One night this weekend, we had a small backyard fire to let the neighborhood kids make Smores. We have a little firepit, and to make it more "interesting", we let some of the kids try to start the fire. Now, my son and a couple of his buddies that camp with us were not in on the deal, too easy. (But, I think after watching, they might have realized that they have learned a few things along the way that aren't common to all their friends. Chock one up for dad.)

We had everything from the boys that wanted to take gasoline from the lawn mower, to another one who just held a lighter up against an 8 inch log, expecting it to burst miraculously into flames. (I'm not kidding) Eventually, they realized that the yard was littered with small sticks from the Noreaster we had last week. Most of them were still damp from the torrential rains, but, they had the right idea anyway. After not a lot of luck on their own, I showed them how to split the wood via batoning. To their amazement, there is a lot of dry wood inside that wet outer layer! I had a cheap fixed blade that I was using to split the small deadfall, shown below:



After a while, the kids were just interested in making the fire bigger, melting those marshmallows, and squishing them between graham crackers with a piece of Hershey bar. I had a couple myself, dark chocolate of course, for the health benefits

It was a reminder that even in a backyard full of damp soggy deadfall, there was plenty of dry wood for starting a small fire, we just had to split it a little to find the dry stuff.

Yep. Fire, knivees and junk food. Sounds like the perfect weekend and a great way to get the kids thinking. Well done!

-Blast

How do you like this knife?

I saw it at Walmart. The price was low. I wasn't able to determine the quality of the steel, so i passed on purchasing.

I may have openned Pandora's Box... as I drive in the driveway this afternoon, I have 2 neighborhood kids asking what time the fire is tonight... Well, I always have the knives and fire capability, but, keeping a stock of graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows around for these types of things is tough... we have teenagers around here all the time, and they can hunt down junk food like skunks raiding an open trash container.

One thing I forgot to mention, is that the cheap knife did surprisingly well. It is a Gerber Profile that I picked up a while ago at Walmart, and for under $20, it's pretty good as a messin' around knife. I don't know what type of steel it is, the Gerber box just says something like "surgical stainless steel", but, it's full tang, and a nice drop point design. The handles are hard rubber. For a bargain basement fixed blade with a ballistic nylon sheath, it's pretty good. I'll see if I can find out exactly what kind of steel it is. It does have a coating of some sort, but, it's already starting to show wear, you can see some marks on it in the picture. I cleaned the pitch and stuff off the blade before I took that, it's actually where the coating has been abraded off the blade from splitting stuff.

BP,
There is nothing like the enthusiasm of young kids in an outdoor teaching session. Thanks for taking the time to pass on some valuable information.
kmat

"surgical stainless steel" usually means 420 stainless steel and is generally considered to be the lowest quality steel usable in knives. With proper heat-treating it will make a good "knock-about" knife. Gerber is a fine brand so I'm assuming their heat-treating is good.

-Blast

That sounds about right. When I saw this knife, it looked like it would be servicable, AND something I'd be comfortable letting someone else use without worrying about it. I have always had good luck with Gerber's knives, even their low end stuff holds up well. I have put a small 1/2 serrated AR locking folder through it's paces cutting heavy line, wire, and fishing stuff on my boat for the past couple years, salt water and all. It's still a reliable handy tool. It's too small to filet, but, it had to one day when I didn't have my big tackle bag with me.

I found out online that the coating on this Gerber Profile blade is Titanium Nickel. It does seem to clean up easy, even when covered with sticky gummy pitch. I don't know how well it will hold an edge over time, but, after splitting a bunch of dirt impregnated wood that was lying on the muddy ground, it still had a tomato cutting edge.

I don't like to "share" higher quality knives and axes, they end up requiring too much work afterward trying to get a decent edge on them again after they have been struck against a rock or something!

One of the other ex-pats here is gonna introduce some of our Aussie friends to Smores this weekend. I told them it is kinda like a Tim Tam. They seem interested.