All Outdoor

Last week, we shared parts 1 and 2 in John Neeman Tools’ “The Birth of a Tool” documentary. Part 3 concludes the series, and is my personal favorite, as it showcases the process of creating a knife from scratch.

Despite the focus on the AK47 and AK74 clones affected by the import recent ban, the Russian rifles are the easiest to replace with imports from other sources. Some of the more unique manual actions also banned from import will be harder to replicate, and no one I know of makes clones of Saiga or Vepr shotguns. The feeble Chinese efforts hardly count — I tested one and, after two shots, didn’t feel safe to fire the rest of the magazine. The Turkish Akdal MKA1919 I mentioned earlier has much to recommend it: light weight, rifle-like manual of arms, low felt recoil, but its long-term durability proved imperfect, leading to the beefed up BR99 variant. Fortunately, MKA1919 can be made much closer to perfect by Firebird Precision.

Kangaroo Carry holsters combine belly band and shoulder holster concepts. Made of cotton and equipped with a suspender strap, they make hot weather carry more comfortable than with synthetic bellybands that depend purely on pressure around the torso for positioning.

Ohboy, this one is sure to start making the rounds. In an article on the recent $50 billion Yukos settlement, the Financial Times turns to a source allegedly close to Putin, who explains to the paper why Russia doesn’t seem to care too much about either the size of the settlement or about the damage to its reputation that this settlement will cause.

One person close to Mr Putin said the Yukos ruling was insignificant in light of the bigger geopolitical stand-off over Ukraine. “There is a war coming in Europe,” he said. “Do you really think this matters?”

I haven’t been following the Yukos drama, but I have been following Ukraine, along with China’s various escalations and provocations. But now this highly placed Russian has come out and said what everybody sort of already knows, and what’s even crazier is that the FT has printed it.

I think we’re going to Mars.

The small, curved-blade knife known as the Karambit occasionally pops up in popular culture; fans of the Splinter Cell video games will certainly recognize it as one of Sam Fisher’s iconic weapons, and Karambits tend to be the weapon-of-choice for assassins or enemy agents in spy flicks. But despite their unique form–or perhaps because of it–Karambits haven’t seen much exposure in the greater EDC community. The Karambit is popular in some circles of martial arts, and its roots are in Indonesia, where the knife was created hundreds of years ago.

Well now. As they say, “This is news.”

I’m a fan of making tools by hand, and this extends into modifying tools, too–an old practice among longtime EDCers. The longer one owns a tool like a knife or a multitool, the stranger it seems to not modify it to suit his or her needs. Although I’m just a hobbyist, I currently have a few 3D printers in my possession, and I decided to try my hand at making some 3D printed scales for my Kershaw Cryo. The Cryo is a popular knife to modify, and there’s no shortage of custom handles available for it. It’s personally one of my favorite EDC folders, although it’s been criticized for having a slippery handle, which can be problematic when using it for intensive tasks. I thought a plastic scale on one side of the knife might aid in fixing this, and it was a simple way to improve the aesthetic of my folder.

Fellow gear-loving women might relate to the struggles of not having enough places to store tools–it’s amazing how many pairs of womens jeans don’t come equipped with pockets. And while this little hairclip multitool certainly won’t put your actual multitool out of business, I thought it was a fun way to wear a useful item.

John Neeman’s Timber Framing Chisel.

Where there’s a cub, a Mama bear isn’t very far behind. Three builders and the dog died in this attack. Two are in critical condition.

It’s not news that the White House rarely pushes anything that really helps people or animals, but this year they’ve taken it farther – and that could result in more trouble for gun owners.

Davis Scott, a 59-year-old Georgia resident, was staying in the Daytona Beach Wyndham Ocean Walk Resort yesterday morning when he did an unwise thing: He fired his pistol into the wall of his room.

Most teens, at some point or another, dream of going on an epic adventure alone. After all, so many of the great stories teens love feature a protagonist on a quest that will ultimately shape the rest of their lives, so it’s no surprise that going on a journey still feels like a rite of passage. But not everyone fulfills this fantasy, so it’s exciting to see teens take their lives into their own hands. That’s what 17-year-old Laina Rose set out to do this summer as she attempted to hike the entire length of the Pacific Crest Trail–all 2,650 miles of it.

The danger to modern civilization posed by solar flares is starting to get real attention well beyond prepper circles. Witness the Washington Post article and Hacker News thread on a recent NASA report on the massive July 2012 solar flare that missed earth by a week.

A class action suit against the city of Philadelphia has been settled in favor of the class, which consisted of people who had applied for (and been denied) a License to Carry Firearms. The city publicly posted the names and other personal information of 3,265 applicants whom they had denied, potentially putting them at risk of being targeted by criminals.

The Tavor SAR, a piston-operated bullpup rifle by IWI-US, has recently become popular with American shooters. A new version, dubbed Tavor SAR RS, has now been introduced to comply with restrictive laws in Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Jersey.

Mock deer scrapes are a great technique that, when used properly, can increase your chances for success this fall. Besides placement, the success of your mock scrape will depend on the types of scents you put in it and when you use those scents. Mock scrape scents are the key needed to ignite the figurative engine in a buck’s quest for dominance. To make an effective mock scrape that will attract a mature buck, the proper scents must be deployed.

Nothing like jumping into the deep end for your first run of knives.

In today’s knife world there is a relentless drive towards better steels. S30V, a top choice even four years ago, is now a common steel. The power of powder metallurgy (as process whereby very pure steel “dust” is pressed and heated to create very pure steels) has given steel companies the ability to tweak recipes on a molecular level. This, in turn, gives them the ability to alter a steel’s performance in a myriad of ways. Nearly all of the best steels ever made (in terms of performance) have been made recently. M390, M4, 3V, ZDP-189, S35VN, CTS XHP and CPM 154 all come tantalizingly close to being “the perfect steel” each with an impressive array of aspects that make them all very tough, very hard, and very corrosion resistant.