New Bow Grip

I put a new grip on my bow tonight. I also gave it an arrow rest. This along with the nock bead will help keep my shots consistant as the arrow will always rest in the same location each time. Here is a picture of it.

At top left is the arrow rest and you can see the nock bead on the string on the right side of the bow.


On saturday I drove to Mooreland, Indiana to pick up 19 staves of wood from a person whose ebay auction I won. I won them for only $30. Often you could pay $30 or more for just one stave. I got a good deal. Here is the picture from the ebay auction.



I'll have to let these pieces season for a year before I work on them, but it's safe to say I won't need to buy any wood for a long time.

Skill: Firebow

I finished my firebow. To finish it up I smoothed the surface by scraping it with a knife and sanding it. After that I wood burned a freehand bear design near the handle and also added detail to the carved bear head tip. I then stained the whole piece. The last step was to wrap the handle in some leather strips.

Here is the finished piece.


In a short term survival situation, you're probably not going to take the time to make one like this. You would just grab a sturdy stick nearby. You might, however, make one like this if you are in a long term survival situation. There are a couple nice things about this stick. First, the cord length can be quickly changed without having to tie a knot. In fact, you don't ever need to tie a knot. This is handy since it can easily adjust to different spindle diameters. Second, it has a comfortable handle which is good to have when cranking away at a coal.

Here is the detail of the bear. I first sketched the design with pencil based on a picture I found and then burned over it. I like how it blends in with the grain as if the tree grew that way naturally. Also you can see the hole where you can feed or take up slack on the string.


Here is the tip after wood burning and stain.


I can't wait to bust a coal with this thing!

Firebow coming soon

It's been awhile since my last post. Since then I've spent more time than I'd like to admit playing video games. That's not all I've been doing though. I've also been working on making a firebow. That is the bow used in making a bow drill fire. The material I'm using is one arm of the bow I broke. You can read all about that tragedy here. The picture in that post actually shows the limb I'm using.

It is taking me a long time because I'm trying to make it real fancy-like. To give you an idea of the detail I'm putting into it, here is a picture of the tip. I was trying to make a wolf head, but it turned out to be a bear.


I've still got more work to do. I'm planning on woodburning a design into the limb. I'm thinking some kind of flame design would be appropriate, but I don't want it to look like a hotrod.



I'm also going to woodburn the bear head to put some shadows on it. Hopefully I don't mess it up. I'll show pictures of it when I'm done. It should be pretty sweet.

Urban Scout Class: Sign me up!

Today I received a wonderous phone call! I was informed that I was enrolled in the Urban Scout Class in June. For those who don't know, last summer I went to the Scout class at the Tracker School. A link to the school web page is on my main page. Here is the class description:

This course recreates the Apache Scout experience and gives participants an opportunity to live as the Scout did, travelling away from his tribe, with few tools and equipment, gathering information from tracks and sign, and hiding from his enemies. This is a true high adventure experience that teaches participants to survive and observe as did the Apache Scout - the greatest survivalist of all.

Here is a picture of my group camoed up before a raid. I'm bottom right and my brother is bottom left. It was one of the greatest classes I've been to.

What makes the Urban Scout so special is that this summer is the first time they're doing the class. That means that I could be in a class with people that have been through the advanced and expert levels which are invite only. It's also likely that this class won't be held again for a few years and possibly never. Of course the topic also makes it special and hopefully more applicable to everyday life. Here's the class description:

The Urban Scout course is intended to cover the application of the traditional Scout skills, techniques, principles and teachings toward our modern day lifestyles. We will work (play) with in the variations of information gathering, teamwork and invisibility applied to the everyday modern world.

The bottom line is you don't get many chances in life to spend a week with a group of people going on raids and missions. I can't wait till June.

My office is like "The Office"

Earlier this week, I was in a meeting at work that had me thinking I was on the show "The Office". I'll have to assume you've seen this show. I am a member of the Safety Team at my office. We are all CPR and First Aid certified and we are basically in charge during fire drills and the real thing. I've been begging for a sash, but no luck so far.

The Team is comprised of a sampling of the company. We've got an old lady, an overweight lady, a women my age who has a mean streak, some middle aged guys, and my friend and I who are pretty laid back. There were lots of different conversations, but one of the funniest was about panic buttons. Unbeknownst to me, there are several panic buttons in our building. Some are hardwired and some are ones you can carry around. We argued about the usefulness of them, and who should get the mobile buttons. If someone pushed one on the weekend when the office was locked up, could the police even get into the building. Would they break the door down? If they got in could they even find the button presser? The answer came in an important email the next day:

FYI - here's the update on panic buttons - police could get in building but wouldn't know where to go.

We also talked about our AED which is a shocker you use to get someone's heart going. One of the ladies got upset when someone mentioned we'd be taking it to our new building when we move because she would still be working in this building. We decided we'd all go up to the 4th floor to take a look at it. As we were all riding in the elevator together, my friend and I chuckled as we pictured the elevator breaking trapping the whole safety team inside while some disaster happens. After checking out the AED, our Dwight Shrute-like member showed how the blood pressure checking device worked on one of the ladies. He couldn't get it to work. After someone made a comment about it, he snapped back in a pissy voice saying they could give it a try. A couple of us had the wide-eyed look of "what the f was that all about".

At some point during our talk of AEDs, someone asked about how the other tenants in our building would be able to use it. The mean women said, "Who cares. They're not our responsibility."

After that we all took a tour of the mechanical room to see how to shut off the air handlers in case of a hazmat incident like a truck carrying tanks full of fart gas jackknifing on the expressway next to our building.