Cougar Allen
Buccaneer (ret.)
- Joined
- Oct 9, 1998
- Messages
- 72,921
Stupid Ideas
One day I was out walking in the woods with some friends when one of my companions stopped to cut herself a staff. She had some difficulty with it and told the rest of us to go on; she'd catch up with us ... after a few minutes we got to wondering what was taking her so long, and I went back to investigate. She was sawing at the sapling with the sawteeth on the back of a hollow-handle survival knife -- I don't know what brand, but it was cheap. (She's always buying cheap knives and I'm always kidding her about it....) She had been sawing away at it so hard and so long she was drenched with sweat and she was cursing a blue streak -- hadn't got through more than half an inch of it yet. I asked if I could help and she told me to go away and leave her alone and cursed me for a while -- still sawing away at the sapling. I just stood there and watched. It wasn't ironwood, only a striped maple sapling. It certainly wasn't lack of effort; I could see that much. I couldn't figure it out.
She was working so hard and accomplishing so little it struck me as funny. I don't think I laughed out loud; I was trying not to anyway, but I might have smiled a little.... Finally she stood up, handed me the knife, and said, "All right, if you think it's so funny you cut the #*%@& thing!" I didn't immediately; I looked at the knife first and burst out laughing. It was a ripsaw.
Some of you may not know much about carpentry.... There are two kinds of woodsaw: a crosscut saw is made for cutting across the grain and a ripsaw is made for cutting with the grain, which carpenters call "ripping." The teeth are different. You can use a crosscut saw to rip with and it'll only be a little messy, but you can't use a ripsaw to cut across the grain with -- it won't work any better than a file.
Have you ever seen such a stupid idea as a ripsaw on the back of a survival knife? All right, maybe some of you didn't know the difference before I explained it, but if you were going to design a survival knife and go into mass production with it wouldn't you look into it first and learn something about saws and choose a tooth design that could cut through a sapling in less than half an hour???
Something reminded me of that story and I got to thinking I should start a thread on stupid ideas. We could include multi-tools as well as knives; I've seen some pretty useless designs there.... I have another one in mind but I'll save it for later, let somebody else have a turn now.
-Cougar Allen :{)
One day I was out walking in the woods with some friends when one of my companions stopped to cut herself a staff. She had some difficulty with it and told the rest of us to go on; she'd catch up with us ... after a few minutes we got to wondering what was taking her so long, and I went back to investigate. She was sawing at the sapling with the sawteeth on the back of a hollow-handle survival knife -- I don't know what brand, but it was cheap. (She's always buying cheap knives and I'm always kidding her about it....) She had been sawing away at it so hard and so long she was drenched with sweat and she was cursing a blue streak -- hadn't got through more than half an inch of it yet. I asked if I could help and she told me to go away and leave her alone and cursed me for a while -- still sawing away at the sapling. I just stood there and watched. It wasn't ironwood, only a striped maple sapling. It certainly wasn't lack of effort; I could see that much. I couldn't figure it out.
She was working so hard and accomplishing so little it struck me as funny. I don't think I laughed out loud; I was trying not to anyway, but I might have smiled a little.... Finally she stood up, handed me the knife, and said, "All right, if you think it's so funny you cut the #*%@& thing!" I didn't immediately; I looked at the knife first and burst out laughing. It was a ripsaw.
Some of you may not know much about carpentry.... There are two kinds of woodsaw: a crosscut saw is made for cutting across the grain and a ripsaw is made for cutting with the grain, which carpenters call "ripping." The teeth are different. You can use a crosscut saw to rip with and it'll only be a little messy, but you can't use a ripsaw to cut across the grain with -- it won't work any better than a file.
Have you ever seen such a stupid idea as a ripsaw on the back of a survival knife? All right, maybe some of you didn't know the difference before I explained it, but if you were going to design a survival knife and go into mass production with it wouldn't you look into it first and learn something about saws and choose a tooth design that could cut through a sapling in less than half an hour???
Something reminded me of that story and I got to thinking I should start a thread on stupid ideas. We could include multi-tools as well as knives; I've seen some pretty useless designs there.... I have another one in mind but I'll save it for later, let somebody else have a turn now.
-Cougar Allen :{)
