Thank you so much for commenting back Ethan, you are definitely an inspiration to me. You must be very proud of all this!
And I have been thinking about getting some wood handles, not sure yet. How is the grip?
Anddd, the story.. Well, my brother and I had decided to go "explore" and take a hike wayyyy out in the desert, and we are in NM so every once in awhile we get a bad snowstorm during the winter season. It was snowy but we thought we knew our way back, then out if nowhere a snowstorm hit us, and you couldn't see ten feet in front of you. Neither of us had jackets nor boots. Just shirts and regular tenni shoes. I didn't expect to be staying out there, nor expect to get lost. So we went out not prepared whatsoever. I was younger and dumber, and I had some but not a lot if bushcraft/ survival experience. We had brought my Bk2 and my E-tool, and only for the reason to show him my bk2 could chop for a smaller knife, he didn't understand at the time. I was very lucky I brought it. Because eventually we got lost, and it got really, really cold.. We walked at night for ten hours to keep moving... thinking we could find our way out, but of course, we managed to walk deeper into the desert. We got to the point that we couldn't feel our fingers or toes, and I could feel my core getting real cold. So finally in our delirious mindsets, we decide to try and wait it out, and make a fire. Well just our luck, my brother being a smoker didn't bring his lighter.. That was very bad on our morale when we realized he didn't have it. I had practiced a few friction fires, but basically sucked at it, and EVERYTHING was covered in snow and wet. I used the E-tool to basically pound my Bk2 into a dead standing tree, and split it to get some kind of dry wood. I split out a straight enough peice of dead cedar to carve into a sort of round shape to make a hand drill. Literally everything for this fire was made from the inside of the one cedar tree, and the incredible toughness of the bk2. Doing this literally kept my brother and I alive, because we stayed moving, even though we were so tired we could fall asleep standing. Which was hypothermia talking. I don't know why it worked, out how. But after using my numb hands trying not to fall over and sleep, for probably an hour, I got a freaking coal. I IMEDIATELY got some source of energy and excitement driving me to get that fire started. And I got it started all right. My brother had never had a look like that on his face, it chokes me up to this day how happy he was when I blew the fire into flame.. Because he knew we could die. Funny thing was he was the strong one. Before I got that fire, he had to basically carry me for the last bit we walked. Because I was falling unconscious standing. All I remember thinking about, was hot food. I can tell you one thing about hypothermia, your mind going crazy is the worst part. I was seeing lights that weren't there, talking about food the whole time. It was horrible. But, with us layin next to the raging fire I made, we warned up enough to make a horribly made shelter to hold some heat. Ha. All he told me when we were by the fire making sure we didn't fall asleep, was how crazy it was we got this fire. Once the storm blew over, we finally got up and started walking again. At this time it was about 4 in the morning and we walked until six to finally see lights in the distance, and at that point we kinda did a run/stumble all the way there. Got ahold of a phone, and had a friend come get us. It was one of the worse nights of my life, but I learned a lot.
