Getting intimate with my Lok CAK

Bawanna

Bawanna

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Been getting chilly round these parts of late, not quite as chilly as Aunties neighborhood with the white blanket they now have but damp and chilly non the less.

Wife informed me that the kindling box was getting low so I spent the morning, actually only an hour or less making some more.

Seeing all the threads of folks putting their khuk's to work inspired me to put one of mine to work other than my beloved KLVUK which sees work quite frequently. Actually been thinking about it all week, strange that a man should actually look forward to work. I know I used to back in my youth but not so common in recent times.

At any rate I selected my Chiruwa Ang Kola from the collection board which has now had it's name changed to Tool Rack.
It's a 17'' beautiful beast that's never come in contact with anything but mineral oil and car wax. That is until today.

What an absolute delight! My wrist started to complain for a bit early on but then seemed to accept that I wasn't stopping, I was having fun and it might just as well stay with me. It got better. That's of course no fault of the knife, just old, well used and abused arm, wrist and shoulder complaining as guys like me in our prime are allowed to do from time to time.

I didn't get any action photos, hard to do a selfie when you chopping kindling but here's the knife and the results. I'll try harder next time. Granddaughter has arrived for the day so priorities are immediately taken into consideration.

Barely scratched the nice polish and didn't effect the edge at all, and there were a few uncooperative pieces to be dealt with. I'm not one to abuse a tool so in a couple cases a full size axe was used to get it down to CAK manageable size. It could have done it but why bother, I don't feel any less manly for grabbing the axe.






And the resulting couple boxes of fire starter.


Think I'll go give it a little love cleaning and ponder the next project, perhaps at the bench but the sun is showing up and one more lawn mowing might be in order.

I fixed this. This CAk is actually made by Lok, I incorrectly called it Lachu. I have a 12 and a 15 I think by Lachu that will get a work out next time.
 
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Nothing better than seeing a good kukri being put through its paces. They just look better with a little bit of finish wear. You could easily polish out all the scratches with jeweler rouge, but why bother... it looks like a proper work blade now.

Oh... Get rid of that damn Epson inkjet and get yourself a proper laser printer buddy. You will recoup the cost in ink savings the first year. Those little ink cartridges only last 500 pages or so with a 5% density yield on the page. A good laser printer will go 5,000-10,000 pages before needed a new toner. Just a suggestion but its what I do for a living. Let me know if you need a good laser printer and I can point you in the right direction.
 
Took me a spell to figure out how the heck you knew I had an Epson printer?? Thought maybe you planted one of them spybots and was watching me or something. Yup, I'd love to dump the thing, don't like it anyhow. Wife insist on a color printer. Don't use it cept for Christmas letters.
Always seems to be out of one color when we want to print.
Can't even print black if your out of Cyan. What the heck is Cyan anyhow?

I'd like to get one where the paper lays in a flat tray and don't curl up into one of them things the british unroll to read, a scroll?

I got a nice one at work at my desk, don't remember what it is but it fits my criteria, cept it ain't color.

What's your favorite printer bearing in mind my electronically challenged disposition. And cheap, not gonna waste good khukri and gun money on something that just puts words on paper and don't even fix the misspelled ones.
 
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Bawanna said:
Took me a spell to figure out how the heck you knew I had an Epson printer?? Thought maybe you planted one of them spybots and was watching me or something. Yup, I'd love to dump the thing, don't like it anyhow. Wife insist on a color printer. Don't use it cept for Christmas letters.
Always seems to be out of one color when we want to print.
Can't even print black if your out of Cyan. What the heck is Cyan anyhow?

I'd like to get one where the paper lays in a flat tray and don't curl up into one of them things the british unroll to read, a scroll?

I got a nice one at work at my desk, don't remember what it is but it fits my criteria, cept it ain't color.

What's your favorite printer bearing in mind my electronically challenged disposition. And cheap, not gonna waste good khukri and gun money on something that just puts words on paper and don't even fix the misspelled ones.
Click to expand...

The ones that stay flat are generally officejets, but they tend to use ink faster, and are more expensive.

