Lost in the woods and whistles

Yesterday 16 year old Bryanna Barnes of San Diego left her group at Portugese Overlook near Mammoth pool in the high Sierra Nevada mountains to "go behind a tree and change her clothes". She never came back. A search was started and today at noon she was found. The way they found her was interesting. The searchers were driving the back roads in the area and calling her name on a bullhorn. They would then stop and listen. They heard three blasts from a whistle, the universal distress signal, and sure enough it was her. The newspaper said shewas a "Girl Scout" and always carried the whistle for safety. You can read the whole story here: http://www.fresnobee.com/406/story/1499164.html This story is kind of odd and I'm not sure why she disappeared. It seems a bit fishy.

Anyway, this brings up a good point. I carry the whistle in the photo below. I've had it since it was issued to me in the Army. Its very loud and its come in handy a few times. If my wife and I are out in the boonies and I go off by myself, she blows a prearranged signal on her Fox 40 if she needs me and I respond with a similar signal on mine to let her know I heard her. It works great.

Two new links of note

I've recently added two new links. One is Food Storage Depot http://foodstoragedepot.com/
and Preparedness Pantry http://preparednesspantry.blogspot.com/. These are good sources for buying high quality long term storage foods in quantity. I am a firm believer in being prepared and have a long term food storage program. You never know when disaster will strike so do as the Boy Scouts and "Be Prepared!".


Also, if anyone finds that any of my posted links is broken/obsolete, please email or make a comment and I'll do my best to repair/replace it. Thanks!!

WinCo Foods

For those readers who live in the western states of California, Nevada, Idaho, Washington & Oregon: WinCo Foods is a chain of grocery stores that offer excellent bulk food varieties. I talked to the manager of the bulk food section and here's a bit of good news! I can order bags of bulk food such as wheat, rice, beans, etc. in various size bags and containers. I've been shopping at WinCo for years and the quality of their bulk foods has been exceptional. I use them as the primary source for my rotating stock of food storage.

This link will show where theyhave stores at present and they are growing in number. http://www.wincofoods.com/

Paying attention

We all are guilty to some extent of not paying attention to our immediate surroundings. Case in point. When I lived in Arizona I was digging up a nice bunch of agate in the mountains south of Tucson. It was way up in the tree's, about 6,000 feet altitude. The day was sunny and warm up there and I was so intent on digging, I failed to notice something in my immediate area. There was a small pine tree right in front of me and after an hour of digging, I stopped to take a break and when I looked straight ahead of me, I spotted one of these less than 2 feet from my face:


This beautiful little guy (photo copyright by Gary Nafis and posted at this site: http://www.californiaherps.com/noncal/southwest/swsnakes/pages/l.p.pyromelana.html) is Lampropeltis pyromelana pyromelana, the Sonora mountain king snake. I don't know how long he was hanging there watching the crazed human digging for rocks.

Another example is my big mistake in wood identification. I was under the impression that the cedar wood I gathered in the Sierra Nevada mountains was western red cedar. I was told this was correct by a fellow at one of the camp grounds and I took it for granted to be gospel. I have come to find out that it is actually California incense cedar, Libocedrus decurrens. So, anything in my past posts that is called western red cedar is actually California incense cedar.

More paracord information

Here's some useful information on paracord from Wikipedia.

US Military issue paracord is specified by MIL-C-5040H in six types: I, IA, II, IIA, III, IV.^[2] Types IA and IIA are composed solely of a sheath without a core. Type III, a type commonly found in use, is nominally rated with a minimum breaking strength of 550 pounds, thus the sobriquet "550 cord".

The US military specification for paracord outlines a number of parameters to which the final product must conform. Although it contains specific denier figures for the sheath strands and inner yarns, there are no overall diameter requirements for the cord itself. Below is a table of selected elements from the specification.

Type	Minimum breaking strength	Minimum elongation	Minimum length per pound	Core yarns	Sheath structure
I	95 lb (43 kg)	30%	950 ft (290 m)	4 to 7	32/1 or 16/2
IA	100 lb (45 kg)	30%	1050 ft (320 m)		16/1
II	400 lb (181 kg)	30%	265 ft (81 m)	4 to 7	32/1 or 36/1
IIA	225 lb (102 kg)	30%	495 ft (151 m)		32/1 or 36/1
III	550 lb (249 kg)	30%	225 ft (69 m)	7 to 9	32/1 or 36/1
IV	750 lb (340 kg)	30%	165 ft (50 m)	11	32/1, 36/1, or 44/1

Sharpening tools

The main cause of most all knife accidents is due to having a dull blade. You need to exert extra effort to cut with a dull blade and when it slips it does a lot of damage to human flesh.

These are the tools I use to keep my knives and carving tools sharp. In the top photo is shown a variety of sharpening devices.
The thing at the top is a piece of lathing board with a piece of scrap leather glued to it. Since this photo was taken, I gave it a lite coating of green chrome oxide polishing compound. Chrome oxide is such a hard abrasive that it will put a mirror polish on stainless steel. It puts a super fine edge on my blades and makes them razor sharp. I also use it for touch ups while working with my knives to keep them sharp. I used Liquid Nails to glue this leather and board together. Good stuff.

On the right are three diamond hones of various grits, 180-coarse, 260-medium & 360-fine. I've glued these to pieces of an old mouse pad to make them non slip when I use them on a table top. These work dry but I use water for a lubricant to extend their life. They will handle very hard types of stainless and other exotic steels. I also use these to sharpen my big chisels, plane blades and ax blades. The middle row is all diamond rods and hones of various makes and grits. My favorite brands are EZ LAP and DMT.

On the left is a Lansky ceramic sharpening set, an Arkansas medium stone, and an Arkansas hard stone. These are a variety of quartz rock called novaculite. The Lansky is my favorite sharpening system. It gives my carbon blades and my Victorinox stainless blades a razor edge. The Arkansas stones are old standbys I use for some of my large blades. I use the medium first and then the hard. It brings my blades to a very sharp, durable edge. I finish with a good stropping on the leather. This will remove any burr left from the stones as well as polish the edge making it cut better and longer between sharpening.

I use machine oil or olive oil for a lubricant with these. The reason for using a lubricant is to keep the micro fine particles of metal from the blade floating on the surface of the stone. That way the stone doesn't get clogged up and works much more efficiently.

When you sharpen a knife always push the edge along the stone at the correct angle as if you were trying to shave off a layer of the stone or hone.



Here's a photo of the Lansky ceramic sharpener. The white rods are medium grit and the gray rods are fine grit. They fit in holes drilled at an angle, one set 20 degrees and the other set 25 degrees. You slice down holding the blade straight up and down and pull the knife towards you as you slice. It doesn't take much pressure or time to get an excellent edge on your blade. The rods can be scrubbed off with dish detergent and a 3M scratchy pad to clean off the gray metal streaks.



This photo shows the end of the Lansky sharpener where the rods are stored inside the holder.


This is my field strop kit. It consists of a credit card with red jewelers rouge on it that is stored in the envelope. This will put a good edge on my pen knives and carving knives. The green container holds a greasy type of chrome oxide polish. This stuff works great and stays on the leather very well. The leather strop at the bottom can be used flat on a suitable surface or tied to a small tree. It is loaded with red jewelers rouge and when this is used up I will use the chrome oxide on it. Red rouge works good but the chrome oxide cuts a lot faster. You can by the green polish at most hardware stores where they sell Dremel tools. You only need a tiny bit and it lasts a long time. Make sure you get the soft stuff. The hard stuff works but its a little tricky to load the strop with. I've noticed that when the strop turns black and shiny its time to add a tiny bit more polish. The reason it turns black is because its the steel micro particles. If you use a white hard Arkansas stone you really notice how fast the oil lube turns black.