Stickers!

 The stickers I ordered for the Adirondack Bushcraft Brothers™ arrived a little while ago. I went plastic material so they can be placed on items like our water bottles and such and be washed.

Knife Sharpening

 Okay, first things first here, this is not rocket science, but it does take practice and some finesse. Especially using stones and a strop the old fashioned way. I also want to add buying a Lansky kit can save a lot of time because they come with jigs for proper angles. I do not have one at this time so I am not going to discuss them beyond this point in this post. I am going to explain the way to sharpen using a double sided wet/dry stone. I prefer those because I can use them on the fly without trying to screw around with water. On the chance I need to sharpen in camp I use my leg as a support and water simply does not work in this situation. But I prefer my little travel sharpener nowadays. And finally, I want to add, the average camper won't need to sharpen their knife often. They aren't using the knife for hard use.

So you have a knife, and that knife will at some point need to be sharpened. Lets take a look at some knives.

As you can see from the above image knives come in different shapes and edge grinds. Above are a Scandinavian grind (top), a full flat grind (middle) and a full convex (bottom). Do each of these need to be sharpened a different way? Yes. Yet once you grasp how to sharpen the answer will be not really. Let me explain a little further.

Sharpeners come in a lot of varieties as well. In the image below we have to more common variations from a couple leather strops I made from old belts, to some strops made by friends using sand paper and compound, and sharpeners ranging from basic pocket stones (stone and diamond) to two sided stones, two sided diamond stones, round diamond rods, ceramic flat stone, and my favorite a travel sharpener with coarse and fine ceramic rods. It doesn't really matter which you prefer as they all have the same goal. But for this exercise I'm using a two sided wet/dry stone and a strop and then my travel sharpener.

The first thing you need to do us lay the blade flat against the rough side of the stone.

Now you want to pivot or tip the blade to find the proper angle for the edge. This takes some time to learn but you can feel the difference where the blade angle goes into edge angle.

Once you have that you slide the knife forward trying to hold the angle. Going first forward then in reverse as in the GIF's below.

Do this for both sides of the knife until you feel the edge is sharp enough for you. Then flip the stone and repeat on the fine side. This is another personal preference. Some want to shave the hair off a hair while others just want the knife sharp enough to cut some food and maybe whittle a little bit.

I like to run my knives on a strop after using a stone like this. For stropping you simply set the knife on the strop, find your angle and run the edge along the strop from spine to edge.

I like to use the little plastic travel sharpener more and more these days. All you need to do is set the sharpener on a stable surface, set the knife in the slot so it's centered and draw the knife back.

After pictures:

The other thing I really like with the little travel sharpener is how fast and easily it sharpens my trackers. I just set the knife in and draw it back to the quarter round and pivot the knife up then into the chopping area by pivoting it down.

Using the stone and strop method takes practice, patience, and time to learn. But at the end of the day once you start to develop the feel for your edges it won't matter if it's a scandi, flat, convex, or any other edge geometry.

I suggest getting one of the double mini ceramic rod style sharpeners. Especially for beginners. It will sharpen your blades up very effectively and efficiently. The ones I have even make quick work of harder steels like D2.

So that's it. No fuss, no frills.

At The Camp

 Been a very hectic and sad week. The camping trip I had planned was cancelled but I still headed over to the camp for a few hours.

A Weekend At Lake Durant

 My wife called me last Wednesday and asked if I wanted to go camping this weekend. I'm not one to turn down getting out in the woods so I was on definitely on board. I was in the ER a short time ago with come chest issues and she has a bad knee currently. But those things be damned, we went camping. We mostly sat reading and staring at the lake on this trip, but it was still better then sitting in the house moping.

I want to say, I don't think we'll ever go back to that state campground. It was beautiful and the view from the camp site was awesome. The staff were good and the sites were cared for as well as the rest rooms being clean. It's also one of my favorite areas of the Adirondacks. Some of the people were just flat out rude. Not all, as upon arrival the people on our left were packing up and gave us their left over firewood. But...The site to our right was closed and I guess that closed sign means free for all to use as a hang out instead of your own site to some people. Other campers would go sit at that picnic table and talk at the top of their lungs, yell, and just be obnoxious. It was even harder to handle when some groups would wait util 9PM for to this. Last night the campers on the other side of the closed site waiting until almost 1AM to start playing kick the cooler around. Not kidding here! At first I thought it was a bear slamming a cooler the people forgot to put away. But, when I looked out of our tent there was no bear over there, only two people doing who knows what. They were dragging and banging that cooler around or something. It sounded like the cooler had been left in the back of a moving truck while the truck was speeding around Baha and the cooler was bouncing and slamming around the back.

Anyway......

Over all we have a nice trip. Odd that during the entire trip I didn't see or hear a single fish jump. I know there's fish in there. but it was very strange they didn't seem active. Especially when I was trying to catch a few (one would have been nice).

Friday:

The drive up wasn't bad. Once we got off The Northway traffic on the secondary roads was fine. The drive up 28 from Warrensburg to the campgrounds is beautiful. We make that drive at least once a year into Indian Lake and it never gets old.

We got everything set up and took some time to relax. I actually used my small pack axe and one of my full size axes to process wood. I generally baton wood down into kindling with a knife, which I did a little of anyway, and used the knife to make a good pile of shavings for use as tinder. Then I broke out the ferro rod and got the fire going. Friday night was ham sandwiches for supper. Something nice and easy after making the drive and setting up camp. Then we sat talking and watching the fire and a beautiful sunset.

There was also an incident on Friday involving my FAK. No one was hurt. After supper I was getting ready to get up from the table and a bird in the tree over head took a shit on my hand. It hit my hand and exploded all over my other hand which had my phone in it. Nasty stuff man! I used an alcohol prep pad to clean my hands and phone.

Saturday:

Woke up to a nice layer of fog sliding across the lake. I'm not sure what it is, but I enjoy watching fog or mist roll around a lake. It's just really cool watching it swirl and move. I thought it was around 57* or out. It was pretty chilly but very tolerable. I got out the little backpacker stove to make coffee and heat water for an oatmeal breakfast. Using a stove is pretty rare for me these days. It's usually a twig stove if I'm not making an actual camp fire. French press for me and some instant for my wife. Speaking of, she has decided she wants a French press for next year herself. So after some hot coffee and oatmeal we headed out to pick up more firewood and a sweatshirt for the dog. He was shivering pretty bad so yes, be bought him a a sweatshirt as we had forgot his. Upon getting into the SUV my initial guess at the temperature was wrong. It was only 43*.

Back at camp my wife went about modifying a person shirt to fit the pup while I grabbed my fishing gear and heading down to the lake. After an hour of not even a bite I went back up to the site and made sandwiched for lunch. Then split up some wood into smaller pieces that burn a little better. The wood bundles at the camp grounds and little store up the road were $11 and $14 for small bags. Even driving down into Indian Lake was a better price. I got about 5 times the amount for $15. It's usually a but damp but the once you get a good fire going it dried fast enough. For the savings in money I'll fiddle with it a little.

I also took a little time to harvest some pine pitch.

Got the fire going so I had some nice coals to cook a couple of steaks. So a couple hours was spent tending the fire and reading. Once the fire was ready and I had a nice bed of coals and not a lot of flame I got supper on to cook. Steak and some pasta salad I made on Thursday. Stoked the fire back up and a little more fishing.

Then I settled in to just sitting by the fire and staring at the lake as another beautiful sunset over the mountains and lake.

Sunday:

Awesome sunrise. Then we broke camp and came home.

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I have to go through the video clips then I'll get the video edited, rendered together, and uploaded.