A Quick Tip on Cleaning Up

This weekend I picked up a tip on cleaning pots which have burnt on or stuck food after cooking. To clean them, put some water in the dirty pot and place it back on the fire. Bring the water to a boil. It will lift up most of the stuck on food. Then you can clean it along with the other dishes.

Weekend Trip

This weekend my girlfriend and I met up with two friends of ours and decided to go a bit further North than our usual camping areas. It turned out to be quite a climb to the top of the mountain. Here I am at the 3500 ft. mark.



There we bumped into some of the local wildlife. Ever since I was bitten by a snake I could not identify about two years ago, I keep my distance.



Unfortunately, after we had climber several more hundred feet in elevation, we realized that staying overnight in the forest at elevation above 3500 ft was prohibited. We had to summit the mountain, and gown down the other side to just below 3500 ft, before we could start looking for a suitable camp site. Seeing how by this point we were utterly exhausted, we bushwhacked until we found a somewhat level spot free from undergrowth, and settled down for the night. I decided to not bother putting up a tarp. You can see my campsite in the picture. You are looking at two sleeping bags, each with a bivi, the two backpacks, and the little puppy sleeping by a tree (see if you can find her). We had a fire pit a bit out of the shot.



In the morning a call rose up for coffee. The emergency was large enough to necessitate the pulling out of the stove. It made quick work of the gallon of water.



Even though the night temperature dropped to about 40 F, I think this was one of the best nights I’ve spend in the woods in a while.

The Kookalight Pillow

I know, I know, real men don’t use camping pillows. They find a nice rock, or a tree root on which to lay their head after a long day in the woods. For the rest of us however, a pillow can make the difference between a good night and a bad one.

There are many different designs out there, from goose down, to inflatable, to just a stuff sack in which you put some clothing for loft. There is nothing wrong with any of these approaches, and you should pick the design that best suits your interests.

Here I just want to point out a fairly new manufacturer of camping pillows, who has developed a rather innovative way to use thin nylon for his designs.

The result is the Kookalight Pillow. It is very light, coming in at 1.3 oz. It is also fairly small, measuring 12 in length, 7.5 in width and 3.5 in height.



Since it is an inflatable pillow, made from a very thin material, it can be compacted to a very small size, alleviating some of the feelings of regret at the thought of carrying a pillow into the woods.

The pillow retails for about $30.00, and if you are in the market, it is worth a look. The manufacturer is very responsive, and I even hear he is willing to take custom orders.

Sharpening a Convex Edge in the Field

One of the best edge grinds for a knife is the convex edge. With a convex edge, instead of the blade being ground to form an edge using intersecting straight lines, the two sides of the blade curve and intersect, forming the edge. This can create a very sharp edge, while leaving a good amount of metal behind it, providing robustness.

Unfortunately, many people stay away from such grinds because they can be difficult to sharpen. Unlike a single, or double bevel grind, you can’t just lay down the edge on a sharpening stone, and move it back and forth, because the side of the blade is curved.

There are different methods of sharpening a convex edge, including using a pad with fine sand paper, but I have found all such methods to be too impractical for field sharpening. In the end, no such equipment is necessary. A convex edge can be sharpened using a regular sharpening stone in the exact same way that you would use it to sharpen an axe (many axes having a convex edge).

I use a small sharpening stone, the Fallkniven DC4, which I carry in my possibles pouch.

To use it, simply take the blade and hold it in front of you. Now take the stone and place it so it touches the edge of the blade. By holding the edge of the blade up, you can see if the stone is touching the edge. Now begin to move the stone in a circular motion along the blade.

Then reverse the blade, so you can still see the edge, but are now sharpening the other side. If you wish, you can count the number of circles you make with the stone to insure that the grinding is even.

Keep in mind that for most sharpening you will only be using a fine stone. To get a hard steel like VG10 to be razor sharp, you will have to spend a good amount of time sharpening, so do not be discouraged if it is not shaving sharp after a few passes. Because the stone I use is so short it may take 80-100 circular motions on each side of the blade to get it shaving sharp.