- Joined
- Aug 7, 2003
- Messages
- 3,330
Since I have "can palm a basketball" sized mitts, my favorite RAT is currently the RC-6.
Yesterday I was using mine to cut apart a large inflatable pool that my dog had wrecked with her nails trying to jump into it last week.
Sorry, no pics, because it was raining and my cameras are not butch.
Long story short, I tasked my seven year old to help me out and gave him an RC-4 to deflate the inflatable ring and cut it off of the pool while I salvaged the floor to use as a woodpile cover.
We took the sheaths out back but weren't wearing them, so I asked my son to put them someplace they wouldn't get trampled.
In his seven year old manner, he placed both sheaths vertically on the pool ladder so that they leaned against the handrails and wouldn't fall over.
At the end of the job I went to retrieve the RC-6 sheath. I noticed it had filled with rain water because some paracord had blocked the drain slit of the sheath. The RC-4's had drained normally as it wasn't blocked up.
Anyways, I was impressed that this obviously two pieced sheath held water like a cup when its drain hole was blocked, so in a combination of fascination and boredom, I took the sheaths inside to experiment.
Indeed, with the drain hole blocked, the sheath holds water with no appreciable side drainage. For the record it holds a decent mouthful of water.
This is not a totally useless "feature." I could easily imagine someone being trapped on a ledge, which happens here enough to be at least a once every other year occurrence to someone, where catchment might be the only water available to the stranded. By blocking the drain hole and propping up the empty sheath, you at least have a passive, "always on" catchment system for rainwater. Also, one could catch water from a rivulet going down a cliff face that might be out of reach of a straw and works better than a cupped hand if the sheath is the only container one has.
FWIW, the RC-4 sheath, due to its different "folded over" construction, is looser at the bottom, and would not reliably hold water with just the drain hole blocked.
There, a not totally useless fun fact about the new RC-6.
Yesterday I was using mine to cut apart a large inflatable pool that my dog had wrecked with her nails trying to jump into it last week.
Sorry, no pics, because it was raining and my cameras are not butch.
Long story short, I tasked my seven year old to help me out and gave him an RC-4 to deflate the inflatable ring and cut it off of the pool while I salvaged the floor to use as a woodpile cover.
We took the sheaths out back but weren't wearing them, so I asked my son to put them someplace they wouldn't get trampled.
In his seven year old manner, he placed both sheaths vertically on the pool ladder so that they leaned against the handrails and wouldn't fall over.
At the end of the job I went to retrieve the RC-6 sheath. I noticed it had filled with rain water because some paracord had blocked the drain slit of the sheath. The RC-4's had drained normally as it wasn't blocked up.
Anyways, I was impressed that this obviously two pieced sheath held water like a cup when its drain hole was blocked, so in a combination of fascination and boredom, I took the sheaths inside to experiment.
Indeed, with the drain hole blocked, the sheath holds water with no appreciable side drainage. For the record it holds a decent mouthful of water.
This is not a totally useless "feature." I could easily imagine someone being trapped on a ledge, which happens here enough to be at least a once every other year occurrence to someone, where catchment might be the only water available to the stranded. By blocking the drain hole and propping up the empty sheath, you at least have a passive, "always on" catchment system for rainwater. Also, one could catch water from a rivulet going down a cliff face that might be out of reach of a straw and works better than a cupped hand if the sheath is the only container one has.
FWIW, the RC-4 sheath, due to its different "folded over" construction, is looser at the bottom, and would not reliably hold water with just the drain hole blocked.
There, a not totally useless fun fact about the new RC-6.
