take any given knife that meets the criteria that we’re going to talk about, and you sharpen that thing up.
It doesn’t matter if it cost three or four hundred dollars. If you put all three of those knives in the hands of more Skowronski he’s going to make every one of them look like a knife. You’d want to buy because his skill level and his expertise at fine carving and things like that are so precise and so good and so well, honed that he makes it look natural, no matter what he’s using the deal with. On the other hand, if you take that same set of knives – and you put them in the hands of someone of lesser skill level, much less skill level, it doesn’t matter how good the knife is they’re going to make that knife look bad and it could look Like something you don’t want to buy, even if it might be something, that’s very good.
So I want you to think about those things when you’re looking at articles of a knife reviews and things like that, because some of what we’re going to do today is going to be talking about knives right in front of you. Some of its going to be we’re going to demonstrate some things with the knives pros and cons of the different knives. One thing that you will never see me do with a knife and it’s another thing that I turn it completely off as soon as I see it in a article is you’ll, never see me, take a 5 or 6 inch blade and chop with it.
There’s absolutely! No reason to chop with a knife: that’s not meant for chopping! If you want a chopping knife, get a machete get a Chris Kane survival tool, get a goal lock get a poor wrong, get a kakari, get something that’s made for chopping and processing, wood or vines or bamboo or whatever the case may be, but don’t use a 5 6 inch knife to smack around and try to chop with and make excuses that the handle is not long enough or that you need to move it up and choke back and put a lanyard on it.
So you don’t let go of it and get more leverage on the blade. That’s bunk, okay, you should never have to chop with a knife. That’s not made to chop with that. Knife should be used to baton through material or to push through material by using different types of cuts, not swung like some kind of axe or a machete. That’s what you want! That’s what you buy! That’s the next thing that we need to talk about in this article is understand before you buy a knife.
What is that knife going to do for me versus what do I want that knife to do for me and I get a lot of questions from a lot of people about you know: what’s the best survival knife out there? Well, the patented answer to that is the one you have on you in a survival scenario, but that leads you right back to that’s, probably the knife you bought to begin with. So did you buy the right knife and when I look at that, what I want to tell you is, I look at any knife that I’m going to strap to my hip on a daily basis as a survival knife, because chances are that’s the knife I’m going To get stuck with in an emergency because I put it on my hip every single day and I’m not going to lose it so with that said, I need to make sure that whatever knife I’m going to select a carry every day is going to be a Knife that is multifunctional in an emergency scenario.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a chopper, because a big chopper is not going to be good at fine carving. It doesn’t necessarily have to be great at fine carving, because it’s not going to be very good for batana processing would necessarily it has to be capable of a lot of things. It has to be capable of processing game. It has to be capable of processing wood. It has to be capable of the fine carving, but it also has to be capable of making bigger logs smaller pieces so that you can create things like pencil sized sticks from a 4-inch log.
If you have to or just split things out when you absolutely have to so that knife has to do a lot of things for you and has to cover a lot of bases, if you go back to my article on knives of the frontier or you know, The kind of history of knives that have been used throughout time you’ll see that really the most common denominator is about a five to six inch blade, at least in the United States, about a five to six inch blade and some type of a butcher knife design.
Either a European butchering knife or an Americanized version of a butchery knife or a French version of the butchering knife and those type blade designs, lend themselves well to a lot of different things for the woodsman. That’s why they use them. That’s why they were around four to three hundred years. That’s the reason. Some of them are still made today so understand what you want to do with that knife.
It’s a back up knife that you’re buying you’re going to put your backpack. Then maybe it doesn’t have to be that perfect knife. That’s going to do everything, maybe you’re buying a backup knife only for you know the trap line you’re going to make your money cuts with and you’re going to keep that thing. Razor sharp and it’s going to be a perfect blade for you to make those precision cuts that you have to make not to mess up a fur on an animal, or maybe it’s going to be your bush crafting knife that you’re going to put in your in Your backpack and you’re going to keep that thing with you to do your fine, carving and making feather sticks and doing those little fancy things that we do in bushcraft, but does that lend itself to a good survival knife? Maybe yes, maybe no depends on if it meets the criteria that you decided needs to meet for me.
I have certain criteria that I look at in a knife and we’ll talk about that right now, okay, so let’s get started on our knife discussion here a little bit and let’s talk about it, I’ve got a table or a bench of knives here. Basically, that are all knives that I have personally used over and over and over and over none of these knives are brand new. All of these knives have been tested thoroughly in a wilderness environment for a lot of different tasks.
So I can tell you, I feel confident that I can tell you what the pros and cons are of these type knives. Now the first thing that you need to think about when you’re selecting a knife is again back to what is that knife going to do for me versus what do I want it to do for me so for the sake of this discussion, because we’re talking about Basic concepts: let’s talk about this is the knife I’m going to strap to my tip, and this is the knife that I’m probably going to end up with.
If everything goes bad, I lose all of my gear that knife is going to be shot to my hip and it’s going to be my only tool that I have to use to affect my survivability and there is a big difference between that and a bushcraft knife That you carry in your pack as a spare where you put it around your neck or where the case may be totally against putting knives around my neck, but that’s beside the point: okay, so blade thickness.
That is your first key element to me. A knife that’s going to be used for a multitude of tasks needs to be 3/16 of an inch thick at a minimum. I do carry knives personally that are only 1/8 of an inch thick. This three dollar butcher knife from a yard sale is only a little over an eighth of an inch thick. It’s not quite 3/16. So if I had to measure it, you know it’s right in between there, but it doesn’t quite meet my minimum standard.
Although I’ve used this knife for everything under the Sun, so I’m pretty confident that in its ability to sustain me, it needs be this butcher. Knife is 3/16. This is the habilis Pathfinder butcher knife it’s 3/16, so 3/16 is a good thickness to start out with now. Let’s talk about why not at 8:10, it’s okay! Because generally what you’ll find is most knives will be 1/8 inch 3/16 and then quarter inch 1/8 inch.
