- Joined
- May 1, 2013
- Messages
- 844
So I thought I'd give a little account of my late afternoon with my Fiddie (stealing this from Thurin) Bushcrafter this afternoon. My girl is away for the next three weeks as she's serving in a missionary in Tanzania, so I have the next three weekends to myself. Woohoo!
Work was very stressful this week (then again, it's always stressful), so I decided to leave work early around 4 today, and drive over to a local park for some mickey mouse scouting (which in this case was to go off the trails in search of a new personal space, essentially a place in the woods I like to designate as a safe haven for practicing bushcraft...primary criteria being isolated and abundant in natural resources). The park is only about 15 minutes from my house. It's a fairly small park, long and narrow park dissected by a river along its length, but it has a very small number of hiking trails (and some horse trails), so ideal for me to wander around and explore.
The Bushcrafter is my primary bushcraft blade for at least the first half of this Spring, so I've been tinkering at home to determine the proper edge grind for my purposes. I essentially ended up extending the secondary bevel to about 2.5 times it's original height (sorry, no before picture). Please excuse the face of Tony Horton...started P90X3 this week....
And of course Mr. Bushcrafter was wonderful (cherry crotchwood over some natural linens, 1/8" tapered tang, yaddy yadda yadda~), a pleasure to work with as I messed around with some feather sticks. Just like any knife, I wished for a small number of things to be different to suit me better personally, but at the end of the day, I found the Bushcrafter to be well balanced, wieldy, and just breathtaking to look at as I carved this fallen sapling up.
When it comes to critical tools, I'm a fan of the saying "two is one, one is none." Hence, in addition to my primary cutting tool, I typically have an axe (size varying pending season and the nature of the outing), handsaw, MT, and a jack/trapper knife (this one only comes with me when I'm trapping, which is rare). Today, I brought my Gransfors Bruks Outdoor Axe, which is essentially a hatchet with incredible splitting power for its size, AND also carves pretty damn well!
So I had a pretty good ~3 hour outing. The sun was setting, and my body was asking for some party in my tummy (how easily forgetting that I went on a healthy diet starting this week), which meant time to walk back to the car.
That's when the second half of this story began. Was about 10 minutes from my car, passed a couple who was necking pretty heavily by a trail (they probably thought they were alone) and their dog who was playing by the river, wet, and muddy, decided to greet me with such alacrity that my pants got covered in mud. What can I say, dogs love me..... I'll spare you by not showing you how dirty my behind was.
Luckily, my new canine friend didn't hurt my fiddie as I shielded it with my right arm, resulting in some scratches. So rejoice my friends!
The final dilemma was how the heck am I going to drive back home without ruining the interior of my car? I unzipped the pant legs off, but I was still dirty....
Then I remembered, two is one, one is none, and remembered I had a pair of my jeans in the passenger's seat!
So the day is near the end, and I thank my God for once again watching over me throughout the week, and allowing me to rejoice in his wonderful creation, and to share my experience with my friends
Josh
Work was very stressful this week (then again, it's always stressful), so I decided to leave work early around 4 today, and drive over to a local park for some mickey mouse scouting (which in this case was to go off the trails in search of a new personal space, essentially a place in the woods I like to designate as a safe haven for practicing bushcraft...primary criteria being isolated and abundant in natural resources). The park is only about 15 minutes from my house. It's a fairly small park, long and narrow park dissected by a river along its length, but it has a very small number of hiking trails (and some horse trails), so ideal for me to wander around and explore.
The Bushcrafter is my primary bushcraft blade for at least the first half of this Spring, so I've been tinkering at home to determine the proper edge grind for my purposes. I essentially ended up extending the secondary bevel to about 2.5 times it's original height (sorry, no before picture). Please excuse the face of Tony Horton...started P90X3 this week....
And of course Mr. Bushcrafter was wonderful (cherry crotchwood over some natural linens, 1/8" tapered tang, yaddy yadda yadda~), a pleasure to work with as I messed around with some feather sticks. Just like any knife, I wished for a small number of things to be different to suit me better personally, but at the end of the day, I found the Bushcrafter to be well balanced, wieldy, and just breathtaking to look at as I carved this fallen sapling up.
When it comes to critical tools, I'm a fan of the saying "two is one, one is none." Hence, in addition to my primary cutting tool, I typically have an axe (size varying pending season and the nature of the outing), handsaw, MT, and a jack/trapper knife (this one only comes with me when I'm trapping, which is rare). Today, I brought my Gransfors Bruks Outdoor Axe, which is essentially a hatchet with incredible splitting power for its size, AND also carves pretty damn well!
So I had a pretty good ~3 hour outing. The sun was setting, and my body was asking for some party in my tummy (how easily forgetting that I went on a healthy diet starting this week), which meant time to walk back to the car.
That's when the second half of this story began. Was about 10 minutes from my car, passed a couple who was necking pretty heavily by a trail (they probably thought they were alone) and their dog who was playing by the river, wet, and muddy, decided to greet me with such alacrity that my pants got covered in mud. What can I say, dogs love me..... I'll spare you by not showing you how dirty my behind was.
Luckily, my new canine friend didn't hurt my fiddie as I shielded it with my right arm, resulting in some scratches. So rejoice my friends!
The final dilemma was how the heck am I going to drive back home without ruining the interior of my car? I unzipped the pant legs off, but I was still dirty....
Then I remembered, two is one, one is none, and remembered I had a pair of my jeans in the passenger's seat!
So the day is near the end, and I thank my God for once again watching over me throughout the week, and allowing me to rejoice in his wonderful creation, and to share my experience with my friends
Josh
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