I spend more time taking care of my hand tools, I’d wager, than most people do. That goes double for sharp and pointy things — knives, axes, saws and such. I don’t obsess about it, and I don’t mind knockin’ the pretty off a tool, but I do tend to be fairly disciplined about maintenance.
That fell apart some while we were living multiple lives, like when I’d use a cutting tool on The Mountain and then return to Harrison without giving it the proper attention. After restoring the edge on those loppers yesterday, this afternoon I pulled out the rest of my woods tools to see what kind of shape they’re in.
And they were okay, mostly. My Hardcore ax had a few rust spots, which I dispatched with 00 steel wool. My well-loved machete was dull as a balloon, so I used the same file that worked on the loppers and brought the edge back to utility.
All of the tools got a protective coat of Ballistol.
I’ve always liked using a machete, despite the fact that it’s not the best tool for many jobs I encounter. Think about it — the machete was born in the jungle, where vegetation is lush, and I’ve spent most of my life around hardwood forests.
Even a shorter, stouter Indonesian golok would be more useful up here. But a machete is cheap and still handy when used within its limits. And so I do, often.
Truth is, all of that indiscriminate flailing with a big jungle knife has made me lazy. What I mean to do from here on is redevelop my skills with ax and hatchet.
That’d feel more American anyway.
There’s a refrigerator in the cabin.
It arrived on The Mountain around 2pm, lashed to a utility trailer pulled by a three-quarter-ton pickup. The fella driving the rig was young and apparently strong enough to deliver appliances, but because he was by himself, I got pressed into service.
All we had to do was move it ten feet over and four feet up, the hardest part being negotiating it through the front door. That took three tries, but we got it done.
Once he’d left, Deb and I finished unpacking it, removed all the shipping tape, ran an extension cord from the power pole and plugged it in. While we were at it, we unboxed the chest freezer and got it running, too.
Both chillers are a-chiilin’ several hours later. Everything seems to be working just fine.
We’ll install a pass-through, either in the wall or in the floor, early next week, so we won’t have to run the extension cord through an open door. Then we’ll have a welcome expansion of our food-storage capacity that our RV’s small fridge doesn’t allow.
This evening we celebrated with a dinner of breakfast sandwiches Deb made with free-range eggs gifted to us by the previous owners of our woodstove. Outstanding.
These are small things, I know. Baby steps. Truly, to understand why they’re a big deal, you’d have to be us.
We’re moving forward now. Nothing can stop us. There’s no feeling quite like it.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
We got two-and-a-half inches of rain last night.