Knife is going to have a lot of flexibility in it if the metal is tempered correctly and it may Bend on you or snap on you, depending on again the temper of the knife. I’ve never broken an old hickory butcher knife and they’re eighth of an inch thick. So an eighth of an inch knife can do the job for you, but it’s not going to be near as rigid or good for prying. If you have to do things like that, that’s 3/16, so there’s a little bit of a trade-off there.
I would say my personal opinion is 3/16 for beginning knife, though it’s going to be the one night that you buy to keep on your hip, and this is where you’re going to put all your eggs. Okay, in my opinion again, this is just my opinion. Your knife should be your most expensive item in your kit for the most part, or you should have the majority of your budget set aside for your knife, because that’s what you’re really going to stake your life on with that knife, you can’t do everything else.
If you have to as long as you have the skill level now remember during this article, there’s I’m not talking bad about any knife makers, I’m not talking about about any people who review knives on TV on on YouTube or use knives on TV. All I’m saying to you is: these: are my standards? These are the knives that I choose, and this is why you can make your own decision from what we’re talking about once we get beyond the thickness of the blade, then we need to talk about.
The tang is a full, tang, absolutely necessary. In other words, is it one piece of solid metal that the scales are both the two on both sides? Almost all of these knives, all of these knives are full tang, the knives I have over here or not again. I go back to if I’m going to get stuck with this one, and I have no other tools. I may have to do things like prying, hitting hard on the back of the spine, with a baton of some sort to process firewood.
All those types of things lend themselves to a weakness in a rat tail Tang knife, because it’s smaller, it’s not like that rat tail, tangs the same thickness, the 9 and 3/4. The way back to handle, generally speaking, a rat tail tang knife is exactly that. It shrinks down to a rat tail and then goes back into the knife, so that is a weak point in the overall structure of that knife. That could compromise you in a real emergency situation.
So I choose again: I choose to always carry a full tang knife on my hip and that’s my personal opinion. So all of these knives are full tang. Now, backup knife could definitely be a non full tang knife, and most of my backup knives generally are non full tang. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes. The next thing that I want to know on this knife is – and here again this is the these. Some of these things are kind of go no-go for me.
I can live with eight-inch if I have to I’d rather have 3/16, but there’s certain aspects of that night that I can’t live without or I’m not willing to do without. One of them is that that knife has a very sharp a 90-degree spine on it, so that it will effectively remove material from a ferrocerium rod, and there is a big misconception out there about ferrocerium rods and knives. Most of the time, if you’re having problems striking your Ferro rod, it’s not the rod, it’s the knife.
So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take a couple random knives here for you, I’ve got several different feral rods from cheap $ 5 Ferro rods. All the way up to $ 50 Ferro rods and we’re going to strike them with a knife and you’re going to see that, for the most part, they’re the same. Ok, so what we got here is we have a variety of ferrocerium rods. This rod is just a cheap rod, probably off of our website and the handle of been yanked off of it.
It’s been wrapped in duct tape. To give me a good heavy-duty handle most of the feral rods that you’re going to buy – and I say most not all most of the feral rods are going to buy. The handles are going to come off of them eventually sooner or later anyway. So I just take mine off on these cheaper ones and I wrap them in duct tape, so I’ve got an element of fire wrapped around it. An emergency plus I have this.
This duct tape is for no other use except a handle or fire. I carry duct tape, my kit for other things. On this side, I have arrived from Canton shop, comm, Rob Simpson spare rod, I’m very fond of these they’re good feral rods, they’re a little bit more expensive than wrapped in the leather. I think they come from deeply handcraft, I’m not sure that and they’re very good, fair rod to stick inside your knife sheet.
That’s what you like to do. This is a cheapie like a Coghlan model, ferrocerium rod. This is the Bob spark from fire. Steels calm. This rod is just a long blank fire rod that was made by one of my instructors, that has a copper, butt, end glued or epoxy Don and pinned in that’s filled with lead on the backside. So they can be used for a Bopper for napping, whether it’s for your flintlock or whether it’s for making arrowheads out of glass or flint, whatever the case may be.
It also gives you a good handle to hold on to and a large striking surface to remove material into your tinder bundle again. Cost difference is a lot here. You’re talking this one in this one are probably five bucks or less this one’s around 2025. This one’s around 2025 – I believe these things are around 40 50 bucks, so you’ve got a big difference there, but the bigger the rod is the longer it’s going to last.
A lot of guys ask me about this blocks of magnesium, with a little bitty rod going across the top of them. Those things are useless, in my opinion, you’re going to wear that rod out long before you ever get rid of that magnesium, and most all of your ferrocerium rods have a heavy content of magnesium in them. Already that’s going to burn if you can’t remove the material with your blade, that’s the important thing: it’s generally, not the Ferro rod that causes you the problems, it’s the blade.
Okay, I’m going to use a couple of different knives to do this stuff with first one. I’m going to use is the Pathfinder knife. This is made by blind or snobs. It’s called the PLS k1. The Scandinavian grind 3/16 own inch a little over a five-inch blade. This one happens to have curly maple handles on it. It has a good, sharp, 90 degree spine. So let’s try this one. First on just a cheapy rod. Now, that’s just as cheap II $ 5 rod.
Here’s the cheapy one off my website! You can see it’s removing enough materials! Hang it up on the back of the knife. Even here is the gob spark. Okay, canteen shop comm got to get the coating off of it. Okay. Now I’m going to show you what just happened here. The cap just came off of this. The leather coiled cap. Just came off of this. I’ve never seen that happen to one of these fair rods. Before that it goes right back to what I was telling you almost any fair rod you buy.
The cap is going to come off of it unless it’s pin through it’s going to come off, just wrap it with tape and go on and don’t worry about it. If you’re looking for something fancy, looking do yourself a favor make sure you got some duct tape with you when you get done here is the large barrel rod again, we’ve got to get the coating off of it once we get the coating off of it. It shouldn’t take a whole lot of effort when you do this.
