Spinning and Fly(ing)

This past Sunday, for the first time in months, I was able to get away for a few hours and get some fishing in. Didn't catch a thing (it's just too hot here in Georgia), but that wasn't really the point. I wanted to check out a new spot for future fishing adventures, and didn't care if I caught anything or not. I just wanted to check things out.

I went to one of Georgia's wildlife management areas (WMA) that's about 40 minutes from my house. Named the Joe Kurz WMA, it's mainly a hunting location, with managed fields and habitat for deer, turkey, doves and quail. It does offer a small fishing lake/pond, and boat ramp access to the Flint River. 

I was particularly interested in the primitive camping area and nearby lake. I didn't know what to expect, so I tossed some spinning gear into the back of the truck and took off. There were a few other folks fishing when I got there, but nobody was catching anything. I tossed out a beetle spin (my go-to lure for bluegill and small bass), and I saw some small bass following it, but nothing was biting. I put it down to the heat - it was pushing 90 degrees that day. As I walked the bank of the pond with my spinning gear I noted that it's also a good location for fly fishing. Clear banks, plenty of area for back-casts. 

So this observation introduces our topic for today - don't be a tackle snob.

I've been fishing since I was about four or five, starting when I fell off the boat dock at our vacation cabin on Lime Lake, south of Buffalo, NY. I was pissed at the sunfish for not taking my bait (small pieces of bread), and was leaning over to yell at them when I slipped and fell in. I still think my older brother Pat pushed me, but he denies it to this day. I remember the fishing outfit I had - an inexpensive little panfish outfit with a blue plastic handle. Just one step up from a bamboo pole. Honestly, I probably would have had better luck with the bamboo pole. But dang it, I was fishing!

1960-ish. Lime Lake in western New York. My earlier spill from this dock, in search of willing sunfish,
triggered a mandatory life jacket policy 

Since that fateful day I've fished all across the US - from the ponds and small streams of South Jersey, to the lakes, rivers and ocean beaches of Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Washington State and the Panama Canal Zone. Many of my favorite memories involve fishing.

Fishing the Maumee River in NW Ohio, renowned for it's white bass and walleye runs.
Mid-1970s

Early 1980's. Somewhere on the North Carolina coast.
Me on the left. A good friend and Army buddy John Laughter is on the right. Can't remember the 
guy in the middle - another officer from our battalion on Fort Bragg.
We were cleaning fish until midnight

Life often gets in the way, and so it did with fishing. Raising kids, being sent hither and yon by Uncle Sam, other interests (some, like shooting, are discussed on this blog). I found myself wetting a line less and less. Then in 2007 I went to work at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, and developed a close friendship with one of the airport planners, a fellow retired Army officer, New Jersey expat and dedicated fisherman named Bill. Bill absolutely loves fishing. Fly fishing, that is. I had only fly fished once or twice in my life, using borrowed gear, and didn't have much luck. Bill became not just a close friend, but my fly fishing coach and mentor. Under his tutelage, I got good at it. Not great, but good.

Bill, working the bank of a local stream. Thinking of trout, but willing to settle for a nice bass.

Along the way I discovered one of the unspoken secrets of fly fishing - it's OK to not give a damn about catching trout. Trout down here in the deep south are just dumb hatchery raised pellet-fed hogs. The real fun is taking a 2 or 3 weight rod and go looking for beds of aggressive bluegill, some crappie, or largemouth bass. In fact, I'll take a largemouth bass over a trout any day of the week. More fight, more fun. But expressing that feeling at a Trout Unlimited meeting (which I did) is the equivalent of pissing on the cake at your cousin's wedding. Kinda' kills the mood. Sorry (not really), but I find the pretentiousness of fly fishing, as practiced by the Orvis crowd, to be tiresome. Love the activity, hate the snobbery shown by a large number of the practitioners. And no, Bill is not one of those.

Me (on the left) and my son-in-law Shawn, getting ready to float fish on one of the stocked ponds
at Callaway Gardens in southwest Georgia. The trout were not cooperating, so I just puttered along the 
edges of the pond, tagging some really impressive bluegill.

