After watching some YouTube videos of guys lighting fires using the flint and steel method I thought I would try to make my own firestriker (not to be confused with a ferrocerium rod) from some old files I had lying around. The first thing you need to do is to anneal the file to make it soft otherwise it will be too hard to work on. To anneal the file I placed a batch of them in the heat treat oven and turned it on to 850 degrees Celsius. Once they reached that temperature the oven was turned off and allowed to cool slowly in the oven overnight. I then cut a section from the annealed file and ground down the edges before heat treating it to make it hard again. To heat treat it the section of file was placed into the heat treat oven again and taken to 850C. The file section was then tested on a magnet to make sure it was non magnetic. This is a critical step to ensure that the heat treat will work properly. Once that was done it was quenched in water to make it hard. Here is a short video showing the finished product throwing sparks. What is happening is small pieces of the steel are being shaved from the firestriker by the flint and the heat generated from the force of the flint striking the firesteel.
I thought I would give it another go and make a firesteel that could fit in the hand a bit better. I also thought that if you could make the area of the face of the firestriker larger it would be more likely to throw a larger number of sparks. Here is another more detailed video showing some of the process of making the firesteel along with a demonstration at the end.
The tinderbox is basically a steel "Altoids" container that is used to store the firesteel, the flint, the charcloth and some tinder which in this case is some jute or sisal twine. The tinderbox is also used to make the charcloth by placing some cotton cloth within it and placing the box into the coals of a fire. The material will smolder without burning completely since there isn't sufficient oxygen in the box to complete the combustion process. A small hole in the top of the tinderbox allows the gasses to escape. Once the gasses cease to flow from the hole you know it is time to remove the tinderbox from the coals and allow the whole thing to cool before obtaining your charcloth.
In the video the "birdsnest" was made from teasing some sisal rope into it's individual fibres which provides a large surface area for the smoldering charcloth to ignite. In the field you could use dried grasses, dried bark like cedar or whatever dried plant material you can find. I have made several fires using the flint and steel method and have found that it is very important to have all your materials at hand and ready to go so that the fire will not go out before it has a chance to catch and sustain itself.
It was such a nice day last Tuesday that I thought I would take a ride around town. If you have Google Earth installed you can view a 3D video of the route below.
And here is a little video as well. I would have continued down the Sarnia waterfront but the camera batteries died. If you're wondering what is pictured around the 2:24 mark, it's a scale model of the Great Lakes. In the summertime it is filled with water and even has a mini Niagara Falls.
During a recent trip to Toronto I was fortunate enough to take a tour of the Steam Whistle Brewery located downtown beneath the CN Tower in what is known as the John Street Roundhouse, a National Historic Site of Canada.
This is a picture taken from the CN Tower when we visited in January. The brewery is located in the first fourteen bays on the left. The other bays are home to the Toronto Railway Heritage Centre and Leons Furniture.
There are several different tour packages offered for the tour when I visited. I chose the souvenir version for $10 which gives you the choice of a retro bottle opener or a tasting glass. For $15 you could opt for a six pack or for $26, a twelve pack. While waiting for the tour to start, visitors are presented with a sample of their beer which is the only one they brew. Their motto is "Do One Thing Really, Really Well." They were very generous with the refills throughout the visit.
The tour starts in the lobby with an explanation of how the brewery was started by three former employees of Upper Canada Brewing Company who were let go after it was purchased by Sleemans. The original proposed name was going to be "Three Fired Guys" before it was changed to Steam Whistle. In fact, the bottom of their bottles are stamped with 3FG in reference to this.
Steam Whistle, I learned, is a premium Pilsner beer which was first brewed in Pilsen, Czech Republic. It consists of only four ingredients - malted barley, spring water, hops and yeast.
Here one of the brewers is overlooking one of the batches being brewed that day. Reminds me of my job running the water treatment plant at work. Hmm, perhaps I could someday work here.
The beer is aged in these tanks.
Space is at a premium in the roundhouse as evidenced by this picture where the kegs are being filled above a storage area.
The packaging area. The bottles are made with thirty percent more glass than other beer bottles which enables them to be used up to forty five times, wich is three times more than the conventional brown bottle used by other breweries. The cap is a non twist off type as well.
The tour was thoroughly enjoyable and I highly recommend it if you visit the area.
Here's a corny video I found on Youtube that gives a pretty good idea of the process.
Fallkniven is a knife manufacturer based in Sweden known for their laminated steel knives. The Fallkniven F1 is their pilot survival knife with a blade that is laminated with a hard VG-10 steel centre with softer sides for toughness.
