A couple new hats
I decided to try a few different color schemes and yarns so I knocked out a couple more beanies this weekend. Since they're so cheap to make and the only real effort is time, there really isn't any reason not to experiment. Anyway, over the last few beanies I've made I've refined the process and my pattern to the point where I think I've got the perfect tight fit beanie down. I could make another pattern up pretty easy for a folded up base, or a bit looser hat which I might try next. I'm also using a fairly tight stitch on purpose, as I'm aiming for maximum warmth with these hats over style. I think an olive drab might work well for a solid color next, maybe put some sort of small decorative patch on the front.
Labels: backpacking, DIY, gear, outdoor
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
New beanie
I decided to go backpacking next weekend and it has been pretty cold at night, so while setting up my gear I decided I wanted to bring a beanie. I unfortunately lost the last beanie I had knit a while back, which is too bad because I really liked it so I was stuck choosing from a commercial beanie. I've got a few I've purchased, but like anything that's made en masse, they all just fit o.k. and going through them I decided I didn't want to bring any of them on the trip.
So I decided to crochet one and since I didn't use a pattern I was able to make it a custom fit for my fat head (24") Since it was crochet in the round there are no seams to contend with and since I made it, no stupid and itchy mfg tags either. Made with probably 50 cents worth of yarn and some free time on my Sunday while appropriately watching Man vs. Wild, I knocked out my earthy toned head-warmer. :)
The completed hat
And on my head
Labels: backpacking, DIY, gear, outdoor, travel
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
My new everyday watch
Victorinox Swiss Army Summit XLT Titanium
For some time now, I’ve been keeping my eye out for a good all-around watch that met some specific requirements; reasonable cost, solid brand, easy to read and most importantly- tough. I’m a fairly active guy and while I’m not exactly a participant in an Eco Challenge, I would venture to say that in general I actually subject my gear to equally abusive, if not worse, conditions. I personally prefer things with a Swiss Army knife sort of appeal, fairly non-specialized gear that excels in many conditions but is not necessarily the best at any one in particular. I also really enjoy watches; men essentially don’t really wear jewelry save for a wedding band and a watch and since ideally the wedding band doesn’t change with any real frequency, watches are the one place where we have some freedom to play.
Over the years I’ve played around with a variety of sub-thousand dollar watches, with the bulk of them being under $250. From Timex and Casio to a recently failed Luminox, I’ve run many watches through unintentional torture tests in the backcountry over the years, with a small sampling of dress only watches thrown in for good measure, so I definitely have some strong opinions on what works for me and what doesn’t. Generally speaking, while very tough, Casio’s digital G-Shock watches with their LCD fail have failed me in the field due to extreme heat or cold washing out the display, something which really applies to any LCD watch; on top of the fact that, let’s face it, style-wise digital watches usually leave something to be desired. Even some of the high end LCD watches such as the Suunto’s will suffer from these problems and honestly, they are just overly complicated as in my opinion a watch is for telling the time- I’ll use my GPS for elevation, compass and altimeter; which leaves me with analog watches.
While there are higher end analogs that are quite nice: Tag, Rolex, Omega, et al. I could not bring myself to subject a 10k Rolex to some of the beatings that the bulk of my watches must endure. Additionally, as a high power rifleman, the recoil of a large caliber round would wreak havoc on the fine inner works of any automatic watch, regardless of price, which also helps narrow down the search. Finally, while I have a small selection of watches to choose from, I generally find that I fall back to one watch I wear most of the time. It is dressy enough to wear to the office but rugged enough to wear into the backcountry on any of the types of trips I enjoy without the fear that it might fail; which brings us to the Victorinox Swiss Arrmy Summit XLT titanium watch.
I personally prefer watches with a Swiss movement, they are accurate and I can count on them to be reliable. Unfortunately not all makers are the same and after the watch that I thought had fit the bill perfectly as my general from the office to the backwoods watch had failed to hold water out after a few kayaking trips and fogged over, a new search began. With my known requirements in mind I started looking around for a replacement and stumbled across the Swiss Army XLT. Already a huge fan of the knives from the same maker, I felt safe sinking a few bucks into one of these watches and after finding the exceptional deal at Sierra Trading Post, I’m glad I did.
The XLT is a slight departure from the modern trend of gargantuan watch faces, which I personally find ridiculous anyway, with its more traditional face size of 28.6mm. The pins are driven in quite solidly and you will find the band will need to be adjusted by a jeweler, unless you happen to have the right tools at home, it isn’t like sizing most low-mid range watches. Though I’m not a diver, the watch does have a second clasp which allows the band to be opened up enough to be worn comfortably on the outside of a wetsuit which will prove useful when ocean kayaking in a wetsuit. Double clasp aside, the standard clasp holds tightly and securely leaving no fear of the watch coming loose. Overall the XLT has a very nice build quality, everything lines up nice and neatly, the design is solid and it is a fine example of excellent craftsmanship. The watch has a screw-in sealed case back which affords a water resistance rating up to 100m, in spite of the fact that the crown does not screw down.
The multilink titanium band offers a little lateral play by design, making it very comfortable to wear as it adjusts slightly during those times when it slides up the wrist closer to the hand. It has luminous hands and hour markers as well as a luminous mark at the top of the bezel to signify the starting point when used as a one hour timer and they do hold their charge quite well, as checking the time at 4am after the watch has been in total darkness for 7 hours has proven and as a side note, they also recharge quite quickly. The one directional ratcheting bezel is made of a tough plastic of some sort with the numbers being painted on in a slightly recessed groove, something which will certainly help prevent wear and make the eventual repainting simple. The bezel is relatively tight, though not overly so and I suspect it will loosen up a bit with use. Thanks to the titanium casing and band, the watch is also exceptionally light when compared to a stainless steel watch and is a pleasure to wear as you sometimes forget it is even there, especially if you are used to heavy stainless watches.
I personally chose the model with the black face and white numbers which is very easy to read, with the time in both standard 12hr and military 24hr format just to the inside of the larger 12hr format numbers. The 3 has been replaced with the date which is in a nice location for easy reading as I find the watches that put the date to some sort of diagonal to annoy me and the 12 is replaced by an artfully designed Swiss Army logo, giving the watch a similar look to a certain popular Tag Heur watch. The mineral crystal should also prove mostly resilient to scratches due to the inevitable knocking around of the timepiece and if you’ll forgive the pun, only time will tell.
Though it has only been through a few small trials to date, I have yet to find any real fault with the watch. I did need to ever so slightly adjust the main and double clasps so that they would grip a bit tighter, but that took only the slightest bit of effort and I would honestly consider that a part of the sizing process. From a strictly cosmetic point of view, some may find fault with the minute hand, which, while going through the ticking process does not always land exactly on the minute mark in question, though the watch holds accurate time and it does in fact tick 60 times through each minute. I cannot speak as to why this is, but it does not appear to affect the accuracy of its timekeeping in any way.
Overall the watch offers all of the things I was looking for and one thing that made the purchase quite painless is the simple fact that before the model was discontinued, the Summit XLT retailed for $325. In the end, the XLT is tough enough to take outback and classy enough to wear to the office. While I wouldn’t wear it with a tux, for the bulk of my ‘normal’ life at work and at play, this watch will adorn my wrist.
Labels: backpacking, gear, kayaking, opinion, outdoor, travel
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
Coke can stove test
I decided to do the classic 2 cup of water boil time test with that backpacking stove I made out of two coke cans. Using my swiss tool I bent a coat hanger into a little ultralight stand. Of course, if you really wanted to save weight you could just dig a small hole or use sticks or rocks to hold your pot over the stove. I'm pretty happy with the stove as it performed coming to a boil in rougly 4 minutes. :) The can of fuel was about $5 at the local Home Depot, it burns clean and fairly hot. I recorded a small 1 minute video as well after the stove had been on for about 3 minutes. The coat hanger worked fairly well, if I was going to keep it for actual use I'd sand off the paint on it, but I suspect I'll just use rocks or sticks in the field.
This particular design has paper towel folded over inside the walls acting as a wick. I also use larger weep holes in the base and it seems to do well. The amount of fuel required to boil 2 cups of water is exactly 2 tablespoons, not bad. To carry the fuel you can just get one of those little containers from the travel isle at the local drug store.
Part way into the video you'll see me stick my hand in there, showing the time at about 3min after starting the fire. All in all it averaged to almost exactly 4 minutes. I should also note that I'm probably only about 100ft above sea level.