Years ago Bill and I made a trip to fish a tailwater up on the Toccoa River in north Georgia. I was standing about five yards out, casting into the foam but not having any luck. I'm also hearing an occasional splash behind me. I turn around to look, and I'm surprised to see trout rising to grab insects falling from a tree on the bank. One of the insects floats by me, and it looks like a small spider. There must have been some sort of spider hatch going on in that tree, and the trout were having a field day. I spin around, grab my fly box and pull out the smallest spider-y looking thing I had, and tie it on. On the third cast... bam! On the fifth cast... bam! and so it went for about 15 minutes. As I'm standing there a guide boat floats by, and one of the dude fishermen on board calls out, "How's it going?" I yell back, "Pretty good, about four in the last 10 minutes." Then comes the inevitable question, "What are you using?" I shout back that I've tied on a small foam spider. He shouts back, "You'll have better luck with a hopper and a dropper combo!" Really? He's giving me advice as I'm landing my fifth trout in 15 minutes... right in front of him? He and his buddy looked like they just stepped from the pages of the Orvis catalog. I'm standing there in waders from Cabela's, with a Bass Pro fly rod, some cheap 4 weight line I picked up at Dick's Sporting Goods, and a few crappy flies I tied up myself. I had fish, while these guys didn't seem to be having any luck. But they looked snappy as they bobbed on by, smug in their knowledge that the yokel in the river would do better if he just followed their advice.

Fly fishing dominated my fishing life for at least a decade. I love it. But there were certain situations where it was clear fly tackle was not the best solution. Windy days, times I knew I needed to get deep with the fly to get to where the fish were holding, heavy weeds, no space for back-casts, things like that. I didn't want to give up on the 'purity' of casting a fly. so I just didn't fish those situations. 

About seven years ago, our young granddaughter Helen was staying with us for a few days. My wife said, "Why don't you take her fishing." A great idea! Helen was excited at the prospect, too. But it struck me - I didn't have any tackle she could use. No way was this kid going to be able to use fly fishing gear. Off we go to WalMart, and while I'm sure she really wanted the Disney character spincast outfit, I upgraded her to something a little better. We grabbed some split shot, #18 hooks, bobbers and a loaf of Wonder bread, and headed to the lake. The bluegill were hanging around the dock pilings, just waiting. I tied on a hook, added a split shot, snapped on a bobber, and baited the hook with a small piece of bread kneaded to a dough-like consistency. Helen was fascinated - bread for bait? We talked a bit about all the things you can catch fish with - pieces of hot dog, cookie dough, bologna, pepperoni, just about anything that smells good to a fish. She dropped her bread-baited hook into the water and was watching the smaller bluegill peck at it when a large female charged out of the depths and grabbed the hook. This was Helen's first real fish, and it was stripping line off the reel faster than she could crank it back in. We got things under control and she landed a nice fat momma bluegill. She was excited, but concerned that we get momma back in the lake as soon as possible. We dropped the big 'gill back in the water and she hung near the surface for a few moments getting her bearings, then darted back to the deeper water. Helen watched it all and just kept saying "Wow, that's neat!" To this day she swears that Wonder Bread is the best-est bait for bluegill in the whole wide world.

That got me thinking. Am I missing something by turning my nose up at spinning gear and other conventional tackle? Helen didn't care what she was using. She was just excited to catch a fish. Am I as snobbish as those dudes on the Toccoa River? I remembered something written by Lefty Kreh, the late dean of American fly fishing. It goes like this - don't be so snobbish about tackle that you miss good fishing opportunities. He recommended taking spinning tackle along on trips for precisely the reasons I list above - windy conditions, the need to get deep in the water column, heavy bank brush, etc. You go fishing to catch fish, not to show off your latest rod purchase from Orvis. 

It was about this time I lost my father. Dad was an avid fisherman who loved to fish from the beaches of the Jersey shore, or along the banks of the Maumee River in Ohio, or out on Lake Erie from his sailboat. My siblings had no interest in his old tackle, so I inherited it all. I got it all back to Georgia and started to go through it. Dad was very Type A, and kept everything 'just so'; When I opened up his collection of spinning reels I was surprised to find the insides spotlessly clean and freshly lubed with grease - ready for the next fishing adventure that never came.

Dad, on his sailboat on Lake Erie with one of his late 1960's vintage Penn Spinfisher reels.

It's as though Dad was telling me... get back out there and start fishing with whatever you've got.

I went into my garage and dug out my old ultralight spinning setup. Nothing fancy, just something I had purchased at the Fort Bragg PX oh-so many years ago. The combo had served me well when wet-wading the Little River in North Carolina, looking for largemouth bass and chain pickerel hiding in the snags and overhangs. Some new monofilament line and a package of beetle spins, and I was back out on a nearby lake, enticing a surprising number of crappie out of the deeper pools. I didn't intend to step away from fly fishing, I just needed to convince myself that spin fishing was still fun and productive. It was, and is.

