Sites I’m reading these days

I’ve been slack about adding new sites to my links list, so here are a few good ones I’ve been visiting lately:

Woodsmonkey:  This site has several authors, all with some great outdoor knowledge.  Most of the content I have seen is presented in relatively long article format, so you can go there and get some nice, detailed reviews of knives, camping gear, and other outdoor equipment.  They also have some good tips and how tos.

Suburban Bushwacker:  A dad in the UK, living in the suburbs, wishing he was in the woods.  The author is an entertaining writer, intermixing reviews of gear with stories about the outdoors and sometimes life in general.

American Bushman:  A stay at home dad that has good reviews and stories, with a nice family angle to a lot of them.  Good reading for anyone who enjoys the outdoors, especially those who do it with their families.

Black Crater Cord Lock LED Light

Got a new product in the store that I am excited about.  Of course, I am excited about pretty much everything I sell, so take that with a grain of salt.

It’s the Cord Lock LED Light from Black Crater.  I saw these little guys on an upcoming gear blog, and immediately emailed Black Crater to get in on their first order delivery.  It is an LED light with three modes: low, high, and flash, but it also has a great feature of being a cord lock that you can attach to anything cord shaped.  Of course, you don’t have to attach it to anything if you don’t want to.  I already carry a nice pocket flashlight, but I still took a few of these for myself and attached them to jacket zipper pulls, sleeping bag cinch cords, backpack cords, and anywhere else a bight little LED light might be useful.  OK, that’s everywhere, in my opinion…

Wet fires are crappy fires

I have been playing with fire since I was probably too young to play with fire by most of today’s parents’ sissified standards.  Over the years, I like to think that I have become pretty good at it.  I know how to start fires with many different methods, firestarters, tinders, and fuels.  Christmas night, I was humbled by some very, very wet wood.  I might whine a bit here, so I apologize for that.

I have not lit any fires in our firepit in a few weeks.  Laziness, cold weather, rain, blah blah blah.  I’m sure there’s something good to blame it on, but I just haven’t made one in a while.  Argo (my dog) was nice enough to unroll an entire roll of jute twine a while back, so that has been sitting in my firepit since he unrolled it, waiting for me to use it to get a blaze going.

The weather has been nice enough to grace us with rain every day or two for about a month, so everything was nice and soaking wet.  Rain had been falling for a good bit of the day, and there were still puddles covering out patio.  Leaves and pine straw covered my pile of branches that I have gathered from the yard, keeping the moisture in the pile very effectively.  Splitting the wood or creating feather sticks reveled more wetness instead of some nice, dry parts like it normally does.

I built a nice little log cabin fire with the driest branches I could find in the pile.  In retrospect, using some literally dripping wet jute as the core of my fire was probably not the best plan.  I started it with some wax and sawdust firestarters, which have always been extremely effective in my past experience.

Now, I got the fire going just fine after some coaxing, and was able to keep it going for a couple of hours.  This required perpetual maintenance, rearranging the fire, blowing on it almost to the point of passing out, and adding several wax and sawdust firestarters in the beginning.  I kept thinking, “What if this were a situation where I actually needed a fire?”  Even in a casual backpacking situation, I would not have wanted or maybe even been able to constantly tend to the fire, with other tasks like setting up a tent, cooking dinner, etc. to tend to.

This was the first time in a long time that I have had trouble with fire.  Do you ever have trouble getting a good fire going?  Let me know in the comments.

Hooray for changes

Well, time for some more changes.  I changed the format of the site, and might continue messing with it.  I also turned on comments, since I know that a lot of blog visitors do not visit the forums.  The google ads are gone as well, maybe for good.  I know that they detract from the look of the site and I make next to nothing on them.  Have fun, kids, and feel free to let me know what you think (in the comments).

I’m going to try to update this blog more regularly with actual useful content.  I know I have promised to do this before, but this time I’m serious (don’t be surprised if this turns out to be a fat lie).

