Parenting a dog comes with an endless supply of humor. Smudge serves me chuckles daily, usually in the form of endearing quirks I’ve come to know and love. Every now and then, however, she shows me something I hadn’t expected.
Sunday afternoon, I was watching a YouTube video of a mechanic installing an intake upgrade on a Dodge diesel pickup. At one point, the guy began to whistle while he worked.
Apparently, Miss Smudge had never heard a human whistle before.
She stared at the TV and cocked her head, trying to make sense of what she was hearing. Then, of course, she barked her head off.
And what happened next? You guessed it — I started whistling, too.
The Heeler was torn. She quickly decided to split her time between barking at the video mechanic and trying to eat my whistling lips.
That’s entertainment.
Monday morning, while it was still cool, I resumed my pre-season inspection of chimney and flue. My objective was to get a look at the single-wall stovepipe inside the cabin without disassembling it.
Making that possible was an inexpensive borescope (aka endoscope) that connects to my Android phone.
There’s not much to the device. It’s basically a semi-rigid cable, at the end of which are two illuminated cameras. A control module near the opposite end allows switching between views, capturing still images and adjusting the LEDs’ intensity.
A free app lives on the phone. It displays the live camera feed and offers the choice of photo or video.
Getting the scope into the flue meant negotiating it up through the outside cleanout, horizontally across the double-walled thimble, and then down through the elbow above the woodstove. That wasn’t easy — the head kept getting hung-up in the elbow.
After several tries and a good bit of fussing, I began catching glimpses of the inside of the flue.
Switching back and forth between the camera on the end of the cable and the side-view camera — all while trying to move the head downward — gave me what I wanted. I could not, however, advance past the damper.
But I saw what I needed to see. No obstructions. No buildup of creosote. There was a layer of soot, thickest on “ceiling” surfaces (see today’s header image), but not enough to cause concern.
I expect to break down the flue and sweep it in the spring. Maybe sooner — as in mid-season — if I notice problems with the draft.
I ‘m already on-record about batoning a knife — it’s a skill, not a feature built into the tool, and seldom is it the best choice for processing wood. Still, countless online videos and social-media posts presume to judge the worth of a blade by banging on its spine.
There are better uses for a knife and far better tools for splitting firewood. And while learning how to baton (as a survival skill) is a good idea, the method doesn’t often make a lot of sense (as routine practice).
The latest “Skill of the Week” from The Art of Manliness instructs readers on a variation on batoning — “How to Fell a Tree with a Knife.”
Yes, it’s possible. Yes, the infographic describes the skill accurately, so that if you absolutely had to, you could do it by following those four steps.
That said — don’t.
Why? Using the batoning technique for splitting cleaves wood with the grain and, notwithstanding knots, is less abusive to the knife. Also, if executed deliberately, the baton strikes the spine squarely, and that (ideally) puts less stress on the blade.
Felling with knife and baton, on the other hand, cuts across the grain, and virtually every strike is at an angle. Most knives don’t have enough “meat” behind the edge to stand up to that. The near-inevitable result will be a chunked or snapped blade.
And in a survival situation, breaking your knife leaves you without what may be your most essential tool.
Again, it is possible to drop a tree with a knife. You simply should think carefully about whether the reward is worth the risk.
Other considerations:
- Don’t use this method on trees larger than the diameter of your wrist. The trunk shown in the AoM infographic is bigger than I’d tackle, personally.
- Don’t baton cross-grain on wood that’s dead or frozen. Both can be hard as rock, which only increases the likelihood that you’ll break your knife. Stick to green wood.
- Go slow. If you insist on felling a tree with a knife and a baton, take small bites. Strike the spine as squarely as possible, and only with enough force to sink the cutting edge a half-inch (at most) into the work.
- Don’t resort to chopping. Swinging away with a knife that’s not designed to be a chopper is worse than batoning it. Wild, glancing blows will chip an edge or break an unsupported blade, guaranteed.
- Find another way. Did you pack a saw? Can you improvise a cutting tool from found materials? Is there chert or flint nearby?
So yeah, learn the skill. Test yourself and the tools you carry into the woods. There’s a time and a place to fell a tree with a knife — just remember that both are rare.
A notification came in from Ryan Hall Y’all yesterday afternoon, something about a significant “Day 6” convective outlook from the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center. It’s unusual for the SPC to have confidence beyond Day 4 or Day 5, so it got my attention.
Having no clue about what part of the US the outlook covered, I surfed into the agency’s website and pulled up the map.
Well, shit. The area highlighted in yellow is predicted to be at a 15% risk for severe weather (supercells, damaging winds, tornadoes, large hail) on Saturday. It affects parts of ten states, including all of Arkansas.
The Mountain is near the geographic center of the big yellow blob.
With that knowledge, I launched Ryan Hall’s video to see what he had to say. He played forecast models showing a strong trough plowing into the region from the west and interacting with ample moisture streaming north from the Gulf of America.
I’m sure that these predictions will be refined between now and Saturday. They’ll change and shift, expand or contract, as they always do. Thing is, the ingredients for this weather event aren’t offering much in the way of wiggle-room.
Anyway, it bears watching. We’ll be ready.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable