It’s been ‘trench warfare’ at my house for the last month. I’m having a garage built and running the electrical line for the garage. This simple act called for me to crawl under my porch, move about a half ton of stone and quarter ton of sandy soil resulting in a trench from the house foundation to the garage. It would have been a lot easier if I could have removed the full length porch from the back of our house. If I had those kind of resources, I would just buy a new house, so it was trench warfare. I ran into an underground retaining wall and had to drill and chisel out enough concrete to make a 6-inch depression for the rigid conduit. I spent so much time under the porch I found I was enjoying it. Unfortunately, mole man syndrome set in and I was eating 47 times my body weight, so that had to come to a stop.
The knife side of this is I cut a little barrier plastic, shaved some roots and truncated cord in the digging process. All of which took its toll on my CRKT Crawford Kasper folder. Add a little dandelion subsurface root decapitation (I know, decapitation is the wrong word, but it always reminds a me of a guillotine). This was followed up by lots of cardboard cutting. My knife was soon too dull to tear newspaper.
When I need to sharpen something fast, I reach for my Spyderco sharpener. The stones were getting a little dirty. So, with a little abrasive cleanser, water, a rag and a little elbow grease, the residue from previous sharpenings was gone and the stones were ready.
 |
| Removing old metal helps give the stone more 'bite' and faster sharpening |
I like Spyderco's system. Hold the knife perpendicular to the ground and glide it down and back against the stone and it’s like a magic show.
Presto-Change-O! A sharp knife!
It’s so simple that even I can get a sharp edge in under 5 minutes.
 |
| Two medium stones, two brass guards, two fine stones and a plastic base. It goes everywhere. |
A good friend of mine recently received a long awaited fixed blade from a local knife maker. Tim is a reluctant knife maker, so I’ll hold his name. My friend commissioned a fixed blade in the sub-hilt fighter style and asked the knife maker to give it his interpretation. It took awhile, but it was worth the wait. Even the sheath was nicely detailed.
 |
| Single Edge Sub Hilt Fighter |
The maker did a very nice job. I wish my photo did it justice, but I had only minutes to set something up. I also found out that one man’s sheath knife is another’s pocket knife.
 |
| I guess the folder in the side pocket is back-up. Hey, one is none... |