Ainsley’s P7 Mag in all its wonderful shininess

Ainsley from the forums was kind enough to offer his custom built P7 Mag for a passaround several months back. He sent it to me, and it sat in my room for quite a while (sorry). I tried it out with alkaline batteries, and while it looked good for a single LED, I knew the P7 was capable of much more.

My excuse for the long delay is that I was waiting two of those months for some NiMh D batteries that I ordered, but I am retarded and forgot about a very obvious solution. I used a set of Eneloops in D adapters, and the results were awesome.

Here are the shots at a wall about 20′ away:

Stock 4 x D Maglite, fresh alkaline batteries:

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Iditarod Dog Booties!

Sldhed8 from the forums lives up in Alaska, and mentioned a while back that he helped shuttle supplies for the Iditarod and picked up some dog booties whenever he was doing shuttle runs. I, of course, instantly begged for some, and he was nice enough to send a set. I have been watching the Iditarod show on Discovery, so I am currently fascinated by the whole race and everything involved.

They are basically just Cordura with elastic and velcro, with no insulation. I wanted something to protect my mutt’s paws on rough and rocky terrain that can shred his paws if I am not careful. Argo does not appreciate them too much, but I am guessing that is mostly because he can’t walk on our wood floors without sliding all over the place.

Hardwood Firesteels (finally)

I’ve been working on these for a while, and finally have them (almost) ready. Hey, they only took three months to get. Not bad! They are not in stock yet, but should be late next week. I’m having him make these up in several wood species, so just let me know if you want one in anything else.

Here they are in the store.

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New Orange Sharp Things

Many moons ago, I had a (made in the US) Schrade Old Timer whittling knife that, judging from the ample rust, was made from carbon steel. It held an edge very well, and even my terrible sharpening skills could get it razor sharp with little effort. Sadly, I lost it in the last few years, so I went it search of a replacement recently. I wanted something that I could sit by the fire and whittle with, a skill that is both useful and keeps my multi-tasking hunger satisfied.

I was looking for something tiny and light enough that I wouldn’t notice it in the pack when hiking or backpacking. I started my search in October at SMKW in TN, where I picked up a Rough Rider that cost a whopping $9. Not exactly a premier brand, but it seemed decently made, had good materials, and no blade play. I proceeded to drop it on my driveway as soon as I got it home, and the bone scales cracked in half. Oops.

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20% off Sale - Lighters, Capsules, Whistles, Carabiners

Going Gear is keeping me busy with orders these days, mostly thanks to forums I post on. I wanted to do something to give back, so how about 20% off on half the items on the site?

What’s included in the sale:

Tent Stakes

Carabiners

Waterproof Capsules

Bottle Lighters

Whistles

Discuss in forums

Out with TGR, in with Conservation Mart

Time for some life changes! TGR does not have as much of an emphasis on online sales as they use to, so I am no longer working full time for them. I will still be doing some work for them, but a lot of my focus is shifting to another company, Conservation Mart.

Conservation Mart is an Atlanta based online retailer that focuses on resource saving items, like CFL bulbs, electricity monitors, and low flow shower heads. The current item selection is at around 600 items, so there are a good bit of things to help save some money on utility bills and be a little nicer to our planet.

I am handling their online marketing, so any shilling you see around the Internet is probably coming from me. I started a blog that talks about our items and other conservation related topics, so give it a read every now and then and you might learn some useful information about saving resources. Since it is business related, I will actually update the blog several times a week, unlike my shameful attempts at keeping the GP blog updated.

On another blog note, I recently built a blog called Sustain Word for my brother. He owns a green construction company here in Atlanta and has been featured on the Weather Channel, the Discovery Channel, and in many magazines. Go give him some traffic too, since he has been going at the blog thing head on for the past couple of weeks, and has a lot of good content. He is tapped into green technologies and companies that are way ahead of most of what is on the market, so you will learn about some new ways to save energy and be more eco-friendly around your house or office.

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