There are laserjets, which use tone. Toner last longer, but can also be expensive. There are color laserjets now as well, whereas they used to be mainly black and white.

All ink cartridges, or toner, can be bought on Amazon with compatbile cartridges, that are cheaper than the name brand stuff.

I use a HP Officejet Pro 8600 AIO, which is my color printer, copier, fax, and scanner. I also have a Brother 2270DW black and white laser printer for my large print jobs. I buy all of my compatible cartridges off Amazon, I never buy the brand name stuff, too expensive.
 
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Bawanna said:
Took me a spell to figure out how the heck you knew I had an Epson printer?? Thought maybe you planted one of them spybots and was watching me or something.
Click to expand...

By the way, did you realize your car's tailpipe is dragging? Thought I'd let you know. ;)
 
It's fun to see how threads unexpectedly go off the rails! BTW, I've only had my printer for a year, and yet it's more economical to replace it next time the ink runs out rather than by more ink. Hmm....

Nice work Bawanna! Good to see some scuffs on the finish of that fine blade!
 
I know we got wayyy off topic. Sorry Mr. B

OH... and about your paper curling. This is due to humidity in the air. I bet some times you see wrinkles across the entire page. You have to much moisture or your paper, or it is being stored improperly. Store the paper near a heater vent or some other dry place.

Yeah they sell those inkjets at their cost to build just to get you to buy the damn inks. Watch out for remanufactured cartridges!!! The monochrome/black and white stuff is ok, but color remanufactured toner is notoriously bad.

A laserjet might have an initial high cost around $500 or so for a HP476, but the toners will last months to years on a single set compared to weeks on "inkjet"

HP476 is a great machine. I have sold dozens of then and have them installed at many of my customers locations. These include car dealerships, banks, realtors, ect... all super high volume people who would dream of owning an inkjet.

An inkjet will cost you hundreds of dollars more in the long run. Just some advice from a printer/copier/fax IT specialist. I usually recommend Canon copiers and HP printers. Both companies are owned by the same people and they excel at software interface and color imaging. Stay away from the Sharps and Kyocera's. Ricoh makes a nice product, although expensive. Konica Minolta is hit or miss depending of their model. Anything over $5k is good, but their cheaper copiers suck. I can usually get low meter Canons that retail for $15k for around $4k. These are low meter lease or repossessed multi functions.

Ok enough with the geek talk :D
 
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GB, I don't know about anyone else, but geek talk is my language :)

TC, I have absolutely done the same thing replacing the printer instead of the cartridge. When it's the same cost or cheaper, I don't see why anyone would do it differently!

Bawanna, I do like that blade, and I love seeing khuks put to use. A dirty khuk is a pretty khuk in my book! I still have yet to add an AK or CAK to my collection, but they're near the top of my list now. We'll see which comes first, but I'm thinkin 15-16" since I like my 15" BAS so much.
 
I see these post as a conversation between friends so as long as the original poster is ok with it, it's fine and dandy.

Geek talk isn't my language but it's the world we live in.

I remember the counsellors when I was in rehab following the wall incident wanted me to learn to be a computer programmer, I told em I'd rather suck out septic tanks with a straw.

I'd be totally depressed without a computer being near deaf, it's a way to stay in touch and we wouldn't have the HI forum without it but I don't care why or how it does what it does long as it does what I want when I want which sometimes can be a rare thing for a computer dumbhead like me.
 
Bawanna said:
I see these post as a conversation between friends so as long as the original poster is ok with it, it's fine and dandy.

Geek talk isn't my language but it's the world we live in.

I remember the counsellors when I was in rehab following the wall incident wanted me to learn to be a computer programmer, I told em I'd rather suck out septic tanks with a straw.

I'd be totally depressed without a computer being near deaf, it's a way to stay in touch and we wouldn't have the HI forum without it but I don't care why or how it does what it does long as it does what I want when I want which sometimes can be a rare thing for a computer dumbhead like me.
Click to expand...

:thumbup: That was so well said, I couldn't say it any better.
 
