So I've been slowly, as I can, building out my tools, both because it makes me happy and I like doing things for myself but also in the name of preparedness. And also, I enjoyed camping as a kid but I have little to no camping gear as an adult, lol, so building up gear for that, too. Today I added to my tools an axe and a metal file. Hooray! I've wanted an axe for years now, and camping or not, I have a wood burning fireplace in my apartment, so now I am prepared if the heat ever goes out again (it's happened when the building had problems with the boiler, or yanno, if SHTF because gestures at the state of the world). I often have seen neighbors online offer up free wood when they had a tree come down, so now I can take advantage of those offers.
But tell me why they packed the axe LOOSE IN THE BOX with the blade cover OFF?
Yeah, that's how I found it. It isn't covered in blood thankfully, so hopefully no one got hurt, but holy crap, people. The blade cover was in a plastic baggie rubber banded to the axe instead of, yanno, ON THE BLADE. WTF?
It's supposed to be on the blade, like this:
They also put the lightbulbs I got for my flashlight loose in the box with two heavy tools. Somebody wasn't thinking about how they were packing...
But thankfully, they weren't smashed and they both work (I did test them both because ...loose in a box with a frikkin' axe).
But hooray, I have an axe now! LOL. The other tool I got was a metal file:
Because a few years back I got my camping knife and a ferro rod, and I have since discovered that the ferro rod doesn't strike very well on the back of the knife. I just recently saw a video from a wilderness instructor guy talking about this with my brand of knife (a Morakniv, a good brand), because the back is all smooth. So his recommendation was to take a metal file to an inch or two of the back near the tip to rough it up, and your ferro rod should send off lots of sparks that way. So I'm going to try that!
(if you're unfamiliar, a ferro rod is a thing that you strike and it sends off sparks, so you don't have to have matches or a lighter to start a fire).
So those are my new tools that are making me happy today. 😄 I love tools.
Have a great weekend and a blessed Samhain, everyone! :)