Breaking the Silence - Finally More Gear Reviews

So it has been several months since I posted anything and figured it was about time I did so again.  it has been a very busy year and 2014 is already looking to be even busier.  However, I will attempt to post more on here than just once every few months.

This post will be a review of several pieces of gear that I have gathered over the course of months that I took on a recent camping trip to test.  Some of the items I have tested on a smaller scale at home and others got tried for the first time on the camping trip.

Let's get started...

The ESEE Junglas

This was an anniversary present from my wife - it wasn't a surprise as I picked it out. For the record, I ordered her a new set of kitchen cutlery for our anniversary - the Cold Steel Kitchen Classics block set.

When the Junglas arrived I tore open the box like it was Christmas morning, since I was anxious.

One thing I need to say is that this is a big knife! 10.5 inch blade from 1095 steel that is .188 inch thick and a roughly 6 inch Micarta handle around the full tang that is .88 inch thick, and it weighs in at a whopping 22.5 ounces without the sheath. I was concerned about the weight and handle thickness while considering the purchase. But let me say that the handle fits my hands great, and provides plenty of room. And even though it is heavy, it is extremely well balanced (not overly blade heavy), so it actually feels lighter in the hand than it would seem. The blade also came very sharp out of the box - easily shaving hair off of my arm.

The Junglas also came with a factory kydex sheath. Most of the other ESEE knives like the 3, 4, 5, and 6 come with a plastic molded sheath, but the Junglas sheath is a one piece, folded kydex sheath with a Cordura backing that allows for belt carry and is MOLLE compatible. There are also several mounting holes on both sides of the sheath. It is, in my opinion, the best factory kydex sheath I've ever received (still doesn't beat custom, but this makes the need for custom much less).  After receiving the Junglas, I later ordered the MOLLE panel that attaches to the front of the sheath using the mounting holes.  I have not not yet added any additional pouches to the sheath with the MOLLE panel, but I plan to add at least one for a multitool or small first aid or fire making kit.

Overall, even though I really wanted it, but was apprehensive about the size and weight, the ESEE Junglas has surpassed all of my expectations. I even strapped it on my flimsy dress belt with slacks one morning, and it was actually rather comfy - my belt didn't even sag.

A few weeks after receiving the Junglas, I used the blade to put a blunt point onto a dowel of about 2" diameter so that I could drive it into the ground. I did not use the knife to drive the dowel into the ground, but I did use it to produce the dull point on the end of the dowel. It took about 5 minutes to put a relatively even, tapering, dull point on the dowel. The knife did a great job of removing wood shavings from the dowel and was pretty easy on the hands. I was not using gloves and did not end up with any hand fatigue or blisters.  Afterwards, the black powder coating showed only very slight (nearly imperceptible) wear from the cutting, and the edge was still shaving sharp, even on the sections of the blade that saw the most use (easily shaved hair from my arm).

I took the Junglas on my recent camping trip to put it through some more paces, mostly wood pocessing for campfires.  I used the Junglas for batoning or various hardwoods as well as making firestarting wood shavings from the same hardwoods.  The Junglas performed both tasks effortlessly. After processing enough wood to use for four days and three nights of campfires, the Junglas was still shaving sharp on the entire length of the blade!  The black powder coating did show some wear on the spots that did most of the batoning, but that is to be expected.  I just made sure to use a Sentry Solutions Tuff Cloth on the entire blade and a light coat of mineral oil on the exposed areas of the blade when I was done.

Overall, I was highly impressed with the function of this blade.  It is very tough and holds an incredibly sharp edge for a long time! This is my first ESEE product, but it probably won't be my last, even though I am trying to avoid anymore knife purchases for awhile. It is a quality blade and I am sure it will continue to serve its purpose without flaws. ESEE also has a great warranty, just in case.

Lansky Puck

The Lansky Puck is a nice little dual grit sharpening stone for tools.  It is very easy to use since one simply places The Puck on the edge of the tool and uses circular motions along the blade edge alternating sides.  I used this on my axe that hasn't been sharpened since it was purchased a few years ago and has not even been used in over a year.  The edge of the axe was quite dull and stained.  About five minutes with the The Puck put a nice working edge on the axe that made chopping hardwood for firewood much easier.  I will continue to keep The Puck in my pack for use on tools but will continue to sharpen my knife blades with the Spyderco Tri Angle Sharpmaker or field sharpener if the Sharpmaker is not available.

Clothing and Other Gear

For clothing, I will just make some general observations.  The camping trip was in Northern Florida, so it wasn't in the really cold wilderness of the upper States, but it was cold and rainy for Floridians, so the clothing had to be warm and dry.  I pretty much exclusively wore 5.11 Tactical Tac-Lite pants the entire time and found them to be not only warm enough (they are not meant for extreme cold), but also water resistant and held up against the stains and abuse common with camping.

We also wore clothing items in the Under Armour Cold Gear clothing line, which also performed quite well.  I have become quite a fan of Under Armour clothing, especially their Heat Gear line of athtletic apparel for running and other physical fitness activities.  Their Cold Gear items did not disappoint, either.

And of course, there was the US Army surplus M65 Field Jacket.  That jacket kept me warm and dry the entire time.  It didn't even need the liner in it, which is good, because I didn't have one with me.  The one day that I didn't weat the Field Jacket was the warmest, but also wettest day of the trip and my Under Armour hoodie did just fine.

I won't go through the entire list of gear that we took, I only chose to mention those peices that I hadn't had a chance to use extensively yet or that I was most impressed with during the trip.  I also have to give an honorable mention to my trusty Zippo lighter that I had.  It never failed to light when struck and stayed lit long enough to light the kindling of my campfires.

That's it for now, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope to post more on this in 2014 as the year progresses.

No Longer A Caveman

I am attempting to resume periodic posts after my extended period of inactivity on the blog.  My real job has been occupying much of my time over the past few months.

I'm resuming my series of posts on items I believe are necessry to have with you everyday or as frequently as possible (some locations prohibit some of these items).  Please follow all applicable laws when it comes to carrying items like knives, blades, flashlights, and (as you will see today) lighters.

I've already posted on two items that I believe everyone should carry as freqquently as possible (and is legal); a knife or blade of some kind and a flightlight.  The third item of importance is a means to make fire.  In this case, I choose and recommend a lighter.  As the title implies, I don't think it is practical to carry to sticks or a stick and small bow, since technology has allowed us to move past the days of the caveman.  One may then ask, "why not matches?"  Well, matches defeinitely have their place, but I personally find lighters more convenient and useful (unless you are trapped in an unpleasant smelling restroom).

Why fire?  Chances are, you will not need to make a camp fire or a cooking fire, but what if?  What if you need to make a fire for warmth because you are stranded in who knows where on a cold night with poor access or cell coverage?  That is an extreme, of course, but having a way to solve an extreme, perhaps life threatening problem, regardless of how improbable, with something that can easily fit in the pocket seems prudent (at least to me).  Also, flames can be used for several more mundane purposes, like burning strings off clothing (better than pullling on them), or to break the ice or start conversations - there are still people out there that smoke and "need a light".

The types and styles of lighters vary and you can spend anywhere from less than $1 on a lighter to hundreds of dollars.  While the really expesnive lighters may look really nice, you can get by with a cheap $0.75 butane lighter.  I prefer something a little different, myself.

Basically, there are essentially three types of lighters (remember, trying to keep things simple): disposable butane; refillable  butane; and the classic naptha fluid Zippo (TM) type. Also, within the  butane lighters, you can get a standard flame or the blue flame torch.  The first picture has some examples of each type.

The next picture shows them open. The lighter on the far left is a cheap disposable butane lighter.  This will work fine, but has very limited wind or breeze resistance, may or may not have a means to adjust the flame height, and useless for anything other than a spark when it runs out of fuel.  Again, this will work fine, and if it is all you want or can afford, then it will be a good way to produce a flame.

However, I prefer something refillable.  For this, I have two kinds - the traditional Zippo (TM), second to the left, and a Zippo (TM) with a "Z-Plus" butane torch insert.  This way I can still do all the cool tricks with the traditional Zippo (TM), and many, but not all, of them with the butane insert.  The biggest benefits I have found to the butane over the traditional is that the traditional type needs refilling even if not used, since the fluid eventually evaporates, and the blue torch butane gives me a more precise flame when doing paracord projects.

The last lighter pictured is a pocket lighter that takes traditional lighter fluid, but is kept in a sealed, airtight, capsule that prevents evaporation.  Plus, it is small enough to add to my P-7 Suspension Clip in my pocket.  These types of lighters are available from several places - I got mine from Lighthound, but they are also available at BladeHQ and County Comm, along with others like Amazon.  Therefore, with the mini lighter, I will (almost) always have at least one lighter in my pocket.  I try to have at least another Zippo (TM) with me, because of its wind resistance, and they are just plain cool (in my opinion).

I highly recommend having at least a keychain mini lighter, if nothing else.  Again, we are no longer living in the caves, hunting saber-tooth tigers by day and finger painting by night, so we can take advantage of technology and have something much more compact, and reliable, to produce fire than two sticks.  And one final note about matches - matches should be part of your overall kit, but not necessarily your EDC kit.  They do have their uses, just make sure that they are either waterproofed or kept in a waterproofed container (or both for the suspenders and belt crowd out there).

Holy Paracord & Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I thought I would share a picture of some paracord crosses that I made for Christmas gifts.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Christmas.  Please enjoy family, friends, and loved ones, and remember they are real gifts.

Latest Batch of Creations

Here are some remaining recent creations in paracord that were not sold recently.

The third picture is of three monkey fists that are made to float.  The black one was my test case, after making it, I attached a stainless steel split key ring from Lighthound and one common house key.  I put it in a bucket of water for over 24 hours.  It still floated, so I attached another key on a #.5 Nite-Ize S-Biner, it still floated, even after being completely saturated.

The first picture is of some little fobs that I made with spare cord and downtime in the shows.  Three of them have glow-in-the-dark skulls and beads, while the other two use pewter skull beads.

The second picture has some random bracelets that I made, two of them with emergency whistles as the clasp instead of a buckle.  There are buckles with whistles available, but these emergency whistles are louder.  The idea for these bracelets came from a custom request from a paddle boarder.  The woman liked hers so much, she ordered several others for her paddle boarding friends as gifts, those in the picture were extras.

After a series of craft fairs and gun shows, we are going to take a break for awhile.  We have also learned some lessons - gun shows still seem to be hte best venue for these items, with rural craft fairs being a second - urban and suburban craft fairs are not very good.  We never lost any money on any of the venues, but some were just better than others.  Our most recent gun show proved that they are still the best venue, even with other dedicated paracord vendors present at the show, we still did pretty well.  Did we lose out to other vendors, most likely, but competition is great, and forces innovation.  I not only did fairly well with patrons of the show, I also had many vendors come to me for items.  I also received several comments, most on my quality and creativity - like I said, competition is a good thing - it leads to higher quality and more innovation.  I also hope that the other paracord vendors did well, since it is more of their livelihood than it is mine - it is just a hobby for me, after all.

Further Self Promotion

Just in case anyone is interseted, I will be doing some craft fairs and shows in late November and December in Palm Beach County:

• Jupiter Lanes Craft Fair and Flea Market on Saturday, Nov. 17 from 8:30 - 1:00
• Jupiter Farms Craft Fair, Sunday, Dec. 2
• West Palm Beach Gun Show, Sat. & Sun., Dec. 15-16

I might be getting spots in other locations in Southeast Florida in the future.

Two Recent Creations

After a few weeks of not doing any tying, I was finally able to sit down and get some projects on the "To Do List" done.  After making a few bracelets that were promised, I started work on a custom project that was requested.  The request was for a wrist lanyard that would be meant to hold key ring items, but it had to also be sturdy. It was also requested that the lanyard have two cords for loops (instead of one), be red and black in color, and utilize a corkscrew type pattern (a twisted solomon bar).

Here is the finished product:

Once I finished this, I used the left over pieces of black and OD green paracord from a wide solomon bar bracelet I tied before starting on the above.  I gutted the four pieces and got a small stainless steel split ring, and began tying a small ringed cross.  Instead of covering the split ring with paracord, I left it as is so it would be shiny.  The small ringed cross came out to about 2 inches in overall size, and even though the split ring should've been a little large, I really liked the overall size of this ringed cross, as it can be used for several items, such as the end to a key/knife/tool fob, necklace, etc.

 

I may try to tie some more oif similar size and put a chain through the top loop for use as necklaces.

Hopefully, it won't take me as long to get more projects posted in the future, as well as some other posts in my ongoing series of EDC gear essentials and reveiews.

Let There Be Light

This post is another installment of my EDC Gear reviews and information.  This post is going to focus on the topic of light, or more specifically the importance of having a flashlight as part of your EDC gear.

I've been into flashlights for as long as I can remember.  As with many of my interests, I guess it was my grandfather that started it all.  He used to keep a flashlight in every room of the house, in the sheds, in the vehicles, pretty much everywhere.  It became a running theme for me to find some kind of new or intersting flashlight to give him as a Christmas gift.

Well, flashlights sure have come a long way over the past 30 years.  Now, one can obtain a flashlight that fits on a key ring, takes one AAA battery, and emits more light than the old incandescent flashlights that ran off of the large 6V lantern batteries thanks to state of the art LED technology.

I recommend that having a flashlight in your vehicle and major rooms of the dwelling, and those can be of any size.  My personal facorites for the cars and house are the Mag Lite 2D and 3D cells with LEDs.  They put out plenty of light, are extremely sturdy and water resistant (unless you completely submerge them for a great length of time), and in a pinch, can be used as a self-defense tool.

However, since most of us are not law enforcement or security personnel, most of us will not be walking around with a duty belt that has a Mag Lite hanging on it.  Therefore, I am devoting this post to discussing flashlights that can carried by almost anyone as part of their overall EDC gear.