If your knife is good 90-degree spine on it, it won’t take much effort, so you can see that all of those barrel rods will work just fine with that knife. Okay, this is the more of bushcraft black. We haven’t talked about this knife, yet it’s not a full tang knife. It is high carbon steel, which means it’s going to rust. If you don’t take care of it, but it’s going to be easier to sharpen in the field than stainless.
I prefer a high carbon we’ll talk about that a little bit in Y on our next exercise. But let’s look at what this will do and again it has that good 90-degree spine. So, let’s start with our cheap e Ferro rod here, pretty good the other cheap e Ferro rod, pretty good gob sport real good, the long heavy-duty one real good, the canteen shop. Pretty good! Ok, so you can see that as long as we have a good 90 degree, spine doesn’t really matter whether the knife cost 30 or 40.
Bucks like this one, we’re close to $ 300, like the Pathfinder knife, they’re going to do what you need them to do with the Ferro rod and that’s the important characteristic to understand. Will this knife be good for striking a ferrocerium rod every time I see someone take their knife and strike their ferrocerium rod with the blade of their knife? I know that person doesn’t know what they’re doing, because I’m never going to sacrifice my knife blade to strike a Ferro rod.
I can always use the back of this or I can find something else. If I can’t do that, but I’m never going to sacrifice my blade, this area of your blade from here to here from this curve back, is going to do. Two-Thirds of everything you do with this knife will take place right here. We’ll talk about that. A little bit too ok, so that gives us a pretty good look at one of the things that we want, our not to be capable of which is striking our ferrocerium rod.
A ferrocerium rod, in my opinion, is the most reliable fire-starting device you can possibly have in an emergency scenario. Matches are a one-shot deal, lighters run out of fluid and get wet all of those types of things. You need to concentrate your efforts on understanding how to use a Ferro rod with lots of different tenders, because a Ferro rod there is a very, very hot spark that will light up a lot of tender and it works even when it’s wet get yourself as big.
A Ferro rod as you can find that you can afford in the long run and carry that with you as your main ferrocerium rod. Alright. Moving on the next thing that we want to look at is the steel that this knife is made out of everything that I do with this knife has to be a multifunctional deal. Obviously, I can do a lot of things at this knife as far as making other things, and that makes it multifunctional, but it also needs to be part of my kit as far as being useful for at least three, I need to be able to start fire With this thing, as one of those chores or duties of my knife, and by scraping that ferrocerium rod that takes care of that element, but I would also like for my knife to be able to throw sparks from a hard rock in case.
I would lose my ferrocerium rod for some reason and all I’m left with is this knife if I can get a fire built somehow, because I made a bow drill set with my knife, I don’t want to have to go through that hassle, the second time. So if I can make char cloth in that first fire thinking ahead to my next fire and I can find a nice hard rock, I can use that to create an ember, then put in a bird nest and forego the whole bow drill.
Action on the next fire, so I want this knife to be made out of high carbon steel so that it will throw sparks off of the spine with a hardrock high carbon Steel’s. Oh one tool: steel 1095, while the Condor knives are made out of a 10 65 1070, not really enough carbon in them to throw a good spark. You see, there’s no Condor knives on this table, not because I’ve never used one, but because it’s not a knife that I would carry all of the time.
So if you’re going to ask me about other knives – and you don’t see it on this table – it’s because I either haven’t carried it, don’t carry it or I have carried it and don’t like it and don’t carry it anymore. These are the knives that I trust. Okay, so let’s talk about striking sparks with the back of our knife. So again, what we’re trying to accomplish here is turning our knife into an ignition source and we can do that as long as we have that high carbon steel blade.
So, let’s pick up, first of all, we’ll just pick up this butcher knife, what I’m going to do with my knives when I’ve decided I’m going to buy one. Is I’m going to do this first that thing’s throwing sparks I’m a happy camper? Now I know I got a good high carbon steel blade for sure. Even if I have no idea what this thing’s made out of yardsale three dollar butcher knife looks like carbon steel, it’s rusting up.
It’s got some patina to it. Let me take a rock to it: okay, now, I’m in business, does it have a good 90-degree spine on it yep now in double business. This is the right thickness. It’s pretty close as I got a good nice five to six inch blade on it yep. Okay now want that knife. That’s my factors now any knife that you have that’s high carbon steel and will, in fact, what we’ll do is we’ll get another cheaper type knife out here.
We’ll look at this more on bushcraft black again: does it throw sparks? Yes, it does okay. Is it throwing them as good as the butcher knife, not quite, but that could just be because the blade is like blue and not all this wore off yet, but I know this will start. It will create ignition with char cloth because I’ve done it. So if I have a high carbon steel blade, I’m going to be able to affect cognition that way and I’ll show you how to do that right now, up close, hang tight guys! Okay, so I have a charring 10 here.
It’s got some char cloth in it right here, so we’ll pull that piece of char cloth out and that’s what we’re going to use for this demonstration now, if I’m trying to strike sparks up my knife, there’s a couple ways you can do this, you can hold The knife blade like this and strike it against the rock. Exactly like you would do a striker, but I don’t like that method very well, because I’ve got my knife blade toward my hand.
If something were to slip, I could cut myself if I have to wrap something around the blade. I may not get a good grip on it, so I would rather strike down on the blade to the charred material. So we’ll pull a piece of this charred material off of here and lay it to the side. Real quick just like this, and what I like to do is lay that thing out and get as much surface area exposed as I can to catch my sparks and then kind of tack it down with my knife.
Just like this now I’ll lean my knife backwards. Just a little bit and I’ll strike sparks on to the char cloth, just like that. Okay, that out now, let’s look at the three hollered butcher knife. We’ll do the same thing. Get it out here, pin it down with the blade hold on the handle, push them down; okay, we’re on a fire all right. Now, let’s look at the pathfinder Scout bigger than the Pathfinder pls k, one larger in blade, size and blade length.
