The "Whatever" Thread

My grandmother had one of those Ramblers!

Mine was given to me by my Grandmother. I rode home in it with her when she bought it new (standing up in the front passenger seat - the 60's were always safety first).

She gave it to me when I was getting driving age, and back then you didn't need a zoot new muscle-car to be cool, you just needed wheels.

My American was turquoise with a turquoise and dark green interior. It had a side-valve 6 cylinder blockhead engine. Mine had a factory block heater, and as such I jump started many a car in the frigid Illinois winters. Sexy? No. Reliable? Very much so, and it was cheap to drive.

best

mqqn
 
Grandma’s was gold and white. My first car was a hand me down from my Dad, 1964 Belair with a 283 and powerglide, no radio, so I bought a 8 track for it.
 
My first car was given to me by my grandpa. A 20 year old ford F-150 with a wood bed, mismatched tires, "optional" muffler, and a hand choke from what I'm guessing was a lawn mower. Loved that thing, as long as I never had to go over 55 mph. Had the rear axle from a chevy van.

Between my junior and senior year, or close to, I was helping a drama club clear out a warehouse to get volunteer hours and they were throwing out a pull-out couch that was used as a prop. Me and my best friend thought we could figure something out with it so we took it. About a week later it was bolted to the wood bed of the truck and became a hangout before Friday night football games.

One of my teachers liked to call it a "half-truck" because it looked like just a cab from behind since there weren't sides on the bed either (lost those at some point driving around on seasonal roads).

I had a radio that I think I stole from my older brother's car after he ran that out of engine oil, he didn't understand car maintenance, and then put the speakers in rain gutter as speaker cases and ran them behind the seat. Looking back, I'm amazed that thing never just burst into spontaneous combustion with the amount of half-ass electrical work and repairs I did to it. Best part about the stereo, couldn't hear it over the engine anyway because of the amount of holes in the exhaust system that I kept making from riding around the seasonal roads and farmer's fields (it was originally my gramps old farm truck).

Good times, but times are good now too.
 
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Haha - too funny. My first several cars had a manual choke. Spiral winding on a metal "cable" that went from the dash, through the firewall and connected directly to the choke lever on the carb.
I also had a Mustang with solid lifters that I had to adjust the lash almost every weekend. I had quick-connect bolts on the valve covers and used to take it to the park on Saturday mornings to get the valves adjusted for the evening street racing.

best

mqqn
 
We were in Owensboro Ky, where Sazerac is made, earlier this week. It's just a few miles from my father's place in Owensboro. Nice gift there!

I got some Dolce & Gabbana "stink water" from the little lady. I like having nice cologne to splash on occasionally.

best

mqqn
 
It's not quite camping weather for the family, but I've been itching to get the new tent setup to see how the process works and how big it really is. It's a semi-freestanding so it has to have the points where the poles insert to the attachment points of the tent body anchored, so I tied it to furniture and the baby gate with shock cord to anchor it. I couldn't get the whole think laying flat since I was too lazy to move furniture for space and the asymmetric design didn't help figure out where I needed to have floor space. The kiddo and I had a bunch of fun for an hour setting it up and playing inside as it took up his whole play area, until he was ready for a nap.

Looking forward to some good times this summer. It's the first nice backpacking tent I've had that is new. I tried following the "buy-once" principle and spent a little extra for the lightweight but robust design so it's not much heavier than a regular 2-person.
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I think we can expect the tent to show up in several knife testing outings in the future. I should've taken a picture of the thing string up in the play area/office as it was pretty entertaining... I found out after tying it up that I put the main door against the bookcase you can see in the background and the much smaller secondary door is like climbing through a porthole, and my desk is right there. Boy thought it was fun, dad didn't fit through as well.
 
Been a long weekend been busy painting and redoing my office. I need to finish the run of buck 110 sheaths I have on the bench
 
I've been fondling the Rule 9 I have available for "try-before-you-buy," and I can't help but think this thing would make a really slick bushcraft/woodcraft/camp knife. Has anyone tried one of these with John's scandivex grind?
 
I've been fondling the Rule 9 I have available for "try-before-you-buy," and I can't help but think this thing would make a really slick bushcraft/woodcraft/camp knife. Has anyone tried one of these with John's scandivex grind?
I can’t remember making one like that before, could be very interesting.
 
I can’t remember making one like that before, could be very interesting.

Rule 9 Bushcraft edition anyone? I could see a few subtle adaptions to the overall design making it "more ideal" for bushcraft.

Could be a really fun knife. I haven't tried any knives with that blade shape for bushcraft personally, but see a lot of love for them and the handle shape is pretty perfect for it.
 
scandi is my second least favorite grind for woods knives. Scandivex is better, but IMHO, ffg and flat saber work better for most tasks.
 
scandi is my second least favorite grind for woods knives. Scandivex is better, but IMHO, ffg and flat saber work better for most tasks.

While I agree with you on a personal level, there is a very large amount of people that like scandi grinds because it is considerably better for the wood tasks and very popular because of it. And, John already has the Rule #9 for folks like you and me. I'm a thin stock, saber grind guy myself but I like to have at least one good scandi grind in my repertoire because for all the things it's inferior at, it's a pleasure to use for wood working/carving tasks and it's a breeze to keep sharp.

If you look at John's current product options, I think a full-size scandi grind is missing and I was quite impressed with John's scandivex when doing my pocket woodcrafter testing. It was actually a lot closer to the performance of a saber grind for slicing and still had all the advantages of a flat scandi. A few years ago I found this out with my moras, rounding off the shoulder of the primary bevel to flat made it slide through material far better than the stock grind.

I think it would fit in really well with John's current offerings for the bushcraft minded folks. Sometimes, the need to do one thing really well is preferred over doing a lot of things not so great. For a while, I went the scandi route (mora) and then had a lightweight slicer like a trapper or opinel.
 
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