Random Thought Thread

SharpPancake said:
I went a bit HAM while sharpening my FK2 and scratched the primary bevel. Did anyone tried to repair the stonewash finish at home?
Something like bucket of rocks and shake the blade inside it.
Click to expand...

I've seen homemade tumblers made from a chunk of 4" pvc pipe with threaded caps. Fill with small pea gravel (not rocks) and a quarter cup of windex, wrap in a heavy beach towel and secure the towel with bungee cords. Throw that in the dryer for an hour, no heat.

Do this when the wife/g.f./s.o. is out of the house.

Plan on sharpening for the rest of the weekend.


Or use the $#it outta it and camouflage it with more scratches.
 
Last edited:
I've tried every alternative tumble media. None works very well. It will be scratched to shit and shiny, not even and frosty. I don't recommend it. Use the real deal or don't bother. Also, this is Delta 3V at HRC 60.5 with a ton of vanadium carbide. A dinky little tumbler doesn't have enough energy to do the job very well. If you don't need hearing protection just to be around it, it probably isn't going to work.

Deep scratches won't tumble out very well. Sometimes a knife needs a light finish grind before tumbling or the flaws are still there.

I recommend using the knife and don't worry about some scratches. Trying to keep a tool pristine will just prevent you from using it and enjoying it for what it really is.
 
co556guy said:
More like industrial forestry is a different monkey than management of natural forests, with the side benefit of not being run by a mob of lawyers.

There is no "get it all" outcome for the US. We can choose to manage for many uses, if we accept impacts. We can manage with the intent to preserve, but even our national parks (which use a preservational attitude) are still being managed to maintain how they are now, instead of the range of variability nature demands.

Another good example is rivers. They naturally flood, meander, move, etc. Humans hate that. We hate floods, we hate it when our structures built on floodplains are now in the channel, we hate it. Yet we like fertile land, and we like having water.

So, we create a channel, line it in concrete and run it in a straight line.

Outcome: higher water velocity, fish population takes a hit, and we remove small floods (but we take out all resilience, so big floods are way worse on us) and we lose deposition of nutrents on those fertile lands near rivers.

Then we are forced to create other solutions to solve the problems we created in an effort to outthink nature, but we only end up making things worse, less stable over time and give ourselves a false sense of stability in the short term.

Humans are smart. We modify our world to fit our wants. That is OK, but we also don't like paying our bills when they come due.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Ok, but is there some reason that a YUGE country like the USA (3.8 million sq. mi.) does not have sufficient "industral forestry" to satisfy its firewood needs without literally going to a teeny tiny country like Estonia (17,000 sq. mi) and shipping firewood (firewood!) on a ship at least 4000 miles across the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the USA? Just does not make any sense to me - I'm still missing something.
 
The Amazing Virginian said:
Thanks.

Ok, but is there some reason that a YUGE country like the USA (3.8 million sq. mi.) does not have sufficient "industral forestry" to satisfy its firewood needs without literally going to a teeny tiny country like Estonia (17,000 sq. mi) and shipping firewood (firewood!) on a ship at least 4000 miles across the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the USA? Just does not make any sense to me - I'm still missing something.
Click to expand...

Not profitable enough. Labor alone here is atrocious in comparison to other countries due to a variety of reasons (not making a value judgement here, but labor in the US is expensive, as is the land to do agricultiure.

There's a reason we grow what we grow. Combo of conditions of the area and expected profit of a given crop.

Even fast growing trees are slow in comparison to corn or soy or whatever. Add in farm bill subsidies, and land for industrial forestry is just an unwise investment.

In many cases, natural forests cannot provide cheap enough wood to get a crew to even cut it, with no investment in the maturation at all and almost free sales of trees on federal land.

That's not even counting the Endagnered Species Act issues occurring on the O&C lands in oregon and california that are reserved for timber sales......spotted owl habitat causing a lawsuit from environmental groups.
 