This is a six inch blade, it’s a little bit wider and so now the full flat grind, but it does have that 90-degree spine. It is three sixteenths, it’s just a little bigger more of a French trade or butcher knife style design. Alright sparks is going right by here. Here we go. Okay, we got a char cloth on fire, so you can see that a $ 40 knife will do it. A three dollar knife will do it. A $ 200 knife will do it.
It doesn’t matter how much the knife costs it matters, what the physical characteristics and capabilities are of that knife. Okay, so what I want to do now, real quick is: I want to kind to kind of go through some knives with you guys. One at a time show you knives that I trust doesn’t mean that there’s other knives on the market that aren’t good. But again, if you’re going to ask me what I think of this of that.
If you didn’t see in this article, that should give you an indication of what I think about it means I don’t carry it. Alright. Anything by blind horse knives is going to be bone. Anything by hapless bush tools is going to be a good knife. Anything by Moore is going to be a good knife, but it’s not going to meet all of the criteria that we talked about. Some of them are not high carbon they’re stainless, and none of them are full tang.
Alright. So, let’s start off with the Morris. The Mora bushcraft block is by far my favorite. It’s got a nice blue blade. It’s got a three quarter: tang nice comfortable, rubber over plastic handle here high carbon steel, blade, good 90-degree spine the blade on it’s almost a little over four inches long, and for me you know the minimum is about five. But again this is not going to be. My main knife, so it doesn’t have to be five inches.
This is another more. This is the Mora companion, another good knife about half a little over tang, maybe 3/4 rubber over plastic handle. You can see the blades a little bit less robust than the bushcraft block. It’s a little bit shorter, it’s not not as wide and it’s about the same, not quite the same thickness. So this is a heavier knife than this one, but does not cost more than this one. Both of them will do the job.
A knife. I’ve been carrying a lot lately as a backup or carving type knife or bushcrafting is this martini, and this was given to me by one of my instructors: solid rubber handle three quarter inch tang molded over. It’s got a really nice 90-degree spine on it. It’s good and thick it’s over 8 of an inch. It might be close to 3/16 Scandinavian grande. It’s a very short blade. It’s only a little, it’s a little less than 4 inches.
I think so. It’s not going to be a main night for me, but it is a great backup, skinning carving and crafting knife for my pack. This is the habilis butcher knife and this knife was designed directly after this knife. This is a three dollar butcher knife from a yard sale. This is the habilis butcher knife. It was designed and made directly to mimic this knife because we knew there’d never be another one of these come along, so we wanted something that was very close to an 18th century design with 18th century type, handle materials and scales.
This one has one two, three four five six pins on it, so that it’s more period-correct for something along the 18th century lines, solid, hardwood handles. They are flat, as many of them were back, then it does have the Pathfinder logo and the habilis Bush tool logo. On it as well, it’s a nice Scandi grind and scanned effects. It’s got a little bit of a convex grind compound grind at the bottom of the Scandinavian grind.
It’s got a good 90-degree spine on it and it’s made out of 1095 so it definitely meets all the criteria. Definitely a good, robust knife. Okay, now, let’s get 2 BHK blind horse knife a blind horse. Obviously, I’ve had a very, very long relationship with blind or knives they’re. Absolutely my favorite knife company Bar None in the world, their knives have never failed me and everybody. I’ve talked to says if they’ve ever had any issue with a knife that blind horse has replaced.
It without question so any guarantee like that is the guarantee I want they’re fit and finish is perfect. Their shops really nice I’ve been to their shop. So I know what it looks like. I know what the craftsmanship is: good, american-made quality, but again you’re going to pay for american-made knives. This is the Pathfinder Scout, the one that I carry probably 95 % of the time, not because I don’t like the PLS k1, but because this one has a little more versatility for what I do every day.
If I were going to have to choose one knife for an emergency, it would be the PLS k1. That’s what it was designed for. This knife is more of a hunting skinning butchering type knife. It’s got a big 6 H butchering style blade on it. European type. French trade knife style blade, 3/16 heavy heavy spine. Oh one tool, steel, curly maple handles it’s just a really really nice heavy duty knife – and I carried this one quite a bit.
The PLS k1 is the original Pathfinder knife that was made by blind horse knives. Scandinavian grind blades about five and a quarter inches long. It’s got some jimping on the top of the blade here, curly maple handles on this one, like I said, oh one tool, steel, heavy duty, 90 degree spine. This knife will do anything in the world that you want it to do and if you have it in, if it’s in the right hands of the person with the right skill, it can do anything you want to do from fine carving to processing firewood.
This is the muck, the Nemec with the Pathfinder logo, on it that’s made by blind horse Scandinavian ground, Nemec style blade, it’s basically a short butcher knife and I think that’s pretty much what nest Mehcad in mind when you had this knife made. If you look at this knife compared to a larger butcher knife they’re pretty much the same, it’s just shorter and squatty ER than a butcher knife. It’s got that same hump at the top so that it rides high over bone when you’re cutting with it.
It’s good for batani! I like this dished area right here, because that forces a lot of forces a lot of pressure right here to the belly when you’re trying to split wood and things like that with it. So it’s a really really good knife, but remember with any knife you’re going to about this. Much of your blade is where you’re going to do 90 % of your work. You know the before you get to the upsweep on the belly is where you’re going to 90 % of your work.
When I see guys carving, sticks and they’re making points on sticks out here on the blade. I know those guys don’t know what they’re doing, because that area of your knife should be the most pristine area, because that’s what we can use to process game. That’s what you’re going to use from very fine under cuts and notches and find carving tasks. You don’t want to use that for hogging material off to make points on sticks.
That’s what this area of the knife is for. Okay, just a little tidbit there, the nest McKnight’s are really really good. All-Around hunting type knife: this is the blind horse. Bushcrafter great cat part style, design, blade cat part style really designed knife for the most part. It’s got this Inlet in the handle, which makes it really comfortable for your finger. It’s got a nice round grip. As my instructor chair, jamie burly, always says, it’s like a broom handle doesn’t matter how you hold it.
