This was my point about living outside high power charging station areas.
After a 300 mile trip you probably squized 100 kWh outof the battery. To replace them back home, via an ordinary 240V socket at 2kW, you’re locking at 50 hours. Say you’re home from a trip like that late Monday evening, you can’t expect to be able to make it again until early Thursday morning
Apart from that I agree with @taitgarry00 about resources and such. Our current lifestyle will soon come to an end wether we like it or not.
Not even DOW is possible for everyone.
Sweden is a sparsely pupulated country, practicly covered with wood. Still, a fairly resent study claimed we would be 100% clear cut in 7 years with all road traffic powered with wood.
Fossil fuel was a gold mine. That gold won’t be replaced for a while.
Yes, sadly, about 40 or 50 million years. I am stunned at how foolishly we burned through such a valuable resource. Apparently in the last 30 years we have burnt 50% of all fossil fuels burnt since the beginning of the industrial revolution, during a time when we have known very well how rare and valuable the resource truly is.
There will be nothing like it to replace gasoline, diesel, nitrogen fertilizer and plastics.
A present arrived from Slovenia the other day.
Kristijan has been watching me working the hatchet when delimbing and decided I needed a proper tool, a Vejnic. I’ve never seen one before. Didn’t even know they existed.
Today I decided to do some work in the woods and brought the Vejnic. It takes a while to get used to it. The weight of it has a lot more overhang over the point of impact and the handle is shorter compared to a hatchet, but it sure does cut nicely. Thank you @KristijanL
Hope it serves you well. Here they were used not so long ago on preparation of most firewood, belive it or not. Hand cuting limbs up to 3" dia over a peace of log. Cut and split firewood was reserved for customers. Then dino burning chainsaws came in the 60ies…
But l culd not find it at the time
The spike can be used for ankering a limb and pulling the limb towards you. Unfortunaly you cant do that with the one l sent.
Allso, its sharpened funny, just on one side so only usefull for right hand. Works good when you get a hang of it. But gets agressive, diving in the wood. I wuld suggest only sharpening it on the left side, to ease the agression a bit.
As for it being front hevy, if you havent, try hiting the wood right in the corner of the blade and the tip. Its bent to be hit there, its balanced that way.
As with any hand tool, the one you are used to is always best. Hope this vejnik becomes one.
Those tools remind me of an old tool I saw advertised locally, but it had a longer handle like an axe, it was described as being for clearing brush. Do you know of a long handle version?
I have seen the longer handled version a very long time ago. I was told it was for making a trail in the woods so you could trim higher branches but I kind of thought the guy telling me didn’t know what he was talking about. That was years ago now.
Yes, but they are shaped a bit differently. More like a scyckle, and a bit lighter. Many many different styles. Some were over 12 feet long! You can be sure being one of the most important tools in the woods, people took good care designing them to their needs and circumstances…
Hi All
The blade shape is old-way known as a billhook.
The two-handed, axe handled versions are what was before caterpillar tractors and chainsaws used in North America to first dig-expose; then cleave-cut major roots below ground on large stumps to loosened. Then horse-team and oxen pulled out.
Locally here they were called root-cutter axes. Sigh. None passed down from any of the family branches. Those with them kept as revered wall hangers now.
Ha! In ground stumps root cutting I make do with the last retained already worn out chainsaw bar and last-use saw chains. Dirt and rocks! And lots of freely poured on bar-oil.
I never thought of this cutter shape as an alternative to a hatchet or two handed lopper/pruner.
As GaryT. said machetes suck on anything I am whacking here except blackberry vines. And there I will use better a stand away long handles edges sharpen spade shovel.
Ha! Just last weekend. My favorite blackberry growth I had to building clear away from the old shop building for my wife’s re-paint all of the old, painting project.
She would not negotiate for the replacement of 2000 feet of fencing gone bye-bye with her sale of 10 acres with the ultimate buyer. It got negotiated, left out. Needing now a new 1500 feet of fencing built across stumps, stump-holes and even trough the remaining forest. 10,000-15,000 $'s if done commercially. Sigh. So maybe $3,000 doing it myself.
Anyhow. She has hired a five-man painting crew for her project needs.
Good. I hate building painting.
Told the wife I was going to bill her for 2 gallons of my lost un-yet ripened blackberries.
S.U.
