Happy birthday to me. ( Eka Swingblade knife)

I am aging again, about  tomorrow, as i do every year it seems. i got this gift certificate, or do you call it vouchier ?. And i used it to get a box of Federal Game Shok ammo for my 22 WMR. It wont be lasting long now as its hunting season for small game so i also chose this knife that i have been thinking of, and hearing that it might be well made and might serve my needs too. Its an EKA Swingblade, with bright orange handles, to help me find it after i lose it in the forest.

Made from Sandvik 12c27 steel that i already have good experience of, as my Eka Super Swede pocket knife has the same steel in its blade. I dont have any field, nor hands on experience of the knife yet but i really really hope it turns out to be a decent knife for my hunting needs.

The knife blade is 10 cm long and the gut opener blade 8 cm.
The knife comes with a plastic lined with a nylon fabric. Simple and can be washed easily. It has a good sized belt loop too. The only small downside is that the belt is secured on its sheath with a noisy and wearing piece of velcro. But thats easy to change, to me :).

Steel quality is Sandvik 12C27 hardened to 57-59 HRC.

 The knife has a rotating blade made from sole piece of steel. The small button locks the blade in its place.

The gutting blade has its sharp edge on the opposite side than the main blade making it easy to use the knife in familiar position in your hand and open the game. It also has a round, dull tip so it wont stick into guts or worst, pierce the guts.

Both blades have a good, quite sharp, simple and grippy jimping on the spines. Good detail on a knife meant to be used often on bloody, slippery jobs.

Many seem to believe that the handle is made only from rubberized plastic but its not. The handle has a good, sturdy stainless, skeletonized steel frame between the handles visible slabs.

The handle is also easy to put down in parts as its assembled with quite commonly found bolts and counterpieces. Again a good detail for knife thats to be used on game handling where its good to have a knife that you can clean and wash, well to prevent germs.

Have a nice weekend !

I think i will have, atleast....hunting, fishing, bathing,eating and sleeping. Might have to take few beers too.

Plans for the weekend, with TOZ 34.

I think ill be heading to Kuru, to hunt as the seasons are starting !

Today i cleaned and checked out my "new" shotgun, TOZ-34, and put the HiViz bead on its rail,and thats about it, ill try to get a few shots fired before weekend too. Its not a hi-tech, nor a legendary outfitters shotgun but to my wallet and hand,it feels pretty good so far.

Sorry about crappy pic,my phone dropped on ground yesterday and its now working well now.

Fishing & Camping weekend in small island.

I found myself heading to see my buddy who i meet only 2-3 times a year but now we both had no plans for 2 days. When i arrived we just loaded our packs, water and fishing stuff etc in to his boat and drove some...maybe an hour till we were at rocky shore if this 30 x 150 m sized island,with plenty of moss and trees,at top of its cliffs.

Sorry for lack of actual fishing pics,but i dont have a waterproof camera nor phone, and i kept my cellphone with camera,turned off for most of the time, to save the battery for emergeanzy situations.

 Optimus Terra Kettle, Crux lite gas stove,Kupilka 21 "kuksa",and a hobo utensil, that has spoon,folding knife,and fork that come apart, stamped as SIGG. But im its not made by SIGG,just stamped to have the trademark on it. Anyways, its a cool and uselful addition to my cookware that seems to get smaller and lighter.

We didnt do anything cool or interesting. For most of the time we were fishing from shore or from boat, night and day, and then eating in somewhere between. Lots of swimmimg, too.

We collected pieces of old fallen trees,branches from shore and then had good warm fires at nights. Way nice, just to lay in the ground,  drink few beers, fry fish and talk some BS.

                                                    Coffee in the morning.

 At saturday morning i was checking the pole i left on the shore,it had a piece of bass as a bait in its hook and it was just on the lakes floor,all nigh long. Well Well, look what we got here:

                                            This creature was delicious after a good smoking !

I´ve really liking my "super" rare Finnish army special unit pack,from earlier 80´s. I had way too much stuff with me, in it, since i didnt know would we sleep in cabin,house, existing lean-to or where and would i be using open campfire, or gascooker, etc, so at home i just stuffed everything but the kitchen sink to it. This thing is bulletproof i suspect. My bed was combined from Savotta army sleeping mattress,thats rolled under packs flap there,and on top of flap theres Vi-He Ransu shelter. Aside those, i had an old army surplus felt blabket and Savotta space blanket that we used as shelters floor.

The good old, trusty almost ultralight Ransu shelter. Awesome and spacious,without its removable insect mesh / floor part. Without floor piece you 3 peoples can sleep in it and still theres space for essentials in the lower end.

                                              No stress.

                                             Good times. Screw the television,we had much better time at night around fire. Hunting stories,fishing lies,all kinds of thoughts and bit of booze. Two of our buddies arrived there too, but they had forgotten to bring any shelter with em but luckily i had a surplus tarp, with me and paracord, so in short time i made a quick lean-to for them to sleep in. It wasnt raining at all, nor cold. Actually it was hot as hell all the weekend so there wasnt even need for any sleeping bag,but as the island was in biiig lake,and it had rocky shore and we were on top ridge of it, the occasional wind was pretty hard. So the lean-to was made to protect guys mostly from the rain and it also worked as a windscreen for fire.

                                                        Some stuff that i seem to use the most nowadays. Vic German Army OH folding knife with home made plain edge,and some filework on the spine, and Kupilka 21 "kuksa" that i had to costomize a bit afer its handle cracked a bit, last winter. So i smoothed the broken handle, drilled a hole for lanyard with Vic´s awl, heated the handle and bent it a bit. So its ok to use again.

 This 3.5 meter long (?) cheap BlueFox 15 piece telescope fishing rod has lasted for some 3 years now and prooven itself with loads of fish that ive got with it. Cost like 18 euros or similar. Its only some 12 inches short when its on its shortest, and with its tiny sheath, it fits nicely on sidepocket of  my packs. This weekend i got 1,8kg pike with it. Its not the finest fish there is but after filleting it, with some lemonpepper and salt scrubbed in it,and frying it above campfire,it sure was nice meal. Coupled with a Karhu beer offcourse :).

                                                    No need for rare restored axes :). Axe never left anywhere in my life. So axe is not "back" :).

Well thats about all the pics i had and i cant come up with anything that i think you might be interested to read.

At morning, in few hours, ill be heading somewhere again. See ya !

Leuku fever resulting , pt.1

Ive been wanting a more traditional lookingcustom made leuku for ages. I have ended up on various knives far away from the original leuku-idea but Now, it seems theres something in these lines coming righ up. Actually two!

 Heres a smutty :) picture i took after i had drawn like 15 knives,and thinking it again and again,measuring and trying other leukus. I talked for few hours at a time about it to Kotavuopio,and i sent one "final" drawing and listed some specs to him,but we agreed that he still can do it very freely, as he sure knows more about those northern knives than i do.

I wanted it to LOOK like leuku at first look. Meaning that it wont turn into machete or any brutal chopping knife this time,heh. But, it will be,in sake of trustworthy durability, made in full tang construction. Some whittling bevel next to handle,slightly curved handle,and lanyard hole in between the two handle bolts,thats about it, other than that,its up to Teros hands and eyes,what will the final leuku look like. I dont want it to be any "hidden full tang" so there wont be nonsense fake bolsters,nor any needless several materials in handles. Just some hard wood and leather liners. Blade will be something like 23 cm long,and 6 to 7 mm thick,and width will be from 35 to 40mm. Tero went far with it, with the blade thing. I would been more than ok,to have a one-material blade but he ended up making it with two forge welded steels, that are treated to be so called "bainite" steel !

After a short while i got a picture from master Kotavuopio :

                                              Way good looking aint it ?!?!?!

I would have been more than happy with the leuku in that project picture. Its not nearly finished in it
but already looking tasty indeed. BUT, this maker is that much of a professional and picky, that he wanted to make a "new" one as theres a minor cosmetic flaw in the forge welding joint and the handle aint curved. So, ill be waiting for this "failed" leuku to arrive to me,and ill finish it by adding the handles and finishing it overall,making a sheath to it and such.

Now all i can do is to wait for the second one that TK wanted to do,and allready im going nuts :).

Ive been using Kotavuopios blades and services quite a good time and never have i felt disapponted in anyway. All i can do is keep on recommending his products.

Chisel time

Ive been wanting a GOOD wood chisel to make wooden sheath liners and all sorts of small crafts,ut i was blown by the prices of thin accuracy chisels and in cheaper shops specializing in wood working,theyre still mostly for construction workers. And in artsy fartsy shops.....well like 120 euros for set of 2 or 4 chisels. An di dont need various, just one or two. One with just slightly curved blade and one with more like half round shape. Tero Kotavuopio interested,or got bored to my chisel whining and offered to make a custom made chisel.

When it arrived i was amazed about to see it. Its laminated,using basic steel and Sten & Co´s Leuku steel. I havent ever even seen laminated chisels,not factory made,and not hand made ones. There might be those,but i havent sen or heard,as i am not any wood carver,atleast yet.

I am whittling a simple juniper handle to it, it will have a brass bolster to reinforce the joint too.

Its all good.

Fixing a canoe.

I´ve been fixing this old school -or should i call it vintage- canoe, that used to work as a rental vessel in eastern finland, and then its been just lying under tin roof for ages.

First i scrubbed it with ecological heavy duty cleaner stuff, and washed it, time after time with pressurewasher, to get most of the old dirt off from it. Then when it dried i started to sand it,all over many times to get away with all loose,chipping paint layers that had been put on the poor canoe in its glory days.

Its been originally a two-tone, the deck was white at first and the lower part was blue, but it had been painted with two layers of green shades and i sanded away everything that was about to loose,and i used sandpaper discs and such, with grits from 40 to 80 to do this to get teh surface pretty coarse, so the new paint would grab the surface well. Then i started to grind away the never ending amount of quickly made fiberglass, epoxy, glue and tape patches. I understand the need to do these emergency repairs as its the only way to work along the trips, if customers canoe breaks and starts to leak accidentally. You dont often have the time to do it properly, not even close, so people end up just slapping patches over patches and  although theyre meant to be temporary, they often turn into permanent ones.

They were all well sealed and the canoe didnt leak  but man they were ugly even in my eyes and i am a fan of bit more crude looks. So i used angler grinder and everything from chisels to small  hatchet to get rid off the super thick patch layers. I ground them all away, and cleaned and smoothed the original areas, so the new pathcing would keep even a bit smoother than the previous ones and so they would also stick well into original material.  After hours and hours of crude removal, i  started to finish the places and then i washed the whole canoe, to get rid of dust and dirt along with any grease that might have been hiding under patches.

After i had the cleaninga and patch removals done, i sanded it throughly once again. Till this point i had half of 200 liter garbage sack filled with dust,dirt and patches already collected. As well as my lungs were filled up with this skull-marked crap. I had a pro quality, air cleaning and fresh air blowing mask & belt on me but i gave up using it once in a while because it was so damn hot days and the lense of mask was foggy from sweat all the time...

                                             The rear end just before adding the Kevlar mixed layers of glassfiber mat.

Ok.

I started to fill in the gaps and holes, scratches and dings. I made sure the surfeces were all wet from resin, and then i laid one layer at a time to the damaged part, then i moved to the next and moved around the canoe doing this round after round. After i got some three layers done, i let it to dry over night. At morning i returned, and sanded the  previous patches, lput on new resins and added patches where needed.

                                           Under side of bow, with reinforcings in place. Not
                                            a beauty queen but works.

                                           .....and the reinforced stern.


In to bow and stern i had few good strips of Kevlar mixed fiberglass as well as thin Kevlar strips, and i used those to reinforce the ends of the vessel, and i also used the kevlar mat to reinforce the under areas of rear seat, where these canoes seem to be "driven" usually from and its common to see these get hits just under the rear seat. So this one will hopefully take the forecoming adventures better that before.

            Canoes stern was all ashed in once, and it had been repaired very poorly,
 by filling the undersides of rear deck with urethane and styrox pieces, and it had all wetted and leaked still. The space was "sealed" with a piece of plywood that had rotted. I removed  the plywood, and smoothed the hole, filled the space with styrox,also the front ends space was secured this way now. It wont sink to the river bottom now even if you smash the stern or the bow hard.

                                    Then i sealed the space with plastic coated sheetmetal and fiberglass.
                                     

It turned out pretty well in my opinion. I admit i could have spent more time, never ending hours to sand off the visible places and use some filler goos, and other tricks,sweat and time, to make it all pretty to look upon, but i believe that this is double better looking than it was and its also a  it lighter now too,thanks to removal of old patch-piles. It will bash against rocks and sand, and all the fine detail work would ruin anyway so i made it it like this. Some may see it as ugly but to mee its more like a tool.

                                                                     No Bondo ! :)

                              The paint is official finnish army stuff ,olive green colour is RAL 6003.

Oh hey one more thing....

i am still considering some modifications, especially adding a watertight gear container into bow but this i just had to make already.

                                                      Almost hidden holder for fishing rod in the rear.

At this point, i could sell this before i continue playing with it....but im not sure,though. Ive noticed some interested to this vessel already but ive invested a bit of diesel, work & drive hours, paint value, sanding material cost and the fiberglass stuff, resin, not to mention Kevlar aint for free either.