About a year later Roberta and I were camping down at West Point Lake on the Georgia/Alabama line. Our spot offered easy walk down access to the lake. One lazy afternoon, while Roberta was napping in the hammock, I grabbed my spinning gear, walked into the lake about knee deep and started tossing out a little Mepps spinner. Almost every other cast earned me a nice bluegill or small bass. It was an amazing experience. I was a kid again, standing on the bank of a small tannin-stained creek in South Jersey, tossing a spinner into the dark water and hoping to hook a bass or sunfish.

Since then, I've changed my outlook. I no longer try to make the fishing situation match my fishing gear; I make my fishing gear match the fishing situation. Today I take it all out with me. My gear load-out normally includes both fly fishing gear and spinning tackle, even for short trips to local lakes. 

As Lefty Kreh (and my Dad) said, don't be a tackle snob. The goal of fishing is to catch fish, right?

Not mighty, but mighty fun!

Stay sharp!

Young Washington - A Movie Review

As Supergirl tanks badly at the summer 2026 box office, another film is quietly building an audience and has actually found some favor with 'professional' reviewers, like the egg-sucking leftist bunch over at rogerebert.com. How could a jingoistic neocon low budget flick tossed together by a studio known mostly for cheap holy roller shlock - Angel Studios - pull this off? Well they could, and they did. 

The movie is Young Washington. Let's get the 'holy roller' stuff off the table right up front. There's nary a trace of overt Christianity in this movie. Washington never goes down on bended knee asking for divine guidance, there are no preachers, no bibles, nobody invokes the Lord's name. Nothing. The only visible Christian symbol, other than crosses on a few church steeples, comes at the end of the movie when Washington is parlaying with a group of Indians. One of the chiefs is wearing a sash that carries what is clearly a Christian cross. Washington shows no interest in it, doesn't even notice it.

Yet Young Washington is clearly anchored in Christian values - devotion to family, morality, duty, honesty, service. So in that sense, it's a very Christian movie. It works because that's what Washington was - a very moral and honest man who understood his duty and responsibilities to his family, his soldiers and his nation. 

The movie also mercifully excludes any 'girl boss' bullshit. Women of the mid-18th century are accurately portrayed as to their roles in society and the challenges they faced. We're also not subjected to what I'll call the 'sharp negro' syndrome, where the wily slaves outwit and make fools of their masters and other white characters. Blacks are portrayed as precisely what they were in the mid-18th century - cheap and often expendable labor. Sorry if that offends, folks. That's history.

Young Washington is blessed (see, there's that religious thing again) with a great story to build on, great screenwriters, a great cast, and a first rate director, cinematographer, set designers and costuming crews. It's not a perfect movie - in my book it gets 4 out of 5 stars. There are some minor dialog issues, some overly long battle scenes that could have used tighter editing, and some obvious mistakes with weaponry. The surveying scenes are a joke. I used to be a surveyor, and have an strong interest in the history of surveying, so I know. But I can forgive all of these quibbles given the overall quality of the movie.

Let's discuss the stand-outs in the cast. George is played by British actor William Franklyn-Miller (what's with these pretentious hyphenated names among the acting set?). He does a great job as the main character and holds the movie together. I think he accurately captures the young Washington - inexperienced, ambitious, over-reaching, yet set with a strong moral core and a willingness to learn from his mistakes.

Mary-Louise Parker as Washington's struggling mother gives the strongest performance of the movie. She is absolutely superb in the role. Her angst, almost desperation, to keep a plantation running while raising two boys (George and his younger brother) highlights the struggles of many women shouldering enormous responsibilities within the confines of mid-18th century colonial America.

Ben Kingsley plays Robert Dinwiddie, the lieutenant governor of the colony of Virginia, and the man who gives Washington his start on a military career. Kingsley is incapable of giving a bad performance in any movie.  Although he sort of loafs through this one, he still turns in a great performance as an upper-crust British aristocrat who at first looks down on Washington as an inexperienced colonial bumpkin with a lot of pretentions (which he was), but gradually sees the potential in this young man as a leader and someone who can make a quick study of a situation and adjust as necessary. 

Mia Rogers plays the young Sally Fairfax, Washington's first love. Rogers plays her role expertly - someone drawn to the brash young Washington, yet always understanding that she's little more than a prize, or a pawn, in the colonial Virginia high society/high stakes marriage game. She loves Washington but understands he can never compete with the more eligible suitors vying for her hand. In real life, Washington apparently never got over her. As Mia Rogers plays her, I can understand why.

John Foss plays George's older half-brother, Lawrence Washington. This role is key to understanding Washington and what he became. After their father's death, the British educated Lawrence took George under his wing and became his teacher, mentor and surrogate father. It's fair to say that without Lawrence's guidance, George Washington would be just another footnote in a tidewater Virginia family history, and we'd very likely have remained part of the British empire.