100 years ago they turned carbon gas into liquid fuel… they still can… we still can…
Nowadays, we, (some small group of people) use some “alien” tech, to run our cars with fuel that originate from yesterdays airpolution…
It all depends on what you DO …( if you DO put WORDS in a certain perspective, the obvious picture changes… )
Greta Thunberg has a mouthful of actions need to be taken, but besides using words, what is she DOING ?
Lead by example, let others talk about it… The more other talk about what YOU are DOING, the more likely people will start following the DEEDS…
It needs miracles to make the blind seeing again… It needs even bigger miracles to make behavioral changes…
on a footnote: if the first and second Law of Thermodynamics are valid, then there can be no growth but only a cycle to be recycled ( that is my opinion, feel free to disagree )
On a second footnote:
I pray for those who are hurt in the path of the destruction of nature (Dorian) and pray for all to be safe
Hi Koen, in ways I agree with your philosophy, but in other ways disagree.
It has been studied and estimated that a family of 4 can be fully supplied for their needs on about 1.5 acres, roughly one hectare of land. If that was followed humanity would have much excess resource capacity. But, what good is a self sufficient farm family to a corporation or politician? No good at all.
So instead we have empty land and cities filled with the scared and unskilled, obliged to do whatever they are told so they can secure shelter and food, and now the system is so advanced that the people hardly know where food comes from.
And the urban population can’t be made into adequate farmers. Think of Cambodia after the secret Nixon bombing campaign destroyed the infrastructure that led to the evacuation of the cities.
Vaclav Smil, a world regarded expert on the role of energy in agriculture, estimated that without FF inputs for farming, both for fuel and for nitrogen fertilizer, about 3 billion people could be sustained at a starvation level.
As for Greta, she’s still a kid, and I think her questions are very valid. The present course of business and society is clearly suicidal. That should be the starting point to discuss how much we need to change, and how fast.
Chris, l bet the knife works for cabbage triming but l am sure this will work even better on wood limbs.
As for the other topic. I think looking at the future in black and white is a mistake. There is no way we can all be self sufficiant. There is no way we can all drive electric vehicles. There is no way we can all keep the exhausting our fosil fuels like this. There is no way everyne can drive on wood. No way we can go 100% solar. BUT a combination of all those we CAN do.
But most importantly, we cant stay in this lifestyle. If we werent so wastefull for food and energy we culd thrive with minimum effort for centurys more.
Yes we definitely need to get away from the one solution fits all mindset if the modern individual era. Economy of scale is wonderful but we need to remember nature designs specialized systems to match the local resources and we need to do the same.
As to Greta I will just say as a 16 year old kid she is aware enough about her own actions on the environment to arrange to travel across the Atlantic ocean by sale boat to avoid the carbon impact of air travel. I know at 16 I wouldn’t have done that. Heck a decade ago I knew air travel was bad but I flew back and forth to Tiawan almost once a month because my job required it and the pay was worth it to me. Not to mention the damage the plastic extrusion lines I installed are still doing to the environment in the name of convenience in how we close packages. So I give her credit for being as aware as she is at such a young age.
I wouldn’t want to use it for overhead brush for safety reasons, but it would definitely be handy for reaching under bushes like multi-flora rose. For overhead stuff, I use a manual pole pruner, it is slower but i’m far less likely to end up with stitches. With a sharp blade you can saw through 5-6" stuff.
That being said, I will stick with the weedwhacker brush blade for brush. It slices through stuff up to around 2.5" fairly easily.
Although, quite honestly, I am thinking about getting a sickle bar mower to do banks with.
I mowed a very step bank with a old junk lawnmower and a 4 wheeler for years. I didn’t dare ride the mower down but I was brave enough to push it over the edge with a rope attached. Then pull it back with the 4 wheeler. Probably not the best method but it was more fun than walking the bank by hand…
Hello Chris, I’ve been searching the threads to see if you are still posting any pictures of the family and homestead. Not able to find much but maybe I’m searching the wrong treads. I’m sure your a busy man trying to get all your projects completed and raising a family.
Well another bad day on the farm my D17 decided it had done enough work and broke off the PTO shaft. As far as I can tell nothing actually went wrong just metal fatigue. Guess that shaft just didn’t want to mow hay today. Can’t complain too much it did roll off the assembly line in 57.
