Zoe's new camp stove

Well our new camp stove just arrived in the mail a few days ago.  Now we'll have a way to heat the hot tent that I just made.  Our tent is much smaller than the standard hot tent so we decided that a smaller stove would be sufficient to heat it.  We eventually settled on the Packer Jr. made by Kni-co manufacturing.  The fire box dimensions are 10 x 10 x 12 inches, with the legs fully extended it stands 14 inches high.  We purchased the package that includes 3inch tapered stove pipe, a flew, and a spark arrestor. To keep it from rusting I painted the outside with a high temperature BBQ paint.

The first burn gets rid of any oil or residue from manufacturing

 Stove painted black

Knife Sheath

I just finished making a sheath for the Mora Belt Knife that I made a couple of months ago. I first made a paper pattern then traced it onto the back side of the leather. After cutting the piece out I wrapped it around the knife using small clamps to keep it in place. Wrapping leather around a knife is a bit trickier than I originally thought. You have to take into account the transition from the flat blade to the wider and rounded handle. When I was satisfied with how it looked I used contact cement to glue a third piece of leather in between the outer cover, along the edge where the stitches were to go. This extra piece will protect the stitches from being cut by the blade. The whole thing was stitched together then Sno-Seal finish was applied at the very end.

I used Sno-Seal to water proof the leather. Sno-Seal is made from bees wax and is nontoxic.

I used 4 - 5 oz leather, a heavier leather could have been used but I wanted to keep it as light as possible.

The snap closure in the front allows the sheath to be added to a belt without having to remove the belt in order to thread the sheath on.

Here you can see how the leather conforms to the handle with some heat and firm pressure.

The Sno-Seal changes the color quite dramatically. On the left is a left over piece of leather. Personally I like the color of the leather after treatment.

Cold weather sleeping system

Lately I've been giving a lot of thought to my sleeping system for winter camping. In the past I've used a MEC Hybrid -20 down/synthetic mummy bag with a home made fleece liner for those cold nights. But with the arrival of Zoe's new Hybrid -20 there are a few more options.

1. For those very cold nights the two -20 bags zipped together provide lots of room, maybe too much room with a fairly sizable air pocket between us. But with the addition of our MEC Raven -7 down bags the air pocket is reduced. The benefits of this system are that we are in our own bags but still able to benefit from shared body heat. (Actually I'll likely be the one producing heat) The down side to this would be the added moisture produced by two bodies in the same bag causing them to ice up quickly during a multi day trek. This could be addressed with the addition of a couple of vapour barriers which I don't have at the moment but intend to make before out next camping trip. (which is planned for New Years eve) With the bags in this configuration I measured the loft to be around 11".

2. A second configuration would be to not zip the bags together but still have the Raven inside the Hybrid. Advantages are less moisture due to only one body, disadvantages are no shared body heat. A vapour barrier would add to the warmth of this system.

3. If I was on my own in an extremely cold situation I have a Marmot -5 synthetic bag that is an extra wide that can be used as an over bag. My original thought was to put all three bags together but when I did this and got inside, it was certainly warm but I found that there was very little room to move around and the down bags were being compressed, reducing the insulation value.

I guess I'll have some fun this winter testing these ideas.

Let it snow!

Raven -7 inside the Hybrid -20. 11 inches of lot!

MEC put some thought into these bags. The zipper on Zoe's regular is in the same position as my long. The difference in length is made up in the foot box. Great!

My Raven -7 inside the Hybrid -20 which is inside my Marmot -5 extra wide. All I need now is a vapour barrier.