It’s always going to be comfortable in your hand and that’s kind of one of the pluses to this knife for bushcrafting and things like that. It’s got a four inch blade on it. Like I said it’s got a cup art design spear point blade on it. This one happens to have a full flat grind. I think the ones they sell have a hollow grind. I’m not positive of that. Don’t quote me on that, and this one happens to have curly maple handles.
This is a really nice little knife that blind horse makes is the woodsman pro now I’ve carried this knife, not as extensive as I carried the others, but it is a really nice woodsy style design, knife for hunting and trapping, and things like that. It’s just not quite big enough for something to me to be beyond a carving knife or a skinning knife for a one tool, type knife. But it is a very good back up knife for the trapline for hunting for skinning and things like that, and this is called the trapline companion now.
This knife has got about a four inch blade on. This was an accidental knife. This is a knife that was made, another knife was messed up and this knife was ground out of it by Dan at blind horse knives and when he showed it to me, I fell in love with him. The reason I fell in love with it and decided to adopt it as the TLC is because it has a nice hollow grind, which means it’s going to stay razor sharp.
It’s got a nice little drop point right here for skinning and making money cuts on furs and hides, and things like that, and it has that small kitchen knife like feel to it. That makes it great for fine carving tasks and things like that. So for making feather sticks for doing fine under cuts and notches and all those types of things. This thing is like the Morra of the blind horse world, except this full tang and it’s high carbon steel with a 90 degree spine.
So it does everything for me. If it needs to okay, one thing: I want to talk about real quick in this article. As I see a lot of people talking about making feather sticks. How, well is the knife make feather sticks well depends again on how well you can handle the knife, and what your skill level is. A good sharp knife will make feather sticks. Obviously a thinner blade is going to make better feather sticks than a thicker blade.
So you have to understand the limitations of what you have, but even a blade that is 3/16 or thick like the Pathfinder knife. But it’s got a big heavy Scandinavian grind on which makes it really good for processing wood and things like that, and a good heavy-duty tool is not going to be as good for fine carving tasks as say this TLC, or even this martini or Mora, because the Blades are thinner, they have a sharper Scandinavian bevel to them and they’re going to make those fine cuts.
This one is hollow ground, so it’s definitely going to make fine cuts all right, but let’s look at these knives and when you’re making feather sticks, you’re not trying to you, don’t want this thing hanging out on a stump between your legs and you’re, trying to push The knife with both hands – that’s not the way to make feather sticks feather sticks, are a fine finesse, carving task I’ll tell you.
Nobody would complain about that butter. Stick! Okay! Out of a 3/16 inch blade with a heavy scanning grind on it. That is a nice feather. Stick that will take flame very very quickly and that’s the advantage of a feather stick. Is you have increased the surface area and made the material very thin so that it heats up quickly and combust faster, okay, guys? Well, I appreciate joining for this article I turn today.
I wanted to go over my mentality with you or my line of thinking when it comes to noise. I also wanted to talk you a little bit about understanding what you’re looking at when you read other people handling knives using knives, reviewing knives and things like that again. This is not a Bosch on any knife company. It’s not a Bosch on a You Tube reviewer. I just want to educate the people who are reading my articles as to what you should be looking for and be sure that when you read a review on any product, whether it’s a knife or a steel pot that that person has used that item.
And you can’t say that you’ve used an item by taking it to the woods one time or for five minutes or five hours or likely even five days. You need to use and abuse that item before you can really say what is worthiness is to have in someone’s kit, I’m Dave camera at five fire school. I appreciate your views, your support, everything you do for me for my school, for my family I’ll be back. Another article soon as I can thanks guys, you
Knives and daggers are awesome! Plain and simple, right? Let me say, I enjoy my dagger collection with a little music playing in the background.
How this all came about was unpicked was reading a movie Cool Hand Luke and, in this movie Cool Hand Luke. I think the Paul Newman Character was able to chop his ankle chains and free himself with an axe and three strokes.
Today, we’re going to put that to the test For this test, we’re going to use some standard logging chain. I believe that this is 5/16 pretty heavy-duty stuff and The axe that we’re going to be using is, of course, a heavy duty chopping. Ask -axe of the basque design. I chose this one because it has a lot of weight to it and a big cutting area. So let’s put it up on the Block and see what happens So, our first chop We’re going to use a big-.
This is about a 6×8 Doug Fir piece of cribbing, And I’m just going to go directly onto the wood and to see -this is a pretty heavy chain. I don’t know if Paul Newman’s chain was going to be. It was quite this heavy, but we’ll see what happens. I fear that it’s going to push it into the block, If that happens, we’ll put start putting some harder surfaces on there, but let’s give a swing and and find out We’ll Glove up here.
…. Alright, let’s see… [ Chuckles ]. I don’t know about this. That might be some Hollywood, but we’ll see Oh Man, What happened there, So that was as hard as I could swing…. Got- it aimed- right there hit right where I was aiming there right across that link, And the problem is that the force of the axe pressed the chain down into the wood, and it just wasn’t enough backing there [ Chuckles ] That really pushed it in There that you can see.
.. Where’d, we strike right there, So we got through not very far, not very far at all, probably about 35… 35 % through the chain. So, let’s put a little bit harder surface on there, a little chunk of plywood and try it again and see what happens All right if we put a little piece of plywood across [ t ] here that that’s pretty hard We’re going across the grain rather than Into it and I’ll get a new piece of chain here and hopefully hit it Right there.
.. See, if that doesn’t, do it, Okay, going to go right there for that one, pretty small target here Hard as I can go…, Oh Goodness, That is a lot Of force and that didn’t work very well, either It just mashed it down into the plywood Boy. I’d say if you were on a Florida chain gang and you had a block of wood, to cut your leg shackles with you might Well, you might be there awhile. There might be a better option.