Last edited:
My mother had a beautiful white oak forest on her farm. We were told the average age of a tree on it was over 150 years old. It was a huge stand of old trees with a canopy almost 100' high that you really only see in this part of the south. It was glorious and it produced copious amounts of delicious white oak acorns that kept the deer fat and happy and made for great hunting and the best venison. Tasty squirrels too. It was a great place to hunt and to just spend time in the woods, I loved it.

Someone convinced her that the timber was too old and she needed to clear cut it. And the house needed a new roof, so she sold it to them and they cut it all down. It made me sick. Something that really struck me was they cut it all down, removed the best of it and left the rest stacked in huge piles to rot. It wasn't even worth hauling out. Mom got about 15K for the roof and a patch of ragweed you can see from outer space. My kids are 14 and 16 and won't ever get to hunt the woods that I did which is a shame, it was quite lovely.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
My mother had a beautiful white oak forest on her farm. We were told the average age of a tree on it was over 150 years old. It was a huge stand of old trees with a canopy almost 100' high that you really only see in this part of the south. It was glorious and it produced copious amounts of delicious white oak acorns that kept the deer fat and happy and made for great hunting and the best venison. Tasty squirrels too. It was a great place to hunt and to just spend time in the woods, I loved it.

Someone convinced her that the timber was too old and she needed to clear cut it. And the house needed a new roof, so she sold it to them and they cut it all down. It made me sick. Something that really struck me was they cut it all down, removed the best of it and left the rest stacked in huge piles to rot. It wasn't even worth hauling out. Mom got about 15K for the roof and a patch of ragweed you can see from outer space. My kids are 14 and 16 and won't ever get to hunt the woods that I did which is a shame, it was quite lovely.
Click to expand...

I know that feel. My family has forested land in the rockies, several cabins....one built by my grandparents by hand back in the 50s. Lots of memories. Hunting, building, whatever.

Forest fire came through and burnt everything down. It will heal, but the land that I grew up working, hunting, etc will never be the same for my lifetime.

These are the exact issues that lead to making decisions that aren't purely scientifically sound.......science is a guide, not a decision.

When I talk about the science of of these things, that's one side. Emotional connection, memories, human experience......that's part of it too.

I get it. Seeing my family land still brings me to tears because of my very personal connection.....and I am fairly knowledgeable on the science of why it isn't actually bad in a natural sense......

There's lots of sides to these things. None are inherently wrong either.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
My mother had a beautiful white oak forest on her farm. We were told the average age of a tree on it was over 150 years old. It was a huge stand of old trees with a canopy almost 100' high that you really only see in this part of the south. It was glorious and it produced copious amounts of delicious white oak acorns that kept the deer fat and happy and made for great hunting and the best venison. Tasty squirrels too. It was a great place to hunt and to just spend time in the woods, I loved it.

Someone convinced her that the timber was too old and she needed to clear cut it. And the house needed a new roof, so she sold it to them and they cut it all down. It made me sick. Something that really struck me was they cut it all down, removed the best of it and left the rest stacked in huge piles to rot. It wasn't even worth hauling out. Mom got about 15K for the roof and a patch of ragweed you can see from outer space. My kids are 14 and 16 and won't ever get to hunt the woods that I did which is a shame, it was quite lovely.
Click to expand...
that is truly sad as hell :(
 
If you all want to welcome folks of all walks of life into the great knife community we have here, its time to revisit using retarded as a slur or as the butt of the joke.

I know it can seem like all in good fun and my intent here is not to police the forums. But a lot of my friends and many kids I work with have retardation as a clinical condition, and they are great people. So when you say retarded and you mean it as something funny because it is stupid or slow, it is because we associate those things with people who do have retardation. But many of those folks are not stupid or slow, or the butt of anyone's joke, even though they are retarded by definition.

And it can be difficult for them to speak up when they feel like people don't see them or want to be around them. But I want to be around them and I'd like to introduce you to them and welcome them here - so let's consider moving on from it. Fact of the matter is it stings a bit for many people who I think all of you would want around participating in the hobby/business/camaraderie of BF & CPK.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top