Current economical situation: Rent or Buy?

Bought the book...love it.

One question: My girlfriend and I are getting married and looking to buy a house....is this a crazy thing to do in such bad economic times?

We currently rent.

All the best,

Burt

Hi, glad you liked it.

Seems that house prices are still going down. Between renting and buying, it’s a pretty thin line but I’d say keep renting if buying would be too much of an effort in your current situation.

Now, if you are financially capable of doing it and not put yourself too much at a risk if you happen to lose your job or have other inconveniences, you have a location you already plan to live in, then go for it.

What we saw here happening a lot was people going back to live to their parents house, even those married with kids. Living together saves you rent, and you also help with other house expenses. I’ve received several emails of people already doing just this in USA. There’s other advantages as well, such as older folks or those unemployed watching over the kids so as to save on nanny or daycare money.

Again, this will depend a lot on your personal financial situation, but if in doubt, keep renting until you are certain. I don’t think the real estate bubble is about to inflate again any time soon.

In a worst case scenario, renting means the owner pays for anything that breaks, for house taxes, so it’s the better option if in a tight budget. If you can’t afford rent anymore, it’s much less of a pain compared to not being able to pay the house loan any more. One means you just get your stuff and leave, the other means you may be losing tens of thousands of dollars. Specially for newly weds, and specially during the first years, renting makes a lot of sense.

These are all things you’ll have to evaluate and come to a decision yourself.

FerFAL

Knife Sharpening

Bones said...
One thing I can never seem to do properly is sharpen blades. Care to share any tips/techniques? I understand there are knife sharpening kits available but would be interested in using commonly available tools.

Hi Bones,

Check "sharpening" on teh topics on the lower left column. I've written some about it. 

Knife sharpening is one of the hardest skills to master. A lot of people think they can do it, but take a blunt piece of steel and turn it into a blade you could easily shave with? Few people can do it. It takes years of practice, but a few good tips and having the right tools will help reduce the learning curve significantly.

Probably the easiest way to sharpen knives if you don’t yet master that skill is to get a knife sharpening system like the one you probably have in mind. Good sharpeners sometimes use it if they want to sharpen a knife quickly. I don’t own one myself but the Lansky kit has had a good reputation for as long as I can remember.

There are a million different ways to sharpen a knife and everyone has his method they swear by. The first thing I do with a new used knife is take a good look at the edge, checking for dents or rounded edges. If the blade has been abused and there are dents and chipped metal I use a belt grinder to remove them. This of course eats up a lot of metal so its not something you want to do often.

If the knife needs a lot of sharpening (it wont even cut through paper properly) I use the more coarse side of the wet stone so as to get a half way decent edge. Here I use elliptical movements, keeping the edge against the stone at a 20-30 degree angle depending on the edge of the blade. The trick and one of the hardest things to do is keeping the blade at the right angle as you move it, and do so again when you change to the other side.

A few tips here:

1)       Go slowly. Visibly check that the angle is correct. This is specially important because its almost impossible to achieve the exact angle on both sides.

2)       Use a red marker on the edge of the knife. This will tell you if you are making contact where you should, and if the angle is right.

3)       Place the knife in the angle you believe to be right and while keeping it that way, look around from other directions to verifiy.

4)       Do 5-10 eliptic movements on one side, then change to the other. If you don’t do this often enough you’ll end up with a wire edge. That is a very thin layer of metal that rolls over the edge. While this can be pretty sharp, its not the real edge. You can feel it with your fingernail by dragging it through the edge. If your finger nail catches on the edge, you’ve got a wire edge and you have to keep sharpening until you remove it.

5)       When using a water stone, you want to eventually achieve a very thin paste on its surface, this paste sharpens nicely.

6)       Use all of the surface of the stone to is full extent so as to not ruin it.

7)       Good stones aren’t cheap. This is one of the" you get what you pay for" things. The $1 chunck of grinder junk will ruin your knife. I did that as a kid, then I learned better and bought a nice two surface Japanese stone. It wasn’t cheap but I’ve had it for decades and its still my favorite stone.

  

Woodstock D1130 1000 Grit and 6000 Grit Japanese Waterstone 

Once I have an ok edge I turn to the other side of the stone, the one with the finer grit, and start dragging the edge at its right angle towards the direction of the spine, opposite from the direction of the blade. This I do so it doesn’t catch some larger pieces of grit against the edge. The stone is usually much smaller that the knife, even more so when the knife is at 90 degrees in relation to the rectangular stone. What I do is start from one edge of the stone, making contact with the edge sector that is closest to the hilt, and as I drag it to the other side (remember, towards the direction of the blade spine) I move it downwards until I reach the tip of the knife, and the other edge of the stone. 5-10 times on each side. You start at one end of the stone when you do one side, you then start at the opposite end of the stone when you do the other. Side you are also moving downwards to cover the full extent of the blade its more of a diagonal movement, and as you reach the tip you are forced to curve your grip some so as to keep the same angle when the edge curves towards the tip.

Using a bit of water with the fine grit side, you soon have a bit of very nice soft clay on the surface of the stone. When you look at the edge of your knife, this clay should be evenly spread along the edge, a sign that you’ve been keeping a correct angle, like the red marker trick.

After a few minutes of this you have a knife that will shave the hair off your arm, but you can still do better by stropping. For this you can use a leather strop, even a simple leather belt of some thick fabric with polishing paste. You draw it as we did before with the fine grit side of the stone, spine-first along the strop.

What you are basically doing here is polishing the two edges. This makes for a razor cutting edge, the finest edge you can ever achieve.

I often use finger nail polishing pad for this, you get excellent results using it diagonally spine first like you do with the stone.

You can sometimes replace the stomping or fine grit stone with sand paper and a mouse pad or some other foam pad. This makes a very nice convex edge which is both sharp and thick enough for hard work.

Another thing you often hear people say is that they will sharpen a knife for a trip and then have it sharpened again by some expert once they return. To me this couldn’t be further away from the self reliant mentality, or survival mindset.

Its like saying that you don’t know how to reload your gun, so you take a 20 round magazine with you when you go hunting and then have a gunsmith reload it for you. It’s the exact same thing, yet these folks don’t realize it.

What you should do is learn how to sharpen your knife, and at least touch it with a ceramic rod like you do when stropping. The fingernail foam pad I mentioned is ideal for this. Sandpaper can be used but I find the foam pad to be just perfect since you already have a somewhat rigid and flat surface to work with. 

Strop (polish) your blade a at the end of the day or after a certain amount of use and it will always be razor sharp when you need it.

FerFAL

Custom Survival Gear

DaShui said...
Fer Fal a great money making opportunity for you.

You have the name- why don't you design your own line of grey man products. Such as a Maxpedition type bag without all the zippers and not so tactical looking? Maybe even work with BBM.com to add body armor. I, for one, would be interested in buying.Today my weather is 105 degrees, and 90% humidity. Almost impossible to wear enough clothes for C.C. Even carrying a daypack would leave my back covered in sweat from the lack of ventilation.
Think about it.

Thanks DaShui for the vote of confidence :-)
I've done some mods using needle and thread and have desinged a few pieces of gear, mostly bags and jackets, but I just dont know any manufacturers or how that type of business works.
There are a few things you can do though, some you can do yourself, some requires the help of a tailor.
For example, I changed the interior fabric of my leather jacket, it had some ugly bright material, now it has a much thicker one that looks very nice, a grey/green color. I asked the tailor to add some pockets on the inside, and make those pockets reinfoced, using that same fabric, for heavier objects. (magazines, tools, etc)

Little seceret fantasy to share? I would have loved to add 20 layers of kevlar, as in an interior vest withing the jacket, as well as some padding on the forearms for knife attack protection. Ja! that would have been nice, but it sure comes at a lot of extra weight and impossible to wear during summer. Maybe its still doable if I add it like they do with certain jackets and the polar interior, that attaches to the jacket through zippers and some buttons on the sleves, but you can quickly remove it if needed.
Reinfoced pockets is something you can do on ordinary pants as well and it allows you to carry more items there and not end up with holes. Any tailor can add a few more well concealed pockets on the inside of jackets, not a big deal.

Also for belts, some people have secret compartments built on the inside. There you can keep a bit of money, cuff keys, or a small knife. If the belt is wide enough you can do something smilar by taping your small stash with ducttape to the inisde of the belt.

FerFAL

Survival knife: Mora Clipper 860MG

New Swedish Mil. Mora Knife

As I write this I have three other knives in my desk. Stashed in several other places there are over 50 knives that I own. Other than a few that I got for collecting, most of them have been used some even though only a couple get used a lot at a time depending of circumstances. Most of them are well known brand and models so I’ll occasionally write reviews of what I have and what I think of it.


The Mora Clipper 860MG

I’ve always been curious about Mora knives(merged with Frost brand). These small utilitarian Sweden knives have a stellar reputation that is indirectly proportional to their price, which is the first thing you notice when you contemplate buying one of these. Truly impressive value.
The design closely follows the Finnish pukkoos, which are general purpose utility knives. A basic handle and a short blade with a clip or drop point, it closely reassembles what you’d expect to find in a kitchen drawer. If the Mora ended up being the only knife you’d use for the rest of your life, you’d appreciate it at dinner time.

                                                     Mora 860MG with its sheath.

The Mora 860MG comes with a very practical plastic sheath that is much better than some of the ones that come along with knives that cost ten or twenty times as much. The plastic protects the user from the razor sharp blade and the knife stays in place snugly when pushed all the way in. You have to push a bit with your thumb to take it out of the sheath, and that’s a good thing.

This Mora has the most comfortable grip I've seen in a knife in  along time.

The grip is clearly the second best thing of this Mora model, right after the famous Mora steel. The handle is made of hard green plastic (MG stands for military green) that encloses the narrow tang. The tang goes almost half way into the grip, which makes for a more than enough solid construction. You’ll snap the blade before breaking the hard plastic handle. The hard green plastic that is injected around the narrow tang is covered with nice checkered black rubber, making for a soft, non slippery grip that is very comfortable.

Stainless Steel for a Survival knife?? Madness! Madness I say!

Occasionally you find survival “experts” that will assure you that no good survival knife should be made out of stainless steel. Usually when I hear such stupidity I remember my stainless steel Buckmaster 184 which is the father of hollow grip survival knives, I remember the Swedish Fällkniven, made out of ATS-34, ATS-55 or VG-10, all Stainless, including their black models S1 and F1, tested and approved for U.S. Marine and U.S. Navy air crew… but the survival guru wannabe will say Stianless is no good of course.
Truth is, people saying that don’t really know much about knives or steel, so they only repeat something they’ve heard before, which has stopped beign true almost 30 years ago already. If you cant sharpen stainless steel, having carbon steel wont make a difference and if you think stainless isn’t as sharp as carbon steel or keeps its edge as long, try remembering that both scalpels and razor blades, two of the sharpest objects on Earth, are made of stainless steel.

The Mora 860MG is of course made of stainless steel. Why? Because the nice Swedish people of the nice town of Mora have been making laminated blades since the middle ages and known that the BS about stainless steel being no good is just that. Stainless is of particular interest for a true utilitarian/survival knife because it means your knife wont rust to pieces when you have to abuse it and you cant run home to dry it up and oil it.

I remember one Opinel pocket knife I once had. I took it camping and used it to cut some wood to start a fire, left it in a jacket pocket after the trip. A few weeks later I used that jacket again and found the little pocket knife, the high carbon steel blade has rusted beyond repair, I had to throw that knife away. While I should have oiled that little blade, this is something you wont be able to do during emergency situations. Even if you chose carbon steel, avoid these high carbon steels that, while a bit easier to sharpen, the slight advantage doesn’t put a dent on the disadvantage of being so needy regarding maintenance.
The Mora stainless Steel is the best thing you get from this knife. The blade is laminated and you can see the 3 different layers of steel, the one in the middle with more carbon, the other two more resistant. The hardness is 59 Rc. , which is ideal for ease of sharpening and sharpness retention. This is prime laminated steel we’re talking about. Again, something you usually don’t even find in +100 buck knives. The three layers shouldn’t be visible since this means dust and humidity can get into the cracks and cause pitting (yes, even in stainless steel) so it’s a good idea to take a few minutes to sand and then polish the spine of the knife.

 The spine of the Mora shows its 3 layers of stainless steel. Laminated steel is rarely found in knives at budget prices, and only Mora offers this quality for such a price. Expect to spend several hundred dollars  for such a thing when offered by other brands.


The knife was razor sharp out of the box, but I still touched it up and polished the edge with a nail polish file. After a couple minutes, the knife was still razor sharp but now it would cut through hair with frightening ease. Very, very nice edge.
If you don’t want or need the resistance of stainless steel, Mora also offers the knife in excellent carbon steel. The orange plastic would make it easier to spot if you drop the knife in the outdoors.





 Size Does Matter

There’s an old saying in boxing that says big and bad beats small and good. Given a small enough difference of skill, the slightly bigger boxer will often win even if the smaller one has better boxing technique. Funny but true. Something similar can be said about knives. The big knife can do most of the cutting tasks that a small knife can do, but the smaller blade wont become bigger any time soon.
These days it seems that the new wave of Bushcraft aficionados carry the smallest knife they can get their hands on. This of course makes no sense, not when a ka-bar size knife is just as practical to carry yet can do much more. Some people will say you don’t need a bigger knife. Soon enough someone mentions building shelters, chopping wood, and even though you can do such things with a small blade, then bigger one makes the job easier. As for fighting, while any knife can cut, something like a machete can crush bone as well and very much chop through any body part that gets on its way. Even in a more practical sense, have you ever seen the kind of knives butchers use? Its often a 10” razor sharp blade. They use it for chopping and slicing. Try cutting a nice steak or filet with a small knife and you’ll see what I mean. You simply need the extra length and a small blade will make the job impossible or at the very least, much harder. Give me a bigger knife any day of the week.

 The Mora looks punny compared to 14" Facón knife. The Facón shows lots of pitting but it still gets the job done after a century of hard work.

 The Mora compared to a custom knife owned by the author. While the custom knife has a wider and ticker blade, they are both very much intented for te same type of use.

Having said all this, the Mora is a very good survival. Not excellent but very good. For ideal size, I’d prefer six or seven inches or bigger, something like a Cold Steel SRK or Recon Scout. The Mora Clipper 860MG is 4” long, sharpened to the complete extension of the blade. This makes it a practical blade, perfect for daily chores and good enough for 95% of the tasks required for survival, food processing and fighting. One final mention regarding its use as a weapon. This little knife clearly is one terrific fighter if the need ever arises. Its razor sharp, just long enough to make considerable wounds, and the handle grip is one of the most comfortable ones I’ve ever used. This means a lot when it comes to defensive knives since knife retention is a much more important issue than people realize. The only weak point for defensive use (and tough work as well) is that it lacks a more aggressive finger guard. There is a bump there but I’d prefer something more significant just in case my hand slips forward.
Highly recommended, the Mora Clipper is a very nice survival knife. Outstanding if you consider the 15 price (or lower) in most stores on-line.

FerFAL

Bushcraft videos… someone please poke my eyes out with my Bushcraft knife.

If you thought the tacticool fashion community was the silliest thing on Earth you’ll be surprised when you looked into some of the weirdos you can find in the new breed of wilderness survival, these days now in vogue and known as Bushcrafters. Not talking about Lofty Wiseman here and some others that are the real deal, I’m talking about these 20 year old something or older that just last year picked a knife for the first time in their lives, cut away a few chips of wood and discovered a new age lifestyle of some sort in what used to be called camping, hiking and wilderness survival.

I wont be mean and link to some of the posts and videos I’ve found on youtube under bushcraft, but how stupid can a person be? No offense meant to the guys over at UK, but some of the ones I saw by British folks are some of the most ridiculous. They talk about the innocent little Mora knife as if it were almost a nuclear explosive device. Folks, it’s a knife no bigger than a steak knife!… less than half the size of a cook knife, for the love of God if you’re afraid of falling over it and stabbing your femoral artery as you make a pointy stick just don’t use knives, or pointy sticks, or forks. I’ve watched some of the most stupid, most ridiculous techniques used to sharpen a stick, a soft and green one at that, as thick as my thumb. Warnings about Tennis elbow risk (when making a pointy stick with your green twig) were almost more than I could take. I’m not Mr. Bushcraft buy both my grandparents were carpenters. I’ve used knives and sharp objects for as long as I can remember, sharpened them (which seems to be a mystic lost art , even among these sort of bushcrafters) Helped my grandparents and my father make enough pieces of furniture, made and fixed some of my own (oh yes, I’ve even sharpened sticks once or twice) yet I don’t have tennis elbow. All this nonsense being said and done while dressing frontiersmen clothes. Videos on how to make a notch? What the hell? I understand that this silliness has a lot to do with the so called “knife crime” paranoia over there. As ridiculous as it is, it is being drilled into their brains and its understandable that this may happen after a few decades of such insanity. Sorry for the rant but its just amazing to hear people talk about knives as if they were loaded guns, specially when every kitchen in the planet has a dozen knives just as big. Seriously folks, the tacticool fashion queens have nothing to be ashamed of after what I just saw over on youtube.

The Bushcraft dude.


*The bushcraft guy Wears buschcrafty clothes of course. Earth tones and such for when in the woods. Makes sense. That way no one finds you if a stroke drops you there among the bush and leaves while you go camping and you need help.

*Buschcraft ego is indirectly proportionate to the size of the knife used. The smaller the knife, the bigger his bushcraft gonads will be. Preferably the knife will be a small necknife, 2” blade tops and replicating prehistoric stone knives. Cavemen had those small knives so that’s the best thing, right? Lets better not take into account that they were made of stone and anything bigger would have shattered when put to use, not to mention, they didn’t HAVE anything better to begin with. Everyone knows that stainless steel knives are no good. ATS-34, VG10, none of those steels are any good for bushcrafting, you have to use carbon steel.

*For starting fires, a firesteel is used. God forbid you from using lowly matches and lighters. Firesteel are more bushcraft type. Doesn’t matter that ferrocerium rods (Firesteel is one commercial brand) wasn’t invented until after 1880 and even common safety matches already existed by 1844. The firesteel throws sparks and stuff and looks cooler, like a caveman. But the real cool bushcraft guys use flint and steel (made by a bushcraft blacksmith of course) or fire bows. Of course this is a pain in the butt to use, starting a fire this way requires desert try tinder and the kit itself uses up ten times the space needed for a pack of 25 storm matches, a lighter and a Firesteel as backup, al put together.

As for knife safety,

1)The hardest part, an specially for some of the new Bushcraft types: Don’t be an idiot. This basically means, understand that sharp objects cut. Understand that if you do lots of strength against a particular stubborn knot you’ll likely end up moving the knife further away than expected when you get through it. That people shouldn’t be around, specially in front of you, when working with a knife.

2)Cut away from you and not towards you. Always. Your hand is still “you”, so your hand should not be ahead in the direction you’re cutting.

3)Always keep your knives and cutting tools sharp. Knives that aren’t sharp are more unpredictable and require more force to compensate for the lack of cutting ability.

FerFAL