EDC

Same moose, different antlers?

Posted on November 9, 2019 by akadventurer

So…. is it bad that I had it 3 days, carrying it 2 days, and already modded it? Lol..
Thats better!


But then, I knew I would when I bought it. my usual, favorite blade preferences, applied to my favorite blade arrangement. (Yeah, you should have seen this coming when I first posted the knife!)

Clip into sheeps foot, clipped shorter and narrowed, then re-edged. Also dropped the kick, to sit lower in the frame when closed, as far as I could.

The spey I made into a clip/skinner, taking some of the swedge out, and removing the raised tip.

With its bigger cousin, the same mods on a Case Muskrat. The moose isn’t actually any narrower, and its thicker. But is shorter.

Its enough of a difference though, its smaller in pocket, which was what I was after in a mini muskrat/moose frame. But it still grips nice in hand, a great bonus.

😀

Categories: Custom, Customized, Daily-cary-log, EDC, Field gear, knives, Modifications, New Gear, Pocket knives

Well, hello little moose!

Posted on November 7, 2019 by akadventurer

New knife came Monday!

Been wanting a Case Mini Muskrat, to do my prefered blades mod to, for a while.

But the things are discontinued, and Spendy when they pop up. Or cheap at auction and I miss them/get snipped… lol I never was a good bidder. On top of which, no other manufacturer makes one in that size right now. Those other discontinued models from the rest being older and harder to find than the Case too.

Enter Cases’ Mini Moose. Something I’ve been trying to buy for several months, always coming up with something else to do instead… (most recently the LCP2 shown a few days ago.)

So, I’d put off buying a mini moose for a fancy damascus stockman… which I put off to get the gun. But I still had a “I want a knife” itch… Just no knife budget.

Enter my old favorites in low cost high quality: Rough Rider. Imported, but Nice.

So, I was browsing RRs, and suddenly hit on a moose, that looks ldentical to all the ones they have out now that are regular sized (4.5″), but the nail nicks were much bigger on the blades! Look at the details, and Hey! A mini moose @ 3.5″!

They call it a small moose.
A little digging found them in 3 different, recent handle materials/runs.

None of the materials really looked good to me, I went with the least unattractive one.

Turned out to be great, its kinda a amber carved apaloosa stag…

Appaloosa is a bone look that Case and a few others have done, mottled and spotted like horses of the same name. Its always seemed that I’m unique among most trad knife lovers, I prefer dye jobs that are faded, mottled or un even, even where theyre supposedly supposed to be a solid color. Its more natural and has character. Thus, I really love the look on this knife!

But yeah… shut up and show pics. Right.

[IMG]

[IMG]

For scale, a Victorianox apprentice, and a Case peanut.

[IMG]

Great clip blade, and a really sexy curvy spey.

[IMG]

[IMG]

And how deep that spey sits closed is great!

[IMG]

Since I’ll most likely be using the other blade the most. 🙂

Categories: EDC, Field gear, knives, New Gear, Pocket knives, Reviews

Multiple tools use?

Posted on November 6, 2019 by akadventurer

A friend on an EDC forum asked me an interesting question today;

Hey AK-A, You’ve had that Victorinox Swiss Tool Spirit for quite some time.
Which three of its tools have you used the most? TIA

It’s funny that he should ask me that; A couple nights before when putting things up for the night, I was looking at it and thinking about what I use and don’t use.

My answer is as follows;
Top 2 are easy, pliers, phillips driver, in that order.

But I had to add a footnote, that I’m not sure that #2 counts as Vic specific since I hated the Vic driver. I cut it off and welded a Leatherman flat style 1/4″ bit holder onto it several years ago. 🙂
#3 is hard to tell what I use more, but I *think* its the large flat head driver/bottle opener as leverage/a pry bar.

Honorable mention/#4, #5 goes to the other two that tied with that big driver, the awl and the wire cutters.


Use the awl as a pick, scraper, small pry tool a lot. And the wire cutters get alot of use when I’m running the wire feed welder.
Honestly, out of those last three its really, really, really hard to tell what I use more.
I can tell you what I Never use; the knife blade.

