*Wood Bowls by Tom Cannon… My ski/canoe/skate/carpenter/builder pal Tom is making fancy bowls on a lathe. Very nice! Great value: they fly out his door. Site at TomCannonBowls.com. 
| *A Passion for Blades… Fred Perrin is a crazy French guy who designs and makes useful knives (and is also a wild martial arts dude, living the rough life in downtown LA). He writes in passionate bad English about knives and his cat at his website. |  |
 | *Pocketknives to make the heart flutter… There’s beauty out there in knifeland. These Frenchies are very pretty, around $100. Nowhere else in highperformance craftsmanship can you get so much value so cheap. |
| *Knives are a great value… Even $50 knives can be at the high end of metal/material/leather craftsmanship—like a fancy car |  |
—offering great function and style. Buy from a local shop if you can.
To appreciate these things you really need to heft and flick em. I recommend the petite Spyderco Delica for carrying anywhere, but I find their same-but-bigger to be spot on for my more-rural needs (better for shrubbery wackin’). The stylish Kershaw Leek must be seen to be believed (the Rainbow is awesome). CRKT M16s are more tactical but still thrifty.
 | *Stylish, effective pocketknives for way cheap… For those on a super-budget, here’s a website with cheap nifty knives. |
I bought two Rough Riders: a slim with clip, $9; and a suave with hand guards, $7; and I really like them. If you don’t know, one-hander linerlocks with clips are very handy and inspire one to fiddle with their knife. Even these cheapies give a lot of craftsmanship and tool-action-click-snap bang for the buck. They’re for utility work, but they’re also defense blades and can look intimidating, so don’t fiddle in public. Taking a big step up, here are some lovely $60 kits. Lefties get the deluxe treatment from a guy who modifies standard knives, greatly enhancing many of them. Here’s a guy who beautifully customizes Swiss Army Knives.
| *Knife, machete, ax reviews galore… Here’s a guy who does great service reviewing everything. Learn a TON about hard-working blades here. |  |
*Swiss Army Knives are evolving… SAKs now offer pens, cigarette lighters, onehander blades and…memory! Yeah! Now they only need a compass and thermometer and I think we’re set. But they can’t keep dropping stuff, like the tweezers and toothpick! Gotta have it ALL. Midnight Manager: pen and light (I have one; they’re great). SwissFlame. Trekker: onehander. They even offer a knife with USB memory! Crazy.
| Â *Build a spark! It’s a ski-sled. You stand on a ski-tail and kick your way over snow or ice. It’s stable and fast. Folks use them in Scandinavia. You can buy nice ones but I made mine. Our kids love it! Here’s a pic and story. A link to serious info. |  |
 | Â *Tall Bikes for Commuters! I was driving down a local country road when a guy came riding around the corner on a road bike that was EIGHT FEET TALL! |
 | Â *”Dead Bugs, Blow Guns, Sharp Knives, & Snakes: What More Could A Boy Want?” The coolest kids and outdoor skills website in the world. Step into the huge world of traditional scouting, for all ages and everyone. Crazy mayhem with heirarchy. Lots on the cosmic aspect and adult development from Scouting. Can’t beat it. |
| Â *Fun Primitive Skills… Here are some websites about things that are fun, interesting, historical and related to each other and the things on this website… World Atlatl. Primitive Technology. Throwers. Flight-Toys. |  |
*Bucket Panniers. Waterproof, handy, quick, and tough. Thrifty, too. Here’s some people who make something useful out of junk: Cobbworks Oyster Bucket Bicycle Panniers.
*Misc Project Stories…
- Make Yer Own XC Ski Wax!!
- The Best XC Ski Glide Waxes, Simplified
- Life Without A Fridge
- Make your own Solar Energy Scene (long, technical, but effective)