There is rumor that, based on the success of Young Washington, Angel Studios is considering making this movie the first of a three part series. I hope they do, because there is so much more of George Washington's story left to tell. Of course we a know (or should know) about his struggles at Valley Forge, the crossing of the Delaware River and the Battle of Trenton, and the final siege at Yorktown. Those are the stories that gave us George Washington the iconic hero. But the 20 years between the 1755 Battle of the Monongahela, where Washington finally finds his footing as a field commander, and 1775, when Congress appoints him as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, is the period that made George Washington the man. 

Stay sharp!

I Think I'll Do A Movie Review

I've seen a lot of crappy movies in the past 6 months, both in theaters and on-line. Some, like The Mandalorian, I knew would be crap because the streaming series is crap, and the movie is just a couple of the TV episodes stitched together. But my wife likes the series (mainly for baby Yoda) so I went. I wasn't disappointed - it was crap. Then there's Nuremburg, with Russel Crowe and Rami Malek. In every scene they had together, Crowe mopped the floor with Malek. It wasn't so much that Crowe was the better actor (he was), but that the story the writers delivered had so much made-up psycho-babble drivel that Malek didn't have much to work with. The same could be said for every other character in the movie that wasn't Hermann Goering. All the other movies were so 'blah' that it's hard to just remember them.

I had been following the talk about the movie Pressure for several months. I'm very familiar with the movie's subject - the struggle to deliver an accurate D-Day weather forecast to General Eisenhower and his commanders. The story of the development of this forecast, and the decisions Eisenhower made based on these forecasts, is one of the fascinating pieces of the history of D-Day. It's also a story that's been well understood by historians for over 80 years. So nobody wanting to tell the story on film has to guess or make anything up. It's all there in the history books, and it's a fascinating tale with a number of intersecting scientific and military components. More than enough history material to fill a movie screen for two hours.

The story of the D-Day weather forecasts also has a huge built in audience. Every weather geek and every WWII history buff  - a combined audience of millions - would stand in line to see a well crafted story. And this is just in the US. A well done movie would play well in theaters in the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This story is, after all, part of the story of their liberation from the Nazis. This is also a story where everyone gets to be a hero. There are no bad guys in this tale, just struggles to understand what the data is presenting, and then trying to fit the invasion around the only factor the Allies can't control - the weather.

So the writers and the director (who was part of the writing team) had a great story with plenty of historical resources. Those resources were not just facts and figures; there's also a lot of well done study on how Eisenhower and his senior commanders made the almost hour-by-hour decisions based on the developing weather picture. The decision processes they went through are fascinating, and are still studied today. But it's as though the movie production team didn't want to be bothered reading the material and building the story from it. Instead they got lazy and set up a fictitious personality conflict between the leading meteorologist, Group Captain Stagg, and an American meteorologist, Lieutenant Colonel Krick. By focusing on this conflict, the director almost completely misses the historical context and importance of the contributions these meteorologist made to the success of D-Day.

My problems with this movie go beyond just a crappy story crappily told. Let's start with the cast. With just one exception the primary cast is excellent. Let's get the really good ones out of the way. Damian Lewis, who played Major Dick Winters in the series Band of Brothers, plays Field Marshall Montgomery. Lewis understood his character better than any other cast member, and plays Montgomery to a 'T'. His is the standout performance in the movie. Kerry Condon plays Kay Summersby, Eisenhower's personal driver, secretary, confidant and, OK, alleged lover. While Condon's role in the movie is fictitious, she plays it wonderfully, as the steadying influence standing between Eisenhower and Stagg. Yes, she's a made-up plot device, but it works.

But now we have to talk about Brendan Fraser. I like the guy, I really do. He's a talented actor (and has an Oscar to show for it), but  Eisenhower just wasn't his role. To start, Fraser is still struggling with his weight. He looks bloated. Eisenhower was trim, with an athletic build. Next, Fraser just didn't seem to understand his character. Eisenhower, even when under enormous pressure (like the lead-up to D-Day) was calm and collected. He didn't yell at subordinates. He knew he needed to project an air of confidence and strong leadership to his staff and the thousands of American and British soldiers under his command. He had history altering decisions to make, and he knew that shouting and berating his staff was counter-productive. Unfortunately Fraser spends a lot of time shouting. Perhaps the worst interpretation of Eisenhower was the scene where Fraser re-creates Ike's D-Day 'Great Crusade' address to the troops. Eisenhower recorded it ahead of time for later broadcast, but most soldiers and sailors received it as a printed message handed to them on the evening of the invasion. Broadcasting the address to the ships would have alerted the Germans that the invasion was imminent. Yet the movie has Fraser, as Eisenhower, shouting into a microphone as the address is broadcast live to the invasion fleet just off the coast. Didn't happen. Perhaps it's unfair to blame Fraser for this - maybe he was just playing the scene as the director told him to. But Ike's recorded address was delivered in his deliberate, clipped, midwestern voice. Fraser would have done well to follow that example, rather than yelling in his naturally shrill voice. I guess the production team just had to put their own spin on the event, and the result is awful. About the only thing Fraser got right was Eisenhower's smoking. Ike was a chain smoker, and the habit eventually led to his death. A lot of actors today have difficulty faking the smoking habit - the 'affectation' of smoking. There are certain ways long-time smokers hold cigarettes, use lighters, etc. Fraser had this down pat, and he has Eisenhower smoking in almost every scene, which would have been accurate. Makes me wonder if Fraser is a smoker in real life.

