Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Well, the Ninja 250 alternator parts are off, anyway. I just shipped off a box containing mostly packing peanuts, with a few very dense motorcycle parts interleaved like lasagne noodles.
I'm hoping that ElectroSport will be able to get back to me soon with a lovely column of numbers, correlating RPM to output power. That would be excellent information to know.
Posted at 14:30 permanent link category: /motorcycle
The return of the pocket knife
In 1996, I was given a very nice Laguiole pocket knife for Christmas. I'd been carrying it for a number of years as my apple-cutting knife, when it suddenly went missing a few weeks ago in Portland. Despite searching the places it would have likely fallen out of my pocket, I didn't find it. Drat!
So, I started the search for a new pocket knife. They're so handy that I didn't really want to be without one. A friend recommended Knifeworks as a good place to buy pocket knives, so I took a look around.
The first model my eye lit upon was the CRKT M16. That's about the perfect shape, in my mind, and would probably be small enough to be unobtrusive. With a bit of cursory searching after I found that, I decided that it was the right thing -- the price was certainly right. So, I ordered it.
I waited patiently for it to arrive (ordering things online is never quite as instantly-gratifying as buying them locally). I got a call one day, about when it should be arriving; it was Knifeworks calling. The woman on the other end explained that there'd been a mixup, and my order had been sent to someone else, and their order sent to me. Could I please send it back? No worries, but how annoying (they paid for return shipment, of course).
However, in the mean time, I'd been doing research, having gotten more interested in the subject. I ran across this article on steel types in my wanderings, and after a thorough reading, I began to have more misgivings about the M16 I'd ordered.
On the one hand, that knife is an excellent price. On the other, I really don't like liner locks (the kind where part of the liner springs into place once the blade is open, to lock the blade in place): I always feel like I'm going to lop off the end of my finger, since the unlocking tab is invariably in the path of the closing blade. I was uncertain of the liner lock, but swayed by the low price.
Then, in the steel article, I found that the steel CRKT is using in that blade (which isn't even listed in the article, but is logically "below" a steel rated "just barely acceptable for daily use") is sub-par. That at least partly explains the low price, I guess.
All this brought about a certain amount of buyer's remorse. When I got the call that the order had been cross-shipped, I took it as my cue to change my order.
For a birthday present several years ago, I was given a Benchmade knife, exact model unknown. I carried it for about a year, clipped to my pocket (as is the style with these things), until one day a shoulder bag grabbed the clip and slid the knife out of my pocket without my knowing it. Of course, when I went back to look for it an hour later, it was gone. Crap! That was actually what spurred me to carry the non-clip Laguiole.
Anyway, thinking back to that knife, which I really liked, I decided to change my order to something about the same. After some deliberation, I decided to order a Benchmade Mini-Griptilian. It's got a few things going for it: the "axis lock," which is a much better locking system, to my mind; 154CM steel in the blade -- in contrast to the AUS4 in the CRKT knife, 154CM is among the best rated steels for knife use; it's smaller than the M16 -- I realized after looking at a ruler that the M16 is huge and would have been hard to carry every day. Of course, it's also $20 more than the CRKT M16.
I got the call that the Benchmade shipped on Wednesday, so with any luck I'll be seeing it today or Monday, but I'm resigned to waiting until Wednesday or Thursday before it arrives. I guess the advantage or ordering stuff online is that it's kind of like waiting for a Christmas present to arrive, except you already know it's going to be exactly what you want.
Posted at 11:04 permanent link category: /gadgets
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