I started out hating the style(which is ironically now my favorite to use on any other knife, a sheepsfoot), and now I just prefer the ergonomics of a dedicated pocket knife.
Rarely, almost never used, is the chisel/scraper. Like maybe 15 times in the ~12 years I’ve had the tool.

That thing I’d probably use more if I remembered it was there… for some reason, maybe because I carried a Leatherman for so long and they don’t have one, I never think of it being there.

I tend to see it when opening another tool and think “dang that woulda been handy 10 minutes ago…”

Categories: Daily-cary-log, EDC, EDC/MT use, Field gear, Improviser, Journal, MacGyver, Modifications, Multitools, Preparedness, Reviews, SAKs, Theory/Thoughts, Usage Reviews

Ruger LCP II

Posted on November 3, 2019 by akadventurer
New EDC added recently! New toy, and new weapon too. All in one! 🙂

Kinda an impulse buy. I’d wanted to shoot and look at a 1st gen LCP last year. Then changed to the LCP2 after I got to shoot one in the spring. I just couldn’t justify the $$ till now.

I’d started to buy a $100 to $140 knife a couple weeks ago and realized it was a single days wage away from the gun. No brainer! 😉

My favored LGS has an online live inventory, showed the black for $295 and the FDE/Jungke green for $305. For $10, I can get fancy cerakote and not be boring black? Why not! 😉
I grabbed cash and headed to town.

SNAFU in their database, the gun was gone.
The guy actually had a slight panic moment when the online and their internal inventory showed it in stock, but he couldn’t find it, not even in the safe!
Turns out it had been sent to their store in the next town, sold there, and didn’t get pulled from the inventory here. He orderd another one, and I put my name on the list to be called. He said probably be in by that weekend. That was the Monday two weeks ago.
Took week and a half to come, with 3 updates on ETA. Then they missed calling me when it did– busy place, its understandable.

So yeah, impulse buy that took 2 weeks to do… lol.

On the flip side, the actual purchase was a breeze, background check came back in 10 minutes, I was in, and out in half hour flat, if that long. 4pm I arrived there, by 4:45 I was at the range ~8 miles away, (and that’s crossing town in rush hour traffic included!) shooting. 😀

With my previous CCW, a Bersa/Firestorm. 380.

Impulse but not a blind buy. As I mentioned, I got to shoot one before. A friend at church has and carries a first gen LCP, and I’d asked if he could bring it to a mens shooting weekend we had in the spring. He forgot, but someone else there had a LCP2 and I got a couple mags through it.

Great shooter, light, compact! Just what I’d been looking for. My Bersa 380 gets a little big sometimes.

I swear the Bersa gets heavier after you have it on for 8 hours straight!

I wanted something smaller, lighter, and pocketable so I could tuck a shirt, or do away with a cover shirt/jacket if I wanted to.

The Bersa I’ve had for over a decade(wow… closer to 15 years I think..).

It amazes me, when I got the Bersa, it was a pocket gun!

The micro polymer guns hadn’t really come into play, or werent as common… At least to me they weren’. I don’t remember that craze starting til a few years later. Now that class of gun is still a small carry, but for a pocket gun its HUGE!

The Ruger weighs Literally half as much (unloaded specs), is smaller, thinner. But at only a single round loss! Shoots good to boot, with amazingly controlable recoil for its weight.

But anyway, back to the range; I was Extremely happy to be hitting within 2″or 3″ of a clay pigeons at 20 or 25 yards, some rounds hitting them, within my 2nd mag! Those sights aint much but they’re really actually pretty good! The ergonomics and fantastic trigger help, it shoots like a much bigger pistol.

I was expecting to need a LOT of practice to get “on the pie plate” accuracy at half that distance.

Sorry, no target pics. The range was surprisingly busy for a cold wet, snowy saturday (everyone getting in any time they can before its freaking cold) so when I was hitting remnants of other targets so easy in my first couple mags, I decided to hell with trying to get a cold range to set anything out for a grouping, and just had fun with it. 🙂

It comes with a light but very nice pocket holster, that works really well. It adds some bulk to pocketing it, but with no safety other than the center trigger bar, you REALLY dont want anything getting into that trigger guard with it in your pocket!

