Reviews - and The Winner Is... Nov. 12, 2010

I've got a couple of reviews to do today, then some announcements

Ozark Trail Machete

This is the Wal-Mart brand of camping gear.  The machete cost me $6.88.  It comes with a two piece plastic grip and an 18" blade.  The sheath is a cheap feeling canvas, that has four rivets to help keep the blade from cutting through the fabric seam.  As dull as this thing is, I doubt it would cut through the seam if the sheath were made of tissue paper.  Yep, it sucks that bad.  The blade was very dull.  The grip was too short for my slightly-over-medium sized paw.  With nearly every swing, it torqued around in my hand necessitating frequent grip repositions.  I hacked away at a sapling with about a 2.5" diameter.  It took over 100 strikes, and gave me a hand cramp before it fell.  The machete was slightly better at taking small twig branches off of tree trunks.  But only if hit right at where it joined the trunk.  An inch out and it just bent the twig, scraping the bark a little.  Don't waste your money on this one.  My USMC Ka-Bar is much more effective at what I was trying to do, and serves multiple roles.  I think for a machete, the Gerber Gator is a great deal at $18.87, for a much, much better quality tool than the Wal-Mart one.  Jack Spirko has a good You Tube evaluation of the Gerber Gator Junior, and a close friend has and likes the full sized one.

So, what to do with my junk machete.  I think I'll hit the edge for a bit on my Lansky sharpening kit to see if I can make this even marginally useful.  If I can, it will go in the pickup tool box.  For yard work, camping, etc... I think I'll save my pennies for the Gerber.  Dull knives are useless and dangerous, the Lansky is a fantastic system that works on straight or serrated blades.  Maybe a review of that is a good idea for a future post.

Glenn Beck's Financial TEOTWAWKI Show

On Friday, Nov. 5th, Glenn Beck promoted his TV show for that night as looking at what a financial meltdown of the world's economy might look like and how it could lead to TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It).  I finally was able to watch it yesterday evening.  Not quite what I expected.  He spent the first part of the show going over a scenario presented by Damon Vickers in his book "The Day After the Dollar Crashes."  Essentially, if the Chinese stop buying US bonds, then a bunch of specific "what ifs" happen, on day 15, the world economy is restructured under a new world order.  On day 16, Americans are in full blown panic mode.  OK, an interesting intellectual exercise, but not much good to me as a non-financial lay-person.  Beck also had the author Brad Thor as a guest.  Thor is a great writer of political thrillers (Foreign Influence was fantastic!) and has done war gaming with Homeland Security.  The end result of the show was than Vickers predicted some sort of cumbaya world coming together to rebuild.  Thor predicted American resilience rebuilding from individuals to families to communities first, then expanding from there.  Beck kind of agreed with both of them, which I found a bit odd.  This show would have been more informative for our purposes if there was more detail and ideas for life after the 15th day, and less theory and conjecture.

And the winner is...

Congratulations to Terri from Florida for winning the drawing for the black Excursion Organizer Bag from Survival Gear Bags!  Thanks to all who entered!  Terri, I'll get it in the mail to you tomorrow.  As mentioned in my review of this great bag, I'll use the OD one to build a midsized EDC kit and write about that process.