Invention and adaptation time..

D:
“That’s not a knife…” “Oh yeah, then what is?” 

Unknown at the time, when I picked this knife kit, Ray Jardine did not use this on the A.T. However, I was interested in not only the knife but the leather sheath kit as well. I’d never made a knife or a worked with leather before and for 45.00 I got to do both.

Until I find a picture taken earlier of what the knife looked like before I shaped the wooden handle, you’ll have to imagine a rectangle of pine sandwiched between two squares of oak. The knife as a whole, was quickly assembled and epoxied into place and would resemble more of an awesome sharp thing protruding from a machination from Mine Craft for a handle. Wanting to be very careful not to remove too much wood to make it into the handle that you see now, it probably took me 4 hours to do it, but do it well, I did. Not bad for my first knife and sheath. "mod" is short for moddy, a self given title for always seeming to mod something, anything.

The sheath literally showed up as a couple pieces of leather with stencils. A large flat piece, about 3/16 of an inch thick to draw a shape on, cut out, then fold in half. But the interesting is, the side the blade slides against, is a thick piece of leather that was sandwiched between the edges. If I ever make a sheath again, I can tell you that the holes to pass a needle through, to sew it together, will be a lot bigger. I broke two of the three needles supplied with the kit in the first two holes.

Before I treated the leather, as the final step. I got the whole sheath wet, to make it pliable, place the knife, kneaded the leather to form to the handle , then let it dry. Once it dried, it held onto the handle of the knife quite well so the terrifically sharp blade doesn’t come out of the sheath too easily. Surprisingly, no lacerations of my fingers or hand were created in the making of either project.

 If you’re taking electronics of any kind on a trip like this, the challenge is to keep it charged and functioning for the whole time, almost 6 months. So, great care is going into keeping them dry, unsmashed (could be a newly invented word) and charged.
So, it began kind of a journey of its own to make this work before the trip.

The inventory of electronics is 3 rechargeable batteries, two mp3 players, 5 short usb to micro usb cables, home made extension cord and my cell phone. All of the devices and cables total one pound.

When there was a signal in the area, I could use the internet, maintain the blog and make a phone call.

The intention is to leave the phone off until needed. Everyone with a phone knows you have about 2 ½ hour of battery life if it’s only searching for a signal. So, with the phone off, I expect the battery to do quite well. If there’s no signal I will just power it off.

The recharge challenge begins. Until there are outlets in trees, I would need to make an attempt to keep these devices charged so it would work when I was ready to use it. I was delighted to not only find a relatively light and inexpensive rechargeable battery; it would double as an impressive LED flashlight. A recent test revealed all three batteries still had a nice bright light after 4 hours of being left on. Another cool feature is these charge by usb port. The portable battery charges with the same cable that I plug devices into it. The small port on the above right is how they charge from a usb port, and my mp3 players and phone charge by plugging the usb port into the large port, underneath the micro usb, pretty clever.

The small circle on the upper left is how the terrifically bright LED is turned on and off.

Another nice feature of LED's is how little power they draw to work. Well after the battery loses it's ability to charge a device, the light will continue to work for hours.

The picture of the three batteries above is an endurance test. At this point they have been on for 5 hours after their ability to charge my phone or mp3 players.

 6 months is a long time to go for those who enjoy something to listen to. So thanks to the technology in compression, battery life and weight, we found a one ounce mp3 player with 4gb of internal memory and the ability to take micro sd chips up to 16gb. It’s expected playback time is 15 hours, probably longer than that if the volume is turned down. (I’ll be able to do that as long as “Sweet Child O Mine” or “Pour Some Sugar on Me” doesn’t  come on.)

 Having around 8 micro sd chips, on a 6 month hike,  presents another challenge of not losing the little buggers.
This player was purchased for half price at 29.00 as a refurb. The price is always appealing but if not quality repaired, it will fail again. I showed a picture of it being opened and re soldered, earlier in the blog. I would like to mention the ear buds as well, since there is quality in how you listen to music that is less than satisfying. Panasonic

Panasonic RP-TCM125-K Earbud Headphones are available on ebay for 15.00. We found them on a website that reviewed over 200 brands and prices. So, to save time, we just went with the recommendation. For 15.00, you can't go far wrong.

Now for the really fun part, if you haven’t had fun already. All of these devices with batteries eventually lose their ability to work unless recharged.  Finding 12 volt and wall outlet usb charging capabilities was not hard, but not wanting to carry a multiport extension cord to plug them all in, I decided to make my own. It would be the length I wanted, work the way I wanted, and I had all of the components on hand. The only original component was the plug that goes into the wall, after that, all of the splicing, soldering, heat shrink tubing and connectors on the end of it are my design.

An AC and DC adapter will cover many options for me to recharge my phone and portable batteries. If there aren't available outlets, all of my needs are 5 volts, so I can use a computers usb port.

The original thought for this idea was, I didn’t want was plugged into the wall to hang by the 4 inch usb cables. I wanted to plug in something longer, the extension cord, and put all of the rechargeables in another container or bag, so it wouldn't stress the cables under the weight of what was getting charged. There would be a better chance of keeping everything together, I don't want to lose these things, it might be a considerable walk to what I need.

Another cable I wanted to make, and I couldn’t find it anywhere. Since the mp3 players do not have a large draw from the usb port they are charging from, I made a splitter to be able to charge two items in one port. The smaller mp3 players only use about 1/3 the power that a cell phone does, when plugged into a usb port. Being creative like this is fine as long as it’s quality made to go the distance. This cable’s connections were soldered, and the shrink tubing was used to give it some durability for the whole trip, and be light too. A pack that’s too heavy can make or break the trip. With everything in our pack it should not be over 40lbs, even with the longest distance between resupply points.

All I needed for this project was to twist together all of the same wire. There were only two, a positive and negative wire. The two bundles of wires on the right are three red and three white with shrink tubing over them

The final product is some clever placement of a few pieces of shrink tubing. With the connections being properly soldered this cable can be useful well beyond the length of this hike.