Covering the trigger/guard etc is the best, and also having Nothing else in the pocket with it.

So far the holster is nice, light, comfortable, and provides a great draw. Even including reaching into my pocket, this is a smoother, simpler, easier draw than I’ve ever had with non pocket guns!

Here it is in the pocket holster, on top of my homemade Bersa holster.

It does actually fit in the Bersa holster too, and rather well. Just a bit short, and of course the retention strap is far too long. I might use it as a pattern to make one for the Ruger.

Serriously considering just adding belt loops to the pocket holster though. Would be simple to do, and would make it a dual use holster.

Will note that I’m Not completely replacing the Bersa. It will still spend a lot of time as a truck gun(where its spent most of its time the last few months as I’ve gotten less and less fond of the weight to carry), and I’ll still carry it on shorter days out… But its just gotten to be too much on looonnnggg days on my feet, which us where the LCP will really shine.

Its not like I carry every day anyway. Its hit or miss for me, and I can alternate as needed, or not. Options are great to have, no matter how often you use them!

For a last fun comparison, here is my pocket .22. 6 rounds of .22 Short. The lcp is smaller, thinner and LIGHTER!

Categories: EDC, Field gear, Guns, Holsters, New Gear

EDC Catch up, fall 2019

Posted on October 29, 2019 by akadventurer

Well, here we go again, big dump of pics of pocket dumps from the last 3 or 4 months. Hope you enjoy!

Categories: Adventures, Alaska-Life, Daily-cary-log, EDC, EDC/MT use, Flashlights, Guns, Jewelry, knives, Lighters, Multitools, New Gear, old tools, Outdoors, Pocket knives, Watches, weather and seasons

Time for a fix; or fixing time?

Posted on October 19, 2019 by akadventurer

Haven’t been able to wear my Eco-Drive chrony for a while, after I found a problem with the band.

Wore through around the under straps keeper ring. (Strap is a leather NATO style)

Technically the watch is still secured by the top strap, but I wasn’t comfortable wearing it til I got it fixed.

Took a couple months to get to where, today, I had time/wanted it enough to actually do something about it.

Some of the rest of the band is also a little rough, here is where its worn through on the bottom strap next to the spot I’m fixing. But its only through the one layer, it’ll be fine for a while though, I think.

I simply stitched the bottom strap to the top one, and trimmed off the worn loop where the ring sat.

From the back;

Got a little too far from the edge there on one side, but it works. 🙂

Side that shows;

Easy fix and all I lost at this point, is that it isn’t an easy change band anymore. I’ll have to pull the spring bars to take the watch off. No big loss really though; Except for about 2 weeks when it was new, the watch has been on this band since about this time of year in 2011. 😀

Categories: Damages, EDC, Leather, Modifications, Repairs, Sentimental, Soft Goods, Watches

Darning leather gloves?

Posted on October 13, 2019 by akadventurer
Have a pair of nice heavy deer skin work gloves that I wore almost all summer. They started developing holes about a month and a half ago.

Since I was welding that day, it meant finger burns (yes we had dedicated welding gloves, but generally I don’t bother with them, they’re a heavy leather gauntlet that allows no dexterity at all.)

My jobsite fix that day was a quick wrap (double layer glue to glue on the holes so it didn’t stick to me!) of gorilla tape over the finger tips.
I gotta say I’m impressed, after a month of work, and you have to remember I’ve been working in a crawl space most of the time so its not just work wear, but crawling wear too, that tape was scuffed and a bit softer, but still stuck, solid, holeless… I HATE duct tape with a passion because it never stays on anything even duct work, but this stuff was great!
But anyway, 3 more holes later and I grabbed a new pair of gloves. I have no idea what the old ones cost, they were a gift, the second pair out of a two pack a friend got. And I can’t shop where they came from(costco) so a direct replacement is impossible.
But the replacement I got at Home Depot was $25 a pair.
I’m sure the Costco ones probably cost less than that, and about 6 months on a pair before they wear out isn’t bad for good quality, real leather, all leather gloves.
But at prices like that I’d still like to prolong their life if possible. And besides, they’re broken in, already stained– don’t have to worry what I get on them, they fit me, and are comfortable as all get out now… I’ve been missing them!
With socks its called darning. Maybe only on knit socks. Ive been saying I’m darning gloves. But they’re not knit, and darning might not apply even to knit gloves… lol.
So, thus, I sat down with some scrap leather, needle and thread, and have been slowly fixing them in my spare time the last few days.
This has worked well so far, a couple seams resewn, and one finger tip I cut out the holed area and patched. Some of it I’ve just whip stiched on the outside, some thing I’ve turned them inside out to have the seams on the inside like original.
It has ironically been kinda hard on my hands. For a while now any hand sewing I do, or similar work that takes a good grip on small tools, and fine motor skills, has made my hands go numb while doing it.

Add to that some muscle damage and inflammation that I have right now in my shoulders/arm pits and lower arms that has been doing a carpal tunnel like effect of a piched nerve or restrictions in blood flow; making my hands tingling or numb over most of the past week anyway;

It makes this extremely slow, somewhat frustrating, and sort of painful to do.

But at any rate, I’m enjoying it, it improves my sewing, saves some gloves, and fills some time.

I still have one big hole and one small one to patch, and two seams to re-close.

Categories: Alaska-Life, Clothes, Cowboy, Damages, EDC, Field gear, Leather, MacGyver, Modifications, Recycle, Repairs, Sentimental, Sewing, Soft Goods, Summertime, Welding

Not just hydration, but COLD hydration!

Posted on September 4, 2019 by akadventurer

All summer, it was HOT here. As in record breaking hot at times. Hot and dry. So dry we broke the state record of acres burning in wildfires, a record set in 2004.

If I had 3 words to describe this summer, they’d be hot, dry, and smokey.

Its ironic that I only finally get this new item now, in the cool fall after the heat and actually after a Long record breaking wet season as well.

Thus is the irony of life!

I’d been wanting a vacuum insulated water bottle for a long time after a buddy got one early this summer. It’s been really annoying going out all day and my water gets warm, when his stayed cold and iced. I can put ice in the bottles I usually carry, but the sweating and condensation is epically annoying.

Unfortunately a lot of these bottles are Really expensive… Took me a while to find something I liked, that I can afford.

Stumbled upon this at wally world this week. Tal Hydration Ranger Pro;

[IMG]

It is stainless steel, vacuum insulated, copper lined in the vacuum area, (I wondered what good that does, turns out according to another brands advertising literature, that its supposed to conduct heat transfer more efficiently.).

Large top opening for filling/ice, and a nice caped drinking opening that is amazingly similar to my CamelBak Chute, my favorite water bottle.

Not sure if its paint or powder coat, but it seems thick, time will tell how durable it is.

Also similar to the Chute is the carry loop, but this one is bigger(great) and fantastically, its hinged, and folds out of the way making it much narrower when not hanging it. Also allows it to hang fully vertical not angled.

[IMG]

My only complaint so far is how tall this sucker is… I wanted a liter/32oz. bottle. Astoundingly They don’t make one!

They do a 26oz and a 40oz . This is the 40. They are all bigger than equal volume uninsulated bottles, obviously, but these things are overly tall for their diameter…

I’m actually guessing this is on purpose, so that they fit, for diameter, in water bottle pouches, and automotive(etc) cup holders..

The 26 was already taller than I’d want, but less capacity than I need (want)… So I bit the bullet and I opted for the 40. Will probably get used to it fast but so far its a little intimidating to pack/carry.

One nice thing about 40oz, and maybe this was their idea, is that you can get a full 32oz drink in it, and have room for ice.

[IMG]

The claim is 24 hours cold, 12 hours hot… we shall see.

Honestly I’ll be Happy if I get half those times. But some somewhat scientific(timed anyway) tests will be done. (eventually… 😉 )

So far I’ve used it a grand total of once, and it had my tea as icy as it started, more or less, for 4 or 5 hours.

So far, I’m extremely happy. Especially since it only cost me $17. 🙂

Will try to do a usage review after a week of two, we’ll see how its holding up.

Categories: Alaska-Life, Bottles, Camping gear, EDC, Field gear, Food, Food Gear, Hydration, New Gear, Summertime, weather and seasons

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: