For someone that stocks over 100 flashlight models (soon to be 300+), I am bad about using the latest and greatest lights on a daily basis. My constant companion has been a $30 iTP A3 EOS SS for several months, and I only carry the stainless version over the aluminum because I needed the gift tin that the stainless one came in for a customer. Customers ask which big and bad light I use, and I sheepishly pull out a tiny little light that maxes out at 80 lumens. Granted, it is an awesome tiny little light that I absolutely love.
With (literally) thousands flashlights in cases and displays around me, I am becoming harder and harder to impress. I admit that I do still get giddy when a shipment of new models arrives, and I doubt that will ever fade, but I need a special light to widen my eyes.
Enter the ZebraLight SC30. ZebraLight has created a very solid reputation as a small, light, and bright headlamp manufacturer, so creating flashlights was the next logical step for them. The SC30 bucks the “tactical” trend that the majority of manufacturers are following by having a switch on the side of the light instead of the rear.
The switch isn’t the usual simple clicky switch, but instead a slick Panasonic switch that gives you instant access to all three modes. When it is off, lightly tap it for high, press and hold for low, and double click for medium. When it is on, hold the switch down to cycle through the modes. You can even double click it in each mode to give you another brightness level, for a total of six brightnesses ranging from a max of 193 lumens (out the front of the light) all the way down to 0.4 lumens. Each mode remembers the brightness you last had it on, so you can set your favorite levels for quick access.
I have found that having instant access to three brightnesses without having to cycle through modes is incredibly useful. At night, I can use the 0.4 lumens to keep from killing myself while trying to navigate our bedroom without waking my wife. The middle set to 21 lumens is perfect for poking through bins or boxes of merchandise. The high at 193 lumens works great for lighting up the backyard to locate my goofy dog while he barks at an imaginary squirrel during his 2 AM pee break.
The SC30 is also available in a warm tint version, the SC30w. A warm tint is closer to what you would see with an incandescent flashlight like a MagLite.
The JETBeam Jet III M is a personal favorite light of mine, so I’m kind of surprised at myself for taking so long to make a video of it. Maybe I subconsciously wanted to hoard them all to myself.
The Jet III M has a neat interface. When the head is tightened, you will always have full brightness. When the head is loosened, you have access to a user defined mode with a ridiculous array of options. You can set it to anywhere from 2-240 lumens, strobe frequencies from 1-20 Hz, SOS, beacon flashing, and several other flashing modes. The light is made for rough users in mind, with thick aluminum walls, stainless steel bezels and tail covers, and waterproof seals.
Here’s a video showing the light and how to program it:
A 68 year old woman in Colorado was driving along a mountain road, swerved to avoid a herd of deer, and tumbled 350 feet down the side of the mountain.
She broke eleven ribs, cracked her vertebrae and punctured her lung. Stranded alone in the ravine, she says that thoughts of her family motivated her to stay alive.
She stayed alive for five days like this, using a golf club as a cane and crawling on her face in an attempt to get help. Five days is a long time without food and water, you say? Yes, yes it is.
She was alone in the woods for five days, basically crawling on her face, through a cold front of rain, sleet and hail. This moisture would prove to be life-sustaining, as she sucked on her hair to keep from becoming completely dehydrated during her ordeal.
I like to think that I could handle a situation like that and make it out alive, but I really have no way of knowing until actually in the situation. No matter how old you are or how much knowledge you have, what this woman did is awfully impressive and once again proves that the right mindset is as or more important than the right gear.
Thanks to a recent out of town trip and some forgotten food in the trash can, I have a modest proposal for a delicious and easy survival food source. The traps (shown to the right) for the food are cheap, and can catch a large amount of countless food types before being completely used.
Initial effort in setting the traps is minimal, and maintenance is almost nil. The traps can be set almost anywhere, negating the need to spend precious time scouting and planning your traps. You can simply check the traps periodically for newly acquired morsels, and enjoy the calories as necessary.
Rechargeable batteries are pretty wonderful. They save money since they can be used over and over and over. They save resources since you are not buying alkaline or lithium batteries ad infinitum for your electronic toys. They do eventually die, but most chargers will make you think that they are dead long before the end of their useful life.
Smart chargers like the LaCrosse BC-900 can not only extend the life of your rechargeable batteries, but they can also make those batteries last longer on a single charge.
The BC-900, in particular, has some very nice features that set it above your average charger that you pick up at Target. First off, each battery is charged on an individual circuit, which means that you can charge different types of batteries without worrying about damaging the batteries or the charger, like you possibly can with a regular charger. Those idividual circuits have very complex monitoring technology to ensure that they do not overcharge and ruin your battery, a major problem with many fast chargers on the market. The circuits can also immediately detect whether or not a battery is completely shot or not, so you do not have to wait until you need the battery to figure out that it is destined for the recycling center. The BC-900 can charge batteries that my other chargers don’t even recognize as batteries in the first place.
Second, you can change the rate at which it charges. If you want to be nice and gentle to your poor little batteries, make it charge slow. If you want to inundate your batteries with as much juice as possible in the shortest amount of time possible, crank it all the way up. I personally just leave it on the middle setting, so it is not frustratitingly slow and also does not burn out my batteries.
Lastly, and coolest to me (I admit that I am a giant nerd, so take this with a grain of salt), is the “discharge and refresh” function. Most chargers will just charge a battery a single time, which can make the battery not have the maximum amount of charge possible. The discharge and refresh function does just that, discharge each battery completely, and then recharge them with the maxium amount of capacity (mAh) over and over. This process can take several days, but it will also help you achieve those ratings you see on your batteries, like “2600 mAh.” In my experience, just charging a battery once will get you about 2/3 of the capacity that the battery is capable of, which means that you are losing a full 1/3 of what the battery is capable of. The BC-900 will help make sure that you take full advantage of your batteries, which is very nice if you take them on a trip where size and weight matter, like on a hiking or travel trip.
There are other nice featuers of the BC-900, but those are what I believe set it apart from other chargers. The BC-900 and similar chargers are more expensive than your average charger, but if your house is littered with five million flashlights, electronics, game controllers, remotes, etc. like mine is, it will very quickly pay for itself.
If you thought the firesteel order was a lot of fire in one place, you should see my pile of fatwood:
I don’t think I’ll have any trouble starting fires anytime soon. Not that I did before, but I am a total failure if I can’t get a fire going with all of this.
I got 500 lbs total, in 3″, 4″, 8″, and 12″ sticks. I thought the little sticks were pretty cool, since they are already the right size to stuff into PSKs and any other nook and cranny you can find. I even got some massive chunks of fatwood, just in case anyone wants to carve a bear out of fatwood, or whatever else people do with several pounds of a firestarter.
I imagine that Ray Mears wanders through the woods, sipping tea in his cup made from riverbank clay, making bird calls, and generally being at ease in the wilderness. He is like the polar opposite of Bear Grylls, and while both have their entertainment value, Ray’s advice is usually much easier to trust and follow. In the below video, Ray shows how to select an axe and then safely use it. Even if you have been using an axe since you were a toddler, the video might teach you a new good trick or two.
There has been a fairly large pine tree in our yard since we moved in to our house a few years ago. At least since then, it has had a decent sized split at the base of the trunk, with a chunk splitting off for about the first 10′ of the three. The tree was large enough where it didn’t seem to matter, and was plenty healthy at the top of the tree. Over the past few months, however, I have noticed a LOT of carpenter ants crawling around in the split, and the way the tree was situated, the weak part of the tree would have meant that if it fell, it would have come down directly on our bedroom. I like adventure, but a 100′ tall pine crashing down on top of my wife and I at 2 AM is not what I have in mind, so my landlord had some guys come out and cut it down this afternoon.
Watching someone cut down a huge tree in a residential neighborhood is awfully entertaining, since they have to climb up and cut down each branch, then start cutting chunks off the top. Huge limbs come down with an almost soft landing thanks to all the needles, but the huge chunks of needleless wood leave log sized holes in the yard with a resounding thud. My neighbors had free entertainment for a few hours and some even sat of their porches watching the whole process. The main thought in my head the whole time: “I bet there is fatwood in the damaged part.” I know, I’m a weirdo.
Sure enough, I was very right. The split portion was dead and rotted, but the other side of the split that was still part of the relatively healthy tree was completely saturated with resin. Hardened resin was also caked all around the edges of the split. I took a small hatchet and chopped in a little way to be sure of the fatwood content and was rewarded with a tool that kept sticking in the gooey mess (good sign, but not good if you like clean tools).
As I pushed the logs around, I came to the base pieces and was suddenly very glad that they took care of the tree when they had. A good 1/4 of the lowest part of the trunk was completely rotten, filled with carpenter ant larvae and adult ants crawling around looking none too pleased. The wood crumbled at the touch, which made me wonder what would happen in the summer thunderstorms a couple of months away.
After confirming the fatwood content, I grabbed my axe and chopped off a small tub full of chunks. This was seriously some of the best fatwood I have ever found, with an almost translucent appearance from the high resin saturation. I put a flame to a small piece, and it instantly caught in a nice, hot flame. With three stumps worth of fatwood sitting in the backyard, I didn’t exactly need more cluttering up the patio. I also don’t exactly need more flashlights and knives, but that doesn’t stop me from pursuing them to the ends of the earth.
If you are unlucky enough to have pine trees on your property (I should probably move out of the south due to my hatred of pines), take a close look at them. You might already have all the fatwood that you need sitting in your yard, but hopefully the tree is further away from your house than mine was.
With (literally) thousands flashlights in cases and displays around me, I am becoming harder and harder to impress. I admit that I do still get giddy when a shipment of new models arrives, and I doubt that will ever fade, but I need a special light to widen my eyes.