Labels: backpacking, DIY, gear, outdoor
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
Navigation tools
My very first GPS was one of the very early civilian models from Garmin, it had an external antenna that you could adjust. I got the "military" style model and unfortunately it was pretty much a piece of junk. The antenna was not very tough and while simply trying to rotate it the thing popped off. When attempting to put it back, some of the connecting points snapped. Thankfully, I was able to return it and purchased a Magellen unit. I liked the Magellans in that they were self contained, waterproof and had a very simple interface.
Of course this was back in the days when a GPS really only gave you data. Direction, speed, latitude, longitude and sea level elevation. On top of that, it was $300. I used that thing in combination with USGS topo maps for many years, it came with me on Jeeping adventures and backpacking trips into the unknown. Unfortunately it finally gave up the ghost a few months ago after providing me with over 10 years of service. Time for a new one and while I was at it, I figured I might as well go full bore and see what kinds of topo software was out there.
After a bit of research I settled on the Magellan eXplorist e210 United States version. Without going into detail on the specs, you can google those, the device comes preloaded with a US map containing major roads, parks, airports and waterways. For more detailed maps you can upload them into the unit via special software.
Now personally I don't really care too much about a detail map on a tiny little GPS screen. The zoomed out major roadways is fine for my purposes, any real detail requires a real map. Not to mention the fact that if your GPS dies for one reason or another, you better have a real map and compass handy or you might not be making it back to camp. Another nice feature is a dual level backlight that allows you to choose a dim or bright setting, very nice. Considering the fact that the backlight on these things can be a real power hog.
Here's the dim setting, note that I'm not tracking any satellites yet as I just turned the GPS on and I'm inside an office building with it pointing away from the windows. However, if you'll notice in the next picture, it started the tracking process anyway and locked a satellite. From everything I'd read and now experienced, this GPS handles satellite aquisition and lock extremely well. I don't yet have a handlebar mount, so to tracklog I just fire it up and toss it in my bag and it works just fine.
Another one of the nice features with this device is being able to set something called a track log, which more or less just records a ton of waypoints automatically as you move along. The nice thing about this is that you can wander off wherever the hell you want, then basically just tell it to do a return trip and it will guide you back the way you came.
The other nice thing about that is that not only can you use it to record locations with a route to get there as well as how to get back to say... camp with virtual breadcrumbs, but you can import this data into good topo software, like the TOPO! maps software from National Geographic. Now that is super cool, with that little feature when you return from a trip you can download the data off your GPS into your PC and see where you went on your map. Of course one of the primary reasons for getting the GPS is that you can also plot charts on your map and upload them to your GPS as a route that you can follow.
Combined with the very awesome National Geographic TOPO! map software, this little guy will be seeing a lot of use.
Now that I can print my own 100k and 7.5' topo maps I can feel free to abuse them and mark all over them and with the routes I create on it uploaded to my GPS, I can feel confident that not only will it lead me where I want to go, it will get me back home as well.
Labels: backpacking, gear, jeep, outdoor, travel, xt225
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
Ultralight backpacking stove
So I'd seen plans for years about little backpacking stoves you can make requiring merely a couple of coke cans a swiss army knife and a few minutes of time, but I'd never really gotten around to making one. I had been using nesbit tablets, which function, but I'm really not a big fan of them. Anyway, someone had posted a video on metacafe showing his own modified and simplified design and I figured I might as well give making one of these a shot.
Now, he simply states that you need to prime it first, then he is shown holding a lighter under it for a few seconds before lighting the jets. Of course, anyone that knows how primed stoves work realize that is total BS because you really need a priming pan, which defeated the whole point of his "modified" stove as it was supposed to be a completely simplified version of the different styles out there.
Anyway, I don't like the priming pan idea, it's just one more thing to carry around and lose. I'd prefer for the entire unit to be self contained. A great website, zenstoves.net goes into detail on the design and theory behind many different styles of these little stoves. Personally, I prefer the open top style, though slightly less efficient it lights instantly and the jets come on when ready.
I am somewhat happy with the performance I'm getting, though I do want to change the design a little and make the top hole smaller, I don't think it needs to be quite so large. Anyway, here's a shot of the flame you get for 5 minutes from a couple tablespoons worth of denatured alcohol.
Labels: backpacking, DIY, gear, outdoor
PermaLink / Posted by: Tony