Next up, uniforms. Jezus H. Christ, could these people not hire a competent costuming team that understood WWII uniforms and how they were worn? The errors were everywhere, and to an old soldier like me who spend over two decades in uniform, they were galling. Soldiers don't go around with loose neckties. They don't go to formal briefings or meetings wearing only partial uniforms and rolled up sleeves. They don't wander around with their uniform shirts unbuttoned almost to the waist. And female soldiers don't wear earrings, particularly pendant earrings (which the Kay Summersby character is always seen with). The individual uniform items may have been correct - the shoes were the right color, the patches were sewn on correctly, etc.- but how the actors wore them was awful, and would have resulted in lots of ass-chewings in the real world. 

So we have a bad script, bad direction, and a bad historical portrayal. Why, I mean, WHY?! It could have been so easy to put together a crisp and fascinating story based on the well-understood challenges. There were challenges in the science and art of weather forecasting, challenges in balancing weather against operational requirements, challenges in making sure the Germans were denied the ability to develop their own accurate weather picture. Nobody has tried to put this on film before, so it's not like the writers and director needed to find their own 'spin' to separate this movie from all the other D-Day weather flicks. 

It really comes down to nothing more than poor story development, poor writing, and poor directing. I don't think Pressure will age well in comparison to all the excellent WWII films and series that have been released in the last 30 years. It all started with Saving Private Ryan, which established a new war movie production paradigm that demands good story and production accuracy. These movies portray real people that changed history. To do a sloppy job on even the small stories is an insult to their memory.

Stay sharp!

A First (For Me)

Several days ago I met my friend Bill, and one of his old National Guard buddies, at a local shooting range. The friend brought along a number of guns, one of which was this very nice M1 Carbine with a Saginaw Gear marked receiver.

I've owned a lot of guns in my time, and I've shot more than I've owned, but I have never shot an M1 Carbine. Well, after 69 years this range trip fixed that shortcoming. Bill's friend allowed me to put a magazine through the little rifle, and I was enchanted. Great handling, excellent sights, very nice trigger, and acceptably accurate (about 4 MOA as I shot it).

Sadly, given my age and stage I doubt there'll be an M1 Carbine in my collection, unless someone just gifts me one, but having shot this one I now understand why they remain incredibly popular.

Stay sharp!

December 2025 Update

Here I am again, making excuses. It's late December, 2025, about a week away from Christmas, and it's occurred to me that this blog needs some serious attention. Not new posts, per-se (although there's going to be more of those coming in the new year), but in cleaning up stuff I've posted in the past. This comes down mainly to fixing broken links, replacing photos that no longer load properly, and doing some minor grammar updates on posts I think are important.

You see, I will finally retire in early January 2026. My kids tell me I've threatened to retire too many times for them to take me seriously this go-around. So to prove how serious I am about hanging things up, I've gone ahead and filed for Social Security, and I've even formally notified my employer that I will, in fact, retire on January 9th. Even they didn't take me seriously, at first.

This blog has been put aside for several years as I followed other interests. However, I've decided that, since I no longer need to play nice and bite my digital tongue on issues like firearms, politics, morality and other fun stuff, I'll re-energize this blog as a more 'pithy' outlet for my thoughts. 

So stay tuned for more. More knives, more guns, more shooting, more fishing. More of everything you love... well, OK, more of what I love!

Stay sharp

Hand Tool Renewal Two

Several weeks ago, on my other Blog - PRC-77.com - I put up a post about how I'm cleaning out several decades worth of old hand tools, and re-setting for my new interests. I wrote this follow up, but then decided to move the tool discussion over here to A Fine Blade because it's a better subject fit, and I need to re-invigorate this blog.

When I published my Hand Tool Renewal post, I thought it was a one-and-done; I didn't think there's be anything else to discuss. But the last few weeks on this tool renewal thing have been very interesting, and even this old dog learned some new tricks. Thought I'd share.

Mechanical systems have always fascinated me. I've been turning wrenches on things like cars, boats, motorcycles, bicycles, fishing tackle and firearms for over half a century. My fascination is a bit odd because while my Dad was an incorrigible tinkerer, he was mostly into wood working and small home repair, and keeping his sailboat up to snuff. I honestly don't ever remember him looking under the hood of a car except to curse at the blasted beast for not working the way he thought it should. Dad loved cars, and loved driving them, but as far as I can tell never had any special interest in working on them. He left that to 'the guy' who ran a gas station and service shop just up the street from us. And on occasion, me. On the flip side, I have very little interest in wood working. I can saw, hammer and drill with the best of them, but taking on anything larger than home maintenance projects just doesn't interest me.

Early in my driving career I inherited a well used '68 VW Beetle. I drove that thing through almost four years of college, commuting back and forth every day, and driving it to the various jobs I had in the Toledo area. Dad wasn't going to put a single dime into it, so it was up to me to keep it running. Having to keep a car running in order to make it to school, and to various jobs to be able to afford school, resulted in one hell of a compressed education in automotive maintenance. With the help of the classic 'How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive' manual by John Muir, and a Haynes manual for the VW Type 1 I became a fair-to-middling home mechanic. John Muir's manual is an absolute classic, done in a funky 1960's 'hippie style', but was a remarkably complete, expertly written and humorously but precisely illustrated. This book is a classic, still in publication and still sells well, even though most of the millions of VWs it was intended to help keep on the road have long since gone to the crusher.

The original manual, published in 1969, had only black & white illustrations
and covered drive trains from the early 50's right up to 1969. It became THE
bible on VW maintenance & repair for the owner/tinkerer

There were some maintenance problems beyond my skills, and for those I took the car to 'a guy' named Alan on the north end of Toledo, who did a garage-level business in VW repairs. I ended up working for him for a few months one summer in the mid-70s just to get some experience. He had me doing mostly brake jobs and carburetor rebuilds, but I learned a whole lot from him just by watching and asking questions. One of the things I took note of was his collection of tools. This guy had retired out of a commercial automotive maintenance shop in Toledo and a lot of his tools were old brands that I can't even remember. One thing I do remember is that he had a lot of Craftsman wrenches laying around. I asked him one day if Craftsman were the best, and Al's response was interesting. He said they were good, and he liked the warranty, but the main reason he bought Craftsman was because Sears was just up the road, and was one of the few places you could go that offered a comprehensive line of metric tools. It was easier to go to Sears to buy a Craftsman wrench than drive across town to a specialty tool shop.

I took Al's comments to heart and began buying mostly Craftsman metric tools. Although often tempted by the sexier offerings from the tool truck guys like Snap-On and Mac, they were far beyond my means, and Craftsman offered the quality, range and availability I came to count on.

Fast forward half a century (oh God, am I that old!?) and while my tool focus has shifted, my appreciation for (and ability to afford) very good tools is unabated. In my last post I covered what was a refresh and expansion of tools to support my electronics bench work. That upgrade is about complete. Now I'm going after the larger tools I use for home maintenance, light automotive maintenance, and maintenance on our camper. In my car port storage room I've got a roll-off tool chest that is packed full of a mish-mash of old stuff - hammers, tap & die sets, wheel pullers, specialty tools, pry bars, hatchets, sharpening stones, at least two, and sometimes three, semi-complete socket sets for both metric and SAE bolts, some old Craftsman screwdrivers with the clear acetate handles that have developed the classic 'funk' coating (that phenomenon is an interesting story in itself, but suffice to say there's no real cure) and other odds and ends.

Then there's electric tools. I'm switching completely from corded tools to cordless. I donated the last of my corded tools to our church rummage sale a few months ago. For several years I've been buying into the Ryobi line of battery powered equipment, both for their power tools like drills and saws, but also for the wide variety of accessory items they make, such as portable fans, sprayers and lights. While Ryobi makes good DIY-grade gear (and it really is well designed and manufactured stuff), what they make often doesn't provide the necessary 'oomph' that pro-grade power tools offer. This came to light when we burned out a Ryobi drill when using it to lower and raise the stabilizers on our camper. Right now I'm teetering between two replacement brands for heavier duty power gear - Milwaukee and Harbor Freight. I know many of you are stroking out at the mention of 'Harbor Freight', but their Hercules line of cordless tools gets excellent reviews, even occasionally beating the comparable Milwaukee tool (example, a 1/2" cordless drill) but at about half the price. I don't want to support three battery systems (Ryobi, Milwaukee and Harbor Freight), so I'm taking a hard look at the Milwaukee and Harbor Freight offerings to make a decision.

So what do I need to keep in that old roll-off in my storage room? Since my heavy automotive wrenching days are over, remarkably little. A set of screw drivers, a 3/8" & 1/2" metric socket sets that take me from 10mm to 23mm, a few specialty wrenches for things like tightening ball hitch nuts, an adjustable wrench or two, some slip joint pliers, linesman pliers and... that's about it. Now, this roll-off cabinet isn't the only place I keep tools. I have a 5 gallon bucket inside my house with common use home repair tools and I also keep a set of tools in my truck - cheaper Harbor Freight versions of socket sets, wrenches, pliers, etc. Considering it all, I guess I'm 'well tooled'. 

This has left me with a lot of spare tools. The broken, rusted or unserviceable stuff  (like the screwdrivers with the funky handles) got tossed. The serviceable excess got put into 5 gallon buckets. Drop in a Z-Rust tab, snap on a lid and put the buckets in the corner of my storage room for any future need. If in a few years I find I don't need to dip into this spares stash, it will all get donated to a worthy cause.

Shopping for new tools has become an interesting lesson in global manufacturing shifts in the Era of Trump. Before Trump and the tariffs, communist China was the leading hand tool producer, and to be fair, they made some pretty good stuff. I've already discussed this in regards to knife manufacturing. Taiwan and India were the other two hand tool production centers. Taiwan has a long history of making high quality tools (and knives) but their production costs were always a bit higher than communist China or India. Long ago I made the personal decision to not buy anything from China; they are at war with us, and every purchase fuels their efforts to undermine us. But the tariffs, even just the threat of tariffs, have forced US tool retailers to shift production to other locales. We are now seeing an increase in production coming out of Taiwan and India, and Vietnamese made tools are becoming increasingly common. The tools made in India area still somewhat crude. I recently looked at a set of Craftsman combination wrenches made in India, and they were rough - poor stampings, lots of metal flash, poorly broached box end sections, etc. A corresponding set of Taiwan-produced wrenches, just one display over, were very nicely forged, finished and chromed. Yes, they were twice the price of the India-produced set, but still well worth the cost. I don't have a lot of experience with Vietnamese produced hand tools, but the few I've looked at (brands included Husky, Milwaukee and Channellock) seem well finished. While Vietnam is still a communist country, at least they cooperate with the  US, and are not trying to undermine us. So, I'll keep an eye on Vietnamese tools.

That's it, for now. My next focus needs to be measuring tools, to include things like calipers and tapes. But, I'll leave that discussion for another day. For now...

Stay sharp!

Trangia

When I'm not writing about knives, guns, fishing, stupid politicians (almost a full-time job there), radio and other stuff, I can be found playing with camp stoves. Yes Virginia, collecting and 'fettling' with camp stoves is a thing, and grown men do it. I mean, why not? It mashes up two of the human male's favorite things - fire and food. Add a bottle of beer and you have the trifecta. I've been 'into' camp stoves since I was a Boy Scout, and that interest was fueled  (ha, ha) by books like Colin Fletcher's classic 'The Complete Walker'. I'm interested in anything that puts out a flame - from classic old Coleman two burner suitcase stoves to the modern ultra-light backpacking stoves manufactured by companies like MSR. 

I've written in this blog a few times about various stoves like the old Swedish self pressurizing brass stoves and single burner military stoves. I took a pause on this interest for a time, but a few years back, while camping with my wife, my interest was renewed. She was taking a nap one afternoon and I was puttering around the campground, and the thought struck me, "This would be a great time to play around with some old stoves". And just that quick, I was back into fettling with stoves ('fettling' is a quaint British term for tinkering around with something to fix it or make it better - a wonderful word that perfectly describes playing around with old camp stoves). 

Several months ago I made a huge mistake - I went down a discussion rabbit hole on the Classic Camp Stoves website (a very dangerous site for those who like to fettle) and learned about something I don't think I'd heard about before - cook sets made by a Swedish company called Trangia. I may have heard about them but never paid much attention because the stove part of the Trangia cook set is a simple (but ingenious) unpressurized alcohol burner. With the Triangia system you don't get a pressurized roaring flame, you get a silent, pokey, alcohol flame. I'd dealt with other alcohol stoves in the past - little more than a cup filled with denatured alcohol and a small pot stand. The performance wasn't impressive. But what Trangia did was interesting. They combined an improved and more efficient alcohol burner with a burner support and wind screen that improves the overall performance of the burner, making it a viable way to heat water and cook small meals. Now, Trangia didn't come up with this in 1980, or even 1960. The Trangia 'storm cooker' set was designed in 1951! This isn't a backpacking stove (although I'm sure more than a few were carried on backpacking trips). It's really more of a car camping or picknick cooking setup. 

The basic storm cooker sets consist of a burner stand and windscreen, two nesting pots, a fry pan and a pot grabber. Every set also includes Triangia's signature brass alcohol burner. Some sets also include a small tea kettle. Everything is made out of stamped aluminum, and Trangia offers sets in bare aluminum, a non-stick coating (like Teflon, but not Teflon), hard anodized aluminum or a unique material called duossal, which stands for 'dual stainless steel and aluminum'. This is basically an aluminum and stainless steel pot bonded together under immense pressure, so the cooking surface is stainless steel, but you get the better heat dissipation of aluminum on the outer shell. 

The plain aluminum cookset. Simple & well thought out

These sets can best be described as 'old world' and 'charming'. They harken back to an era when lunches were put into wicker baskets and loaded into the boot of the old Morris for a day of sightseeing along the ancient country roads of Yorkshire, stopping to eat lunch and brew up some tea and soup in the shelter of an old stone farmhouse while watching the sheepdogs move their charges from one field to the next, and wrapping yourself in a wool shawl as the cold mist settles in for the late afternoon. Yeah, OK, I watch too much Masterpiece Theater.

The storm cooker packs down into a compact nested set. It contains the burner base, 
windscreen/pot support, two bowls, a fry pan/lid, pot grabber and alcohol burner. If you
buy the optional kettle, it fits in there too

Trangia has been in business for almost 100 years The storm cooker sets were not their first product, but clearly they are the most successful. The design of the alcohol burner is clever and it makes the best use of the unpressurized fuel. It can easily boil water or heat a small frying pan in a reasonable amount of time. Not as fast as pressurized gas stove, but still fast enough and, like I mentioned, without all the noise and complexity of a pressurized gas stove. 

About the size of a biscuit. The burner includes a flame adjustment cap - simmer ring (left)
and a storage lid (right)

The alcohol burner set in the burner stand. The stand ensures good airflow to the burner

The windscreen set over the burner stand, which improves efficiency by
forming a chimney that blocks wind and funnels heat to the pot or pan 

Flame on! The alcohol burner in full roar (but there's no roar)

If the alcohol burner has a drawback, it's that it's either all the way on, or all the way off. Since it's not a pressurized system there's no valve to regulate output. You light the alcohol in the burner and it just... burns. There's no way to regulate the flame. Trangia does include a gizmo called a 'simmer ring' which doesn't work all that well. I only use it to extinguish the flame. But Trangia introduced something that I think fully reveals the genius of the system design. You can buy an iso-butane burner head that snaps into the hole that the alcohol burner normally sits in. This burner brings more heat, and adjustable heat, to the the storm cooker set. If  you've ever used a camping or backpacking stove you know that wind is the enemy of any stove. That's why companies like MSR and Optimus include flexible aluminum wind screens with each stove. These windscreens work, but they are a pain to set up. They are little more than heavy duty aluminum foil. The Trangia wind screen/pot stand is the best solution for this problem that I've seen. It's the wind screen/pot stand that makes the simple alcohol burner a viable cooking platform, but when used with the iso-butane burner the storm cooker becomes an incredibly versatile cooking system. You can boil water with a full flame, or simmer a stew with a low flame. Again, the pot stand serves as a chimney that effectively funnels the burner heat straight to the cooking surface. Add a camp oven (like the wonderful Omnia system) and you can even make rolls, biscuits, bread, pies and other baked goods. 

The Trangia 'snap-in' iso-butane burner significantly enhances the storm cooker set, making
it a platform for more complex cooking tasks

An additional trick with the iso-butane burner is the ability to use it with larger 1lb propane cylinders. The burner fuel line is long enough and flexible enough to allow it to connect to an upright 1lb cylinder. You'll have to buy a separate adapter to mate the burner connector to the cylinder, but they are inexpensive and available from several sources on Amazon. This means you have access to cheaper bulk fuel for longer cooking & baking sessions.

Running off of a larger fuel source means you can tackle larger cooking tasks like heating large
pots of water for things like pasta

To say that I'm impressed with the versatility of the Trangia system is an understatement. I own a lot of camp stoves and cookware, but no single integrated cookset matches the capabilities of the Trangia storm cooker. Would I carry it on the Appalacian Trail? No. Would I take it to a campground to handle regular meal prep chores in an old-fashioned, leisurely and non-fussy way? You bet!

Stay sharp!