Okay, there we can see So that right there actually cut through even less than the first one That -I thought that that would have Been harder than that Well, there’s only one thing left to do and that’s to put a really hard surface down, which is going to be a little bit hard on the axe, But…. We can always fix that. Alright, how about a piece of mild steel? What if we put a mild steel on there, That’s certainly not going to press through This was the first strike.
The second strike, the third one… We’ll try to go right through there To see. If we can chop through that in one hit, Even against the wood, you can see we’re getting uh, certainly getting a little bit of damage on that axe, but still plenty of edge there. I don’t think we have any prob-. I think it’s definitely sharp enough, but let’s see what happens here, You know what I’m going to put some safety glasses on There.
We go hard as I can. What happened there? Oh goodness, look at that that did indeed cut through that chain-link. Look at that. It cut all the way through on one side and Almost all the way through. On the other side, You can see the first two strikes here. It looks like maybe hit the same piece right there, But I want to see if we would like to see if it’s possible to cut through that chain in one strike.
Let’s try it again. Let me see if I can swing it even harder That steel on there Will cut, try to cut through this one right here. It doesn’t have any Nick’s in it right. There See what we’ve got there yeah again. Look at that! That’s a pretty amazing! That’s a clean cut right through that that deal, But it didn’t cut all the way through I’d like to see if we could get it one Chop. If I hit it perfectly and hard enough, I’ve bent our bar there a little bit hard enough.
I think We could actually do it. There’s a lot of force there a lot of force. Let’s see, let’s try this piece right here. Okay, let’s give it all. We got a one chop through a logging chain And a piece of steel. The white Dodge pickup, a lot of folks, have been asking about that. If I got a new rig, It’s not mine, it belongs to a friend of mine, Who is one of the volunteers, for the fire department He’s putting a new transmission and he doesn’t have a shop to work in so he’s.
That’s why it’s here he’s just finishing up putting a new new tranny in and exhaust system. So If you were wondering okay, let’s pull this tight, I Really liked it would like to chop this I’ll. Try it one more time And see if we can get all the way through it, nice big heavy axe. Oh we did it. Let’s take a look at that, so it is possible. It is definitely possible. It works Sure enough. So I guess Paul Newman actually could have chopped his chains off with an axe.
There’s a link. You can see, there’s a certainly the two pieces and That’s good to know. I guess I’m surprised, I didn’t think I didn’t think you could chop through that with one hit, but boy that axe sure put to Put the hurt on that flat bar. Let’s take a look at the edge. I’ve been really impressed with these Basque Axes. You know a little bit of chipping right there, nothing that can’t be repaired actually quite easily, But that is very interesting.
You Know what I would really like to know is: can you cut a big fat cable with an axe? You know all those movies where they cut the cable, So here’s an old logging choker, That’s pretty much served. Its purpose is starting to fray and every time I grab it. Stabs me in the hand, I’ll be glad to get rid of it, But I always read, though you see those old movies where they’re like a fishing boat or the old Sailing ships or whatever they were, there, always get the axe.
You know something It’s it’s dragging the ship down And they always have an axe at the ready and they cut through those gigantic cables. On that I don’t know about that. This stuff is pretty tough, but let’s try it and see. This is probably about a Maybe a 5 – that’s probably a 3/8 cable. So it’s not an insignificant bit of cable. But let’s put that up on here and see if that will indeed chop in one hit: Okay 3/8 cable hard, as I can How’bout that Indeed an axe will definitely cut a cable, it’s multi-strands there, it cut through all of them, except for one little piece.
So that’s that’s, definitely a truth too Yeah that actually cuts pretty simple. There huh that’s kind of interesting, So there we have it. I hope that answers your question. Unpicked and axe will indeed cut through a Logging chain in one stroke, as well as a stranded cable. So Well that was fun I’ll spend the next hour working the chips out of that axe. So, just to to tell you guys, what’s been going on lately, So I haven’t been putting up a lot of articles because, as as you know, I’ve been on two wildland fires And I’m.
I guess I’m happy to report that I think wildland season is over. For the year It has been raining solid for two days I talked to the guys that are on the fire and they’re pretty much pulling everything and wrapping up and everyone’s under the Pretty much in agreement that the season in this area at least, is completely over. Just starting to get snow on the mountains, I think it looks like to the north.
There Mount Fuji. There is starting to get a fresh cap on it and it’s just incredible how quickly the seasons change when we were just sweltering in the heat on that fire. Back to tin, pants and warm clothes and long johns and getting ready for winter, so there’s a look, got a whole bunch of stuff To share with you guys, We’ll be finishing, bringing in the firewood We’ll be doing some work with the firewood processor.
I got a whole bunch of stuff to get ready for winter. It’s just today’s. I don’t want to get out there and do it, because it’s raining and it’ll stop here in a few days And we’ll get out there and get those last things finalized. We got a whole new load of logging, a log truckload of some really great wood That I’m splitting with a couple of the guys at the volunteer fire department. We got some nice lodgepole from the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, That is a bone dry, so that lodgepole makes really wonderful, firewood, smells great And we’ll be cutting that a bunch of that here pretty soon Anything else to report, I’m really enjoying the poison oak that I Picked up from the fire We, I have it on my neck and covering about a third of my body And that’s always a good time, if any of you guys have a recipe To give me some relief from that.
I would be all ears because it is absolutely miserable If you’ve ever had it in this area. It feels What it feels like these little like little drops of acid Wherever it is all of your body, And I knew it. You know it happens to me every time the same way, And I knew I was going to get it. What I, what we do is we have the all those fire hoses and we drag them around through through the forest, and It’s got that poison oak all over and that oil gets on that fire hose and when we were doing a back haul, we’re pulling All That hose and bringing it back in when we were done with it, You know we were throwing those big bundles up on her shoulder and I got it all over my neck And I don’t know if it’s spreading and I’ve got it on my legs and on My arms and it’s just hateful, It’s absolutely people.
What else was there something else someone to share with you? Oh The van the welding, so I’ve got a welder coming Brian who, But you guys, know Brian. He works for me a couple days a week. He’s actually he’s a pretty good TIG welder. Apparently he hasn’t done aluminum, but he’s done a lot of steel and chromoly Doing bicycle frames. We’ve got a Lincoln welder coming that we’ll be able to do TIG And I’ve never done it before so we’ll do some articles on that and kind of I’ll be curious to see how how well Me not ever being able to not welding with TIG.
I can get up to speed on that. I’ve always been something I’ve always wanted to try. So we’ll share that experience as well. Maybe Brian can share a few tips with us that he’s picked up. He seems to be pretty well checked out on it, But I guess that’s it. So, thanks for reading and we’ll see you guys on the next article
What are you eating? Check out the video below to find out about a healthy snack.
Well as a marketing professor. We are stunned by that amount, the number of people that are accidental of to be him, so we get to Stuart Alaska now and they did to Searle activity.
A few of you have okay, it’s a very beautiful place. It’S it’s right on the coast, and it has these big mountains called mountain marathon, which is right behind it, which actually run up the mountain during the summer. But would you like the fourth and it’s beautiful, with the Kenai for its Glacier National Park, which is right to the south, and so I go and meet even during the class? A Motorhome and fundamentally he’s telling me about his lifestyle.
Chris and G are what we would call digital marketing entrepreneurs he graduated from ISU in 2008. I won’t steal all his thunder, but fundamentally what he did was he chose to say, I’m going to travel and try to figure out a way of living and making a living at it. And so what happened? Was I formed a Basecamp team which is base camp set of project management? Software and Chris was on it he’s Sean with the era.
Who is the director of the student marketing company back there, and I would call one of the finest social media technician skilled professionals we have on the campus. I was in the background, along with doctormick Eska, dr Bowman, and we’re all coming Katty because we’re trying to help Chris, but we’re also trying to learn from Chris and what he’s doing, because it is not very easy. Going from just a few hundred people on YouTube to forty-eight thousand five hundred, I think, as we checked yesterday, and so when it comes down to is we’ve been working with them and amazing.
We were able to really help them in a lot of ways, and so we’re very proud of that. He’S also taught us a bunch of things about what he does and how he’s doing it. So in essence, what happened is you have digital marketing entrepreneurs in front of you? These people are literally going out traveling around the country going on national parks, beautiful places and they’re making a living at it. When I was growing up, I traveled around this country, but I could never figure out how to make a living at it being on the road and that’s, what’s wonderful about the digital marketing tools that you currently have.
You lived in a very exciting and fascinating time because of these digital marketing tools that are available so without further ado, like a warm welcome for Christian and Gina. Thank you everybody. So I first of all I’d like to thank everybody for coming in today. Those that were here yesterday and also those that came in today, this lovely Indiana weather I walked to class, just like you did so.
I appreciate you all being here today. So the first thing that I want to talk about today is just if you take one thing from this presentation today, one thing at all: it’s not about the digital market. You might know everything that I’m going to tell you. You might already have a plan in your head, it’s something that you plan on doing, but what I want to you know remind you, and this is something that started my philosophy on traveling and just kind of the way that I view things is that everybody thinks They have all this time in the world to do what they want to do.
But if the average age in this class is 21, then you only have 20,000 days left in your life to do what you want to do and that doesn’t include your senior years when you’re not able to go out and do what you want to do. So if you’re in a major right now or if you’re doing something, because your parents want you to get done with something or you feel like it’s a societal expectation to what you’re doing right now and you need a little slap.
You need to wake up because the fact of the matter is you don’t have that much time to do what you want to do in life every day that you wait to do what you want to do that’s a day late, that you’re not able to do Anything in the future, because you’re more free right now than you’ll ever be in your entire life and think about that, like literally tomorrow, you’re less free to do what you want to do.
So it’s very interesting for all of you and something that I’ve found out is: do you have all marketing majors graphic design? Is that pretty much the consensus of this room right now? Because if that’s your major, then you are free to travel the world? You can live from your laptop when we went to Thailand. We were living on about $ 40 a day, and that includes a bungalow on the beach that includes our moped rental.
That includes three Mills that we ate out every day and we were living on an island on the beach and you can work remotely from your computer and make 300 400 hours a day. So you can pay like put money back and travel the world. So, just if you take one thing from this presentation, I want that to be the one thing you take away for sure if you gather some other things along the way cool, but on a lighter note.
So, as you can see here, this is G and I the lovely, miss G in the in the back short for Regina. We travel in this class a Motorhome that we call Atlas. We spend our summers up in Alaska, like you just heard, and in the lower 48 we just kind of bounce around. This upcoming fall we’re transitioning into full-time work through our digital marketing. Through our work with companies, they’ve offered us the opportunity to take their gear.
Go from RV show to RV, show around the country and sell their gear. So now we went from the Alaska work, so in Alaska we had to have a job, because we were at a tipping point. We were spending more than we were actually bringing in. So we had to go to Alaska we’d, worked the tourist season and make a lot of money and then live off the YouTube blog after that. So we’d have a supplemental income and then use our money from the summers to you know kind of break-even for the year and right now we just barely you’re making a little bit more money than we’re spending.
So we’re at this very awesome tipping point. It’S very exciting for us. The presentation today will be a little bit different for those that were here yesterday, because it’ll be a little bit more about how I got started in travel. How I went from you know not really traveling at all to you know just living full-time out of an RV. What I’m going to do right now is show you a quick article. The article I want to show you is when we first got the motorhome.
My personality is just jump into stuff and see what happens. I don’t really think about it too much it’s like. If I want to do it, then I’m going to do it because it’s something inside me told me to do it and then I’m going to figure it out after so we get this motorhome and we’re in Louisiana. At this point, we went from Indiana down south because it was warmer and then we decided to take the scenic route and all of a sudden.
