Poo; A Photographic Study

As many of you are are also amateur naturalists this won't sound as strange to you as it perhaps would in less inquisitive circles.

Taking a walk on the marshes:

Elfa: What are you doing? You're taking pictures of Poo!
SBW: always! Poos I have known, loved, and photographed
Elfa: if I'd known you were interested I could have stopped flushing the toilet

More soon
Your pal
SBW

A Street SO Posh....

That Arugula AKA Rocket grows from the cracks in the paving! Who'd a thunk it?

More foraging and fishing to come, and of course that long awaited rabbit hunt

SBW

There's No Auction Like a Firearms Auction

If you're like me and already have too many hobbies, look away now. 

Apart from inane eBay searches, charity shops and locked unit auctions there aren't too many places that you've consistently got a shot at a bargin with.  A lot of the gun auction sites  basically have people selling off their pride and joy, so they're pretty clear on the upper value of their guns and rifles. That leaves the physical auction houses which are amazing troves of treasure, the Purdy, Rigby and Rolex end of things is a bit crowded but the 'Pikey' and 'Ephemera' end is where the magic happens anyway.

How many great stories are in this lot? Estimate is: $150 - $200

A build-yer-own Rigby kit AKA a 7mm Mauser with tidy wood work and a knackerd barrel, is estimated at  $100-$200 sounds a bit vague as an estimate to me, run $40 up the flag pole and see if anyone salutes it. Or thinking again what about "re-barrel it and start competing in Service Rifle!" Go on, you know you want to.

Pre-war Nazi Ammo? Est. at a measly $50-$80 the clips alone are worth that.
[He tells himself]

I was pretty taken with one of these for £200 the other day. If it opens at $30 (£19.36) in front of the wrong crowd it's not going to have too many takers. If I was in Florida I'd be all over it.

As the buyers at the gun auction are squabbling over the high-end stuff a lot of 'working guns' fall through the cracks, but wether you're in the market for a dinner-getter or an heirloom, searching for 'hunt'-ing ephemera is lots of fun and will occasionally throw up real bargain-of-a-lifetime finds like this stunning signed photo....

Look everyone, its the boring one out The Avengers and him off the coffee ads. Yours for £4!

What did I bid on? Not telling.

More soon

SBW

Review: Spyderco Sharpmaker 204MF Ultra Fine

If you're the kind of person who has one of those annoying 'wheel sharpeners' for your knives best to stop reading now, as either you don't care about edge durability or you dont yet know what it'll mean to you. I'll concede that 'wheel sharpeners' can achieve a sharp [ish] edge, but never a durable edge.

 I know its frustrating to start with, but by working your way through a set of stones you get an edge that is far more robust and with enough patience far far sharper too. It took me ages to be able to get even half decent results on a set of stones. While I was practicing I used and reviewed the Spyderco Sharp Maker, which with - a very small amount of practice/following the instructions, will give you excellent results. The Sharp Maker is absolutely the perfect sharpening system for Spyderco's blade geometry; works surprisingly well on axes, and is very safe and handy for broadheads: it took me a while to get good results from thicker convex blades like the F1, but its excellent and intuitive for any flat-ish grind.


What you get is a box that does double duty as a stand/handle for the hones, setting them at 40 and 30 [giving you grinds of 20 and 15] degrees for blade sharpening, 12 degrees for scissors and flat for an improvised bench stone. Comes with course brown and fine white hones which make short work of carbon steel and are hard enough for stainless' including the 'super steels' like VG10 ect.

I've always wanted a pair of the Ultra Fine hones but they used to be crazy money so I never took the plunge. They've come down in price a bit lately so I ordered some from the chaps at Eden Webshops and two days later they were on the door mat.

Puta Madre!

Hallelujah

Yes sir I can boogie

They're good, really good, they take you to a whole new realm of sharpness, and considering the sharpness you get from the fine hones, that's really something. To illustrate the point my TK6 has a cutting edge in Super Gold Powder Steel hardened to 62, the fine stones made very short work of restoring the factory edge.

If you've already got a Sharp Maker, get a set, these you will love. If you haven't yet got a Sharp maker you've only yourself to blame.

More Soon

SBW

Conversations In Gun Shops Pt1

Been a while, no? Work, money, girls, yah di yah di yah.Getting back into it, more posts to come. Soon.

This one took place a while back, I was dropping an air rifle off for servicing at a well known north london specialist where I found the proprietor standing behind the counter with a look of world weariness barley concealed behind a veneer of shopkeeperly bonhomie.

On the 'punter' side of the counter was blading man in his late forties, wearing those nasty multi coloured beach trousers, a red wife-beater, and three wrist watches. Yep three wrist watches - the internationally recognised symbol of a nutter.

No sooner had I popped my weapon on the counter [really your minds!] when we were somehow conjoined in conversation. Well I say 'conversation' he was ranting and I was nodding in disbelief. The proprietor allowed himself a sigh of relief.

Edited Highlights:

I'm a mercenary.
I've just got back from Egypt.
I was the winner of a gun fight in a police station on the Iraqi border.
I was shot with 7.62x39 rounds here and here [points to cigarette burns on his arm]
The Bedouin saved me by giving me 13 pints of their own blood.
I'm on my way to Hollywood
I'm an armourer for the movies
You can read all about it in my forthcoming book.

By now I'm backing towards the door, 3watches' eyes are getting wilder as he warms to his subject

3watches: 'You can tell them you've met The Bear'
SBW: 'Rest assured, I will'

More soon
SBW

Ka-Bar - The Knife Of The Marine Corps

KA-BAR Knives from Common Machine Prod. on Vimeo.