LoL, Just to throw another Geek POV in there. LaserJets are incredible for printing docs absolutely nothing better if you do a lot of printing of text document type things. Do NOT use them to print photos, you will not get a good result. The way they mix the color toners does not give you true photo quality colors and your people will turn out speckl-ie. Which is why I have 2 printers 1 is a laserjet for my letters and reports and the other is a Epson Stylus R2000 for the photos. If I spend hours in Photoshop adjusting the lighting and curves and contrasts, I am not printing it on something that makes it look like one of those old newspaper comic pages with all the colored dots supposedly blending in my eye to an even color tone.

By the way, Great job turning tree chunks into nice even sized kindling Bawanna. Always good to see a CAK being used for more than the wall decoration mine khuks seem to have become lately. Going to have to go out and find a fireplace to chop some kindling for and put some good honest work marks on my khuks AND myself soon. ;)
 
That looked like fun too me! Great review Mr. B! Still hard to hit a new blade for the first time aint it? That feeling subsides very quickly tho. in lieu of awesome performance. Consider that day of fun the first page in its history book :thumbup:
 
Shavru honey, if you got the time, I got the fireplace................................

Like my wife said last year when we filled the wood shed for the first time in many years, we fill rich when we got a nice big supply of wood.

Lot of work. One of the things I miss a lot is cutting wood in a normal fashion. I still run the chainsaw and split and stuff but don't cut trees down no more, too iffy when it starts falling if I'll be able to get out of the way.

Last fall they put in a new development behind us and changed the road around, actually gained about 30 ft of property since the road was in the wrong place. Anyhow they had to cut accross my driveway for the new drainage and stuff.

I was out cutting on the wood pile with the saw and splitting and such when one of the guys came strolling up. After he asked about our schedule of coming and going so they could dig the ditch we got along ok and he admitted that him and the other fella working with him flipped a coin as to who would come talk to me.

I asked him why that was and he said we been a watching you out here for several days driving back and forth and any dude in a wheelchair doing what you been doing is either crazy or a force to be reckoned with. I told him stick to just crazy, ain't near the man I used to be. I did tell them not to tell that to the county dude that was telling em what to do with my driveway since it wasn't what I wanted them to do and wasn't gonna allow it but that's a whole nuther story.
 
LoL, time? what is that? I think the last time I had time that wasn't accounted for was probably 15-20 years ago back when I was "between jobs" Just to be clear, I am good for wood piles no need to scout out more LoL. While we don't have a fireplace or woodstove in our house there is always the dragon-in-law's wood burning stove to consider. Nothing like good daughter-in-law points for making sure the old dragon has wood to burn as it gets older. I understand exactly missing the tree cutting, I used to go up to the Carbonado area on some friends private land years ago and we would harvest 6-10 trees a year for our wood burning stove. Those were the days, hot cocoa with schnapps, tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches and a full days work cutting them down, lopping limbs, sectioning, loading or splitting when too big then loading. Dang, I am tired just typing it all out :D
 
Guess I better get busy and cut me some wood too. The doghouse is wood fired. No heat otherwise. Weve had a few cool nights but nothing like them pics Aunti posted.
 
Beautiful blade! I hope to get mine soon. Would you say the CAK is good for "light" work like that kindling?
 
I think it worked better than a hatchet once it was down to workable size. Once you get to the small stuff it's more than you need but it still works really fine.

I have a smaller lighter one I plan to try next. I know the big CAK is the ticket on the big chunks and a full size axe to start if the chunks are too big.

Unlike that kid in the recent video taking on full size rounds with his Foxy Folly or possible Trusuli Ghaule, I don't take on the full size rounds with a knife. That's not to say that it couldn't do it, it surely can but for me the axe is quicker and in my case probably a bit safer. I'm not fond of beating on my khuks with a stick of wood (batoning). Do it once in awhile but try to avoid it.
 
Jackal, Not sure if you have read all the stickies on the Main HI forum. There is a lot of info there about proper technique for chopping with a Khuk. If you haven't already read them I highly recommend them while you are waiting for your's to arrive. The proper technique will make it possible to chop and split without wearing out all the moving parts (you, LOL) Then once you get your CAK and just a little practice, you should be making good kindling matchsticks with ease. I mean it doesn't even take too much smarts...even I can do it :D
 
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