We got on this detour and we had to take this back road and all sudden. This bridge comes up and we’re not exactly sure how tall our RV is, but we know that it’s clearance on the bridge is 13 13 feet 9 inches. So I’ll show you this article real quick. This is just a little snippet from from our travels, you got to see the crowd chapter xlix, so that’s the basis of the blog right there. It’S just our misadventures traveling around in this this class, a Motorhome cuz.
I really don’t know anything about this thing. When I first got, I had no idea how it worked. We kind of learned along the road remember our first campsite. We actually stopped and figured things out. I sat outside for about an hour looking at the manual trying to figure out how to turn things on how to turn things off. We were little stressed that day, but we got it figured out, but now we, you know we’re we’re going along with it and its really helping out the blog is helping on our digital marketing.
But we’ll take a step back here, and this is my hometown of Montezuma Indiana and I don’t know if many of you are from small towns. This is a metropolis of about a thousand people. We have a caution light and you know about five churches in town. That’S about it, but there’s some things that I picked up from this small town that helped me be the person and the person that is just like hey. Let’S, let’s go for it.
If I want to do it, then let’s make it happen. So at the age of nine I was adopted by my grandparents, I was living. You know conditions that weren’t really that good for anybody – and I remember so my earliest memories are from that time, and from that I got the the impression or the idea that positivity can get you through. Anything like I went from a very bad situation to a good situation and that you know that kind of put inside of me this this reality that, when you’re positive, no matter what happens it’s going to be better as long as you stay positive, you go negative If you start going down that road, then you’re not going to get anywhere like you always have to be positive.
Also, it gave me the hard work ethic. So these these fields right here I worked on farms from the age of like nine to I guess my freshman year college. I still came back and helped out a farmer that I worked for and baling hay and detasseling corn will definitely instill a work ethic, especially when I think from you know the younger ages. I was making four dollars an hour, you know, and then it went up from there.
So I got a good work ethic from from this small town and then things progressed. This is a a picture from my first, my first rubber tramping experience as they call it. Traveling around in a vehicle – and this came about – because why was that? Is you after I graduated from my small town high school and went to ISU, which is only about 30 miles up north? I started get this feeling towards the end of my freshman year that I really wanted to get out and see what was out there.
The best way for me to do that was, in my mind, with studying abroad, is actually walking to my communications 101 class, and it was a lovely day like we have outside nice and nice and toasty out there and I sat down, and there was a flyer For studying abroad in Australia knows, I’m at a place sounds pretty warm. So I went to Jenna’s Halperin’s office and then I applied and I had a two-week window to apply and get accepted.
I got accepted right towards the end. I went to Australia. Two major things happen in Australia. The number one thing that happened when I started to go to Australia, I bought a whole new outfit, a bunch of new clothes. I had to roll a bags giant bags and a backpack I paid for extra baggage. I brought everything I brought my xbox. I brought literally everything that I thought would you know I’d need for Australia, which I really did it and I was rolling through in this, the scruffy guy with one backpack he was, he had a big beard, he just smelled horrible.
He walked by me and I just looked back at him. I was like man what’s what’s wrong with that, guy, like what what is going on with him like he needs, he needs some class going on in his life and fast forward to six months later I went to school for four months and then I scheduled my Flight to leave two months after that, so I did a total of six months in Australia, so I was backpacking around and I met some Australian friends and then we went on a camping trip right before I boarded my plane back.
So I hadn’t showered for like three days I had given away all my stuff sold my xbox. I I got a backpack for my British tran1 backpackers backpack and that’s all I had with me. So I’m walking through the airport back at LAX, and I smell horrible, and I literally saw people like doing like one of these, like kind of looking around see what the smell was. It was me because I was just like this – this dirtbag traveller now and I literally left one person and came back another.
That was a big thing that happened in Australia, and I remember it very clearly. I was reading Black Hawk Down is around 2:30 in the morning. I couldn’t sleep on the train and I was sitting there and I heard something on the side of the train. Next to me, it sounded like a like a bolt hitting the side. It was like tinging down the side of the train and I was like man, that’s really weird and the brakes went on really quick.
Everybody kind of jolted up and started looking around and my friend looked at me and he asked me what was going on. It’S like, I don’t know man, I heard something on the outside and I thought something happened with the train. I thought it was broke down and then the announcer came on and said that that we’d actually hit somebody – and I found out later that somebody stepped out in front of the train and committed suicide.
And what we heard was him hitting the side of the train. It was like his body parts hitting the train and I was just like holy crap. They had to stop the train, the bus came and got us and we were going into Melbourne. Australia – and I remember it was rush hour during the morning – and I was on this bus just like kind of I hadn’t slept, I’m kind of out of it and I started looking at the people in the cars going to work late.
Just had this look on their face like they were just out of it like they were just in this little zombie mode, and I was just looking at him and I remember very clearly, there’s a blonde woman with blue eyes and a ponytail and just a look On her face, I at that moment and people can look back at their lives and see moments like just like that that really changed their perspective and the way they view things.
That was a big one. For me, it’s like I am never going to do that. I’M not going to be a person, that’s doing something. They hate like working a job. They hate to buy things, they don’t need. So Australia was a big turning point for me and then after I, graduated oops must have pressed the button. Sorry after I graduated I bought this van on eBay for 1,800 bucks had a hundred and eighty thousand miles on it.
I actually won the auction over in the in the packaging lab over there at the School of Technology. I almost fell over backwards out of my seat. I was so excited when I finally won it, and then I I took out all the seats I put the bed back, but a futon mattress built some cabinets and threw a bunch of food in there and drove her out my dog for a month and a Half – and that was the reason why I did that was – is because you can travel very cheaply in a vehicle you pay for your gas, you can buy cheap food and you don’t pay for anywhere to stay.
I was saying in Walmart parking lots. I’Ve staying in you know anywhere, I’m staying in town and you know neighborhoods, because you’re in a van nobody’s really going to mess with you, and that was the first time that I actually had a the the realization that I could go out there and travel and Do it cheaply and see a lot of the world
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