- Joined
- Jan 28, 2007
- Messages
- 1,236
I woke up Friday morning, sick as a dog. Irritatingly, I had already booked the day off work, and today (Monday) is a holiday here, so obviously I was not going to be hanging around sick in civilization!
I packed up the truck with help from my lovely assistant Erin, and off we drove to an area south of Princeton, BC.
I was expecting the road in to be pretty clear, as I'd heard my dad had been through the area a few weeks earlier. He likes clearing roads and building up fording spots on rivers and streams, so I expected to be able to cruise right in to the end of the long-deactivated logging road. Surprisingly, though, no one had been in there yet this year. I didn't have any trouble crossing the streams with my truck, but there were a lot of trees blocking the way in. I don't care for chainsaw noise so I went to work with the axe - in this case a solid little Agdor Bruks. It's a small axe, probably the size most guys have for cutting wood for the fire - a 2 pound head on a 24" handle. The handle is a good grained hickory, and the head is a very good general-purpose shape. It is neither a limbing axe nor a splitting axe, more like a small felling axe. It cuts very well.
Like all my axes, it is sharp enough to comfortably shave your face with. I didn't count, but I would say a foot-thick pine drying over the winter and spring takes me about thirty strokes. There was quite a bit of that over the last half-mile, prior to that it was more like 4-6" trees. They only take a few swings.
Success! You will notice that I have been chopping overhead...a bit sketchy and requires quite a bit of care! I keep it slow so that I can catch the axe in the event of a miss or a cut straight through the wood.
Well worth it at the end of the road, though! The book I am reading is one of my favourites: "From Log to Log House." It is a Swedish textbook on log construction, I like to read it while out in the bush.
Also a popular spot with the assistant + dog.
Here was a little knife project: cut some sticks for the shishkabobs! I used the Scrapyard Guard to chop off the branches, and the Gene Ingram Lacer to do the rest. I tried using the Guard to peel and carve one of the sticks...forget it. I am going to reprofile the guard and properly sharpen it...it came fairly dull, actually. It would take hair off your arm, but not particularly well. After I get it thinned down a bit and sharpened, I'll see how I like it. Right now, I find it pretty clumsy and overall I am not very impressed with it. The main reason I carry it around is the excellent sheath, which is just too good to leave behind. Who made the sheath? Normark, of course, of OnScene Tactical. If it weren't for the sheath I don't think I'd bother with the knife at all. Still, since I have the killer sheath for it, I think it's worth working on to try to turn it in to a good user.I didn't think to take any "display" pics of my knives as I have never been a collector of anything - I just spend a lot of time in the bush and use a lot of edged tools.
Anyway the Gene Ingram is incredible. I never spent so much on a knife as the Lacer...now I would happily spend it all over again for another Gene Ingram. I love the little thing. So here are the kebobs, courtesy the lovely assistant:
I like them.
But I predict this pic will be more popular anyway, even though the message is the same:
Note 1 sleeping bag for the girl, one for me, and a little one in the middle for the dog. AW!
Well, other than that it's pretty much just cheesecake bikini shots, and I know nobody wants to see those!
One last note - in general, I probably wouldn't have too much to do with a little barbecue thing. I just cook stuff on fires, myself. But Erin suggested we take it and I ended up being glad we did. Obviously you wouldn't hike one anywhere, but for drive in camping, it was very handy. I lit all our campfires in there, and I found I could light a very small fire very easily, and that even at night, when it was around ten degrees, we could comfortably sit very close to it, and get plenty of heat from it. (this was an issue for me, because I felt cold and achy all weekend, and for Erin, because she runs around half naked all the time.) Furthermore, it really reduced my concerns about starting forest fires. One of the big concerns here is catching roots on fire underground - they will smoulder away for ages without giving any sign of the fire, then one day, wham, forest fire. But with the raised barbecue, we didn't have much to worry about. So I lit all the fires there, and was quite pleased.
I packed up the truck with help from my lovely assistant Erin, and off we drove to an area south of Princeton, BC.
I was expecting the road in to be pretty clear, as I'd heard my dad had been through the area a few weeks earlier. He likes clearing roads and building up fording spots on rivers and streams, so I expected to be able to cruise right in to the end of the long-deactivated logging road. Surprisingly, though, no one had been in there yet this year. I didn't have any trouble crossing the streams with my truck, but there were a lot of trees blocking the way in. I don't care for chainsaw noise so I went to work with the axe - in this case a solid little Agdor Bruks. It's a small axe, probably the size most guys have for cutting wood for the fire - a 2 pound head on a 24" handle. The handle is a good grained hickory, and the head is a very good general-purpose shape. It is neither a limbing axe nor a splitting axe, more like a small felling axe. It cuts very well.
Like all my axes, it is sharp enough to comfortably shave your face with. I didn't count, but I would say a foot-thick pine drying over the winter and spring takes me about thirty strokes. There was quite a bit of that over the last half-mile, prior to that it was more like 4-6" trees. They only take a few swings.
Success! You will notice that I have been chopping overhead...a bit sketchy and requires quite a bit of care! I keep it slow so that I can catch the axe in the event of a miss or a cut straight through the wood.
Well worth it at the end of the road, though! The book I am reading is one of my favourites: "From Log to Log House." It is a Swedish textbook on log construction, I like to read it while out in the bush.
Also a popular spot with the assistant + dog.
Here was a little knife project: cut some sticks for the shishkabobs! I used the Scrapyard Guard to chop off the branches, and the Gene Ingram Lacer to do the rest. I tried using the Guard to peel and carve one of the sticks...forget it. I am going to reprofile the guard and properly sharpen it...it came fairly dull, actually. It would take hair off your arm, but not particularly well. After I get it thinned down a bit and sharpened, I'll see how I like it. Right now, I find it pretty clumsy and overall I am not very impressed with it. The main reason I carry it around is the excellent sheath, which is just too good to leave behind. Who made the sheath? Normark, of course, of OnScene Tactical. If it weren't for the sheath I don't think I'd bother with the knife at all. Still, since I have the killer sheath for it, I think it's worth working on to try to turn it in to a good user.I didn't think to take any "display" pics of my knives as I have never been a collector of anything - I just spend a lot of time in the bush and use a lot of edged tools.
Anyway the Gene Ingram is incredible. I never spent so much on a knife as the Lacer...now I would happily spend it all over again for another Gene Ingram. I love the little thing. So here are the kebobs, courtesy the lovely assistant:
I like them.
But I predict this pic will be more popular anyway, even though the message is the same:
Note 1 sleeping bag for the girl, one for me, and a little one in the middle for the dog. AW!
Well, other than that it's pretty much just cheesecake bikini shots, and I know nobody wants to see those!
One last note - in general, I probably wouldn't have too much to do with a little barbecue thing. I just cook stuff on fires, myself. But Erin suggested we take it and I ended up being glad we did. Obviously you wouldn't hike one anywhere, but for drive in camping, it was very handy. I lit all our campfires in there, and I found I could light a very small fire very easily, and that even at night, when it was around ten degrees, we could comfortably sit very close to it, and get plenty of heat from it. (this was an issue for me, because I felt cold and achy all weekend, and for Erin, because she runs around half naked all the time.) Furthermore, it really reduced my concerns about starting forest fires. One of the big concerns here is catching roots on fire underground - they will smoulder away for ages without giving any sign of the fire, then one day, wham, forest fire. But with the raised barbecue, we didn't have much to worry about. So I lit all the fires there, and was quite pleased.