Let me begin by stating that a flashlight, in my opinion, is one of the three essential items of an overall EDC kit: flashlight; knife; lighter or matches (preferably a lighter).  With those three items, one will be able to address most of the problems / obstacles / chores faced in everyday life.  There are exceptions of course, and additions (such as a small minor first aid kit), but those three should be able to assist in most daily tasks.  I will address the other two in future posts, but will focus on flashlights in this post.

If you have ever started looking for flashlights for EDC, you probably have seen the wide variety of options, as well as a wide range of prices.  While that may seem daunting, it is actually beneficial, as one should be able to find a flashlight that not only meets their ligt output needs, but also their budget.  Since there are thousands of flashlights to choose from, I am going to focus more on the characteristics of a good EDC flashlight, in my humble opinion, and then provide examples of what I use for EDC.

When considering an EDC flashlight, I look for a few characteristics.  First is the size.  The flashlight needs to be small enough and thin enough to carry in pocket comfortably.  There are plenty of small flashlights that are inexpensive on the market, but most of them are lacking in other important features.

Next, the brightness of the flashlight.  There are a few different ways that the brightness of a flashlight are expressed, especially the LED ones.  For simplicity sake, I will refer to lumens instead of candlepower or watts.  For a primary EDC flashlight, I typically look for one that is in the 30-60 lumens range.  I've found that anything higher than that tends to reflect too much light off walls.  There are reasons to have flashlights with higher output, but those are more specialized in nature.  I've found that 30-60 lumens should be adequate for most tasks (it wasn't too long ago that many of the very high end weapons lights were rated at 60 lumens).

Third, is ergonomics.  Specifically as they relate to the operation of the flashlight.  Flashlights have several ways to turn them on and off, from twisting the tail caps or headlamps to buttons.  I prefer flashlights to have buttons, especially tailcap buttons.  A button allows the flashlight to be used one-handed, whereas the twisting kind require both hands.

Fourth, I prefer LEDs over incandescent or xenon.  LEDs last a lot longer.  The diode can last thousands of hours, whereas incandescent or xenon bulbs will burn out much faster.  Additionally, LEDs are more efficient and get more life from the batteries.  LEDs are also cooler in temperature - incandescent, xenon, halogen, etc. all get very hot, especially in the higher lumens flashlights.  Lastly, I prefer the light that the LED produces, it is, in my opinion, cleaner.

Fifth, the types of batteries used.  I prefer to get flashlights that use standard battery types, especially AA and AAA.  AA and AAA batteries can be found almost anywhere, and they are relatively inexpensive.  I try to avoid getting lights that require the CR123 batteries, or other more difficult types like AAAA or the watch type batteries.  CR123 batteries can make the flashlight smaller with higher output, but they are not always available and are more expensive than AA or AAA.  I reserve my CR123s for use in dedicated weapon lights.

Lastly, is the price.  I don't want to spend a couple hundred dollars on an EDC flashlight.  I will admit, I have done it, but regret it, due to the speed at which flashlight technology changes.  Price will also dictate how many compromises or sacrifices you will need to make on the above features.  However, after much trial and error, I finally found a few options that meet most, if not all, of the above criteria, and still remain relatively inexpensive.

The two lights I carry with me as part of my EDC are the Streamlight Stylus Pro and a Life+Gear Mini Aluminum Flashlight Keychain.

The Stylus Pro is always carried in a pocket with the pocket clip and is hardly noticeable.  It is about the size of a pen, but is sturdy and produces a good amount of light.  I've used it a number of times for variuos tasks since I purchased it.  I really like this light and may end up purchasing one or two more, just to have extras.  Granted, it is not really low priced, especially you can get a package of 3 or 4 LED flashlights from a Big Box store for the price of this one light.  But this one light, in my opinion, meets all of my criteria for an EDC flashlight the best.

The Life+Gear Mini Aluminum Flashlight I found at Target for a price I couldn't pass up, so I bought about 5 or 6 of them.  If I come across anymore at the price I found them for, I will buy more.  It is a handy little light that I have clipped on a #0 S-Biner on my Nite Ize S-Biner Key Rack.  I have used this light even more than I have Stylus Pro, especially for opening house door locks in the dark.  You will notice that the light has a lot of wear to the black finish, that is from the key rack, but I think it also adds some character to the little light.

The above picture shows their light in a fully lit room.  They are quite bright and their beams do go a good distance.  Even though the Stylus Pro is not a dedicated weapon light, I would have no problem using it for that purpose if I had to, especially since its slim prfile would allow for a modified two-handed grip as opposed to the supported one-handed grip.

There are several flasjlights to choose from out there, so choose one (or more) that best suit your needs and budget.  While the Stylus Pro and the Life+Gear Mini Aluminum work for me, they may not suit everyone's needs.

Stay Safe.  Be Prepared.  Defeat the Dark.