A while ago I ordered a sheath from Eric at On Scene Tactical for another knife that didn't quite fit as tightly as I wanted. So Eric sent me another one that was perfect. Well..., I found a use for the loose sheath. The sheath that comes with the F1 is less than wonderful. So I got out the heat gun and some foam and modified the old sheath to fit it. I added the ferro rod holder and some red para cord and this was the result.
I found out this past deer season that the blade will chip if it comes in contact with bone due to it's high hardness. Here is a video showing how I refurbished it.
After the accident I thought it wise to upgrade to a more reliable bicycle. Bicycle touring really appealed to me so I did some research on the net into the various bikes available. After test riding a Trek 520, a Marin Muirwoods and a Surly Long Haul Trucker I decided that the Surly Long Haul Trucker worked best for me. I bought the bike from the guys at Revolution Bike Shop on Blackwell Road and highly recommend them as they provided top notch service. Here's some pictures of the new bike and the old.
Have a look at my Michigan Circle Tour blog post back in December of a tour I did with some friends from the Bike for Bibles ride to see the new bike in action.
My commute to work is really a great ride. It takes me through the downtown area of Sarnia and follows the St. Clair river through Corunna, Mooretown and Courtright to my work at the Lambton Generating Station. We have showers at work as well which is all the more reason to get some exercise.
Last August I was returning home from work on my bicycle after working a night shift and made it all the way home but somehow I crashed at the bottom of my driveway. I can't remember falling but what I think happened was my front tire came off and sent me over the handlebars. I landed on my head and was knocked unconscious. Here are some pictures of my helmet. You can see in the top picture how it is cracked where most of the force from the fall was absorbed. The bottom picture shows the abrasion from the fall.
I must have suffered from amnesia as I cannot remember falling or waking up. My watch was damaged and stopped working at the exact time of the fall 07:35. I also remember checking my time as I came up the street and it was around this time. My first recollection was stumbling into the house and going the bathroom to check myself out and wash my wounds. After getting a bag of peas from the fridge to apply to my face to keep the swelling down I went back outside to collect my bike. My wife Trish found me at this point when she came back from a run. It was 08:05 so I must have been laying unconscious at the bottom of the driveway for at least twenty minutes.
She took me to the hospital where I received stitches to my cheek and nose where my glasses had cut me. After several x-rays the doctor pronounced that I had not broken any bones. Here's a picture taken after the fall. You can make out a faint red spot on my fore-head where I must have received the blow that knocked me out. I had abrasions all over the place as you can see from the picture below so it must have been quite a fall. My neck and back muscles were sore and would take quite a number of visits to the physiotherapist and some time to heal. It was early on a Sunday morning which probably explains why nobody saw the fall or me lying there.
When I arrived home from the hospital I asked Trish to look for the lens from my glasses which were missing from the frames. After she couldn't find it I went down and had a look but couldn't find it anywhere. Later that day I found them in my fanny pack where I must have placed them earlier but I had no recollection of putting it there. It could have been much worse - I could have broken my neck!
My brother Don works for the Canadian Bible Society (CBS) and every year he organizes a bicycle tour called Bike for Bibles. The CBS website describes the event as "...an annual CBS event that brings cycling enthusiasts of all ages and walks of life together for a time of fellowship on the road - with one purpose in mind - to help raise funds for Bible distribution and translation projects."
Last year I finally made it to the event which was taking place in Southwestern Ontario and was raising money for a Bible called The Key to Freedom Bible. After meeting up with the other riders at a church in Cambridge my old Norco was parked next to the other bikes in the gym. It seemed a little out of place next to the other more modern bicycles costing much more than my humble ride. It was purchased four years ago at a garage sale for $80 and judging by it's condition was probably sitting in someones garage for several years. The tires were worn and cracked and were replaced with a new set. After a checkup from the local bike shop and a few modifications it was ready for the road.
Up to this point I had used my bicycle mainly for commuting to work and for exercise. It had served me well but I soon learned it's limitations during the week long ride. The shifting levers were located on the down tube wich was not the safest place since you needed to take your hands off the handlebars to shift. The gearing was also not the best for climbing hills which had not been much of a problem in the past with little or no hills back home.
By the end of the week I had learned how to draft behind others to make the riding easier, especially if there was a wind. I also learned how to signal to others of dangers on the road like gravel or potholes. It was also necessary to signal if you were stopping or slowing down. I made lots of new friendships and am looking forward to this years ride which will be in Eastern Ontario. Here's a video of last years ride.