Apropos of not a lot, I saw this on BB this morning and thought one or two of you might like it too. The Ka-Bar is certainly and iconic design, not totally convinced by the claims of 'finest craftsmanship' myself but with a few hours and a few sheets of sandpaper they can be made pretty user friendly. I've had one in the past and would have another one. More Soon SBW

Bargain VG10 Kitchen Knife Review

Many of you have written in to jeer at the amount of money I drop on gear, no offence is ever taken because my off-line friends mock me even more savagely, but in my self image I see myself as something of a bargain hunter so for this post I'm reviewing something that's such great value for money that it actually challenges Mora of Sweden's crown as 'best bang-for-buck outfit on the planet', effusive praise I know, but deserved!

When my pal at Edenweshops told me he had a range of kitchen knives I must admit I was a little underwhelmed, everyone and his uncle are selling kitchen knives and most of them are terrible, then he said 'They're in VG10' now as regular readers will know that made me sit up and pay attention, VG10 is one of the super steels that hold an edge long after the competition has been rendered blunter than the cold-word from a plumber. Then he showed me the price list! In the parlance of todays young people OMG! WTF!!

Up until a year ago VG10 was always at a fairly hefty price premium - prices starting at $100/£100 a blade and rising very steeply from there. With kitchen knives inexplicably costing even more than survival knives and stalking knives, more like $150/£150 and very quickly reaching double that and beyond

Because Eden are a relatively new name in knife sales, and this is their first foray into manufacturing, they've priced the knives at the level known as 'no-brainer'. Yep finally you can have a whole set of chef's knives for what one of the better known brands would set you back for just one knife.

Edge Holding? VG10 steel takes care of that.

Blade geometry? Cuts like a lazer, really like an effing lazer.

Fit and finish? 95% of what you'd get for several times the price, and nothing that you couldn't smooth out with a few sheets of wet-and-dry in and hour or so.

Kitchen Brag factor? Way way cooler than Global Knives for a fraction of the price

I've got one of the posher Damast series knives in the 'Santoku' blade shape, the perfect all-rounder for kitchen duties, and with its oil-on-water damascus pattern blade very very sexy, but if you're just after function rather than entering the 'kitchen tools arms race' with the other foodies, you can forgo the damascus option and just have plain VG10 blades for even less money! Personally I'm saving up to take advantage of the Whole-Set-For-30%-Off offer they're running at the moment.

Good Stuff, from nice guys, at silly cheap prices.

Very soon McShug and your pal SBW will be field testing some of Eden's own label binoculars against one of the better known names in American glass

More soon

SBW

Chef's knife, 20cm
£ 43,90

Bread knife, 20cm
£ 39,90

Carving knife, 20cm
£ 39,90

Santoku knife, 18cm
£ 43,90

Utility knife, 13cm
£ 24,90

Paring knife, 9cm
£ 19,90

Woodcock Recipe

At the end of the season we had one of our all too infrequent 'Bloggers Armed Ramble' where The Bambi Basher, Mc Shug and your pal SBW took a walk in the woods, giving the dogs one last romp and taking potshots a Tree Rabbits and Woodies. As we were about to call it a day, with nothing in the bag, McShug produced this beauty from his game pocket saying" You said you'd always wanted to scoff one - its had a week, pongz a bit" and I became the proud [if slightly smelly] owner of a Woodcock.

The Woodcock had been hanging for week when I got it, I hung it it until that well known barometer of ripeness - more than one flat mate asking about the smell - announced it was freeze-it or eat-it time. In old Blighty legend has it that a Woodcock should be nailed by the beak to a post in an out-building and only cooked up when the body falls from the head. Sadly that's about two weeks longer than the flat mates patience, so mine was ripe but not maggoty. I saved the head for an art project, but when roasted the birds skull should be split in half and using the beak has a handle the roasted brains should be sipped from the halved skull.

The Woodcock is an almost mythic gamebird, after a solitary migration in early November they over-winter in woodlands, living in a scooped nest on the ground and feeding mostly on earth worms, until the frost hardens the ground when as needs must they eat seeds and berries. In a very harsh winter even visiting bird tables.

McShug took this one with 'the wife's 20g semi', and over the years I've seen a few versions of the 'woodcock gun' all short-barrelled fast-to-the-shoulder shotguns, with Berretta even making a specialised set of rifled shot-dispersing barrels for their Ultralight [mmmmm want]. As bursting from the ground cover a Woodcock famously zig-zags though the woods at alarming speeds they are often many many outings and indeed cartridges to the bird. What has to be the most exclusive of shooting organisations is dedicated to this elusive bird. Since 1949 the Shooting Times Woodcock Club has welcomed members ONLY when they have pulled off a 'left and a right' without taking the gun from the shoulder, and done so in front of two witnesses.

With its well deserved reputation as the ultimate gamebird I wanted to savour the full experience, the bird seasoned with just salt, cooked whole and served 'old's cool' with its guts as the seasoning.



Perhaps a little over cooked - rescued from the oven after 12 minutes, still pink and bloody



The guts are very very strongly flavoured, a potent, forceful taste of the woods, they wont be to everyones taste, think of them as a woodland caviar.



Thigh and breast of woodcock, Black pudding [aka blood sausage aka Boudin noir], roast aubergine and browned halloumi, and for the dipping sause a reduction of pan juices with unsalted butter and woodcock guts.

Lots more to tell, just little time to tell it

SBW

Wooo hoooo!

Just bought 21 packs of asparagus for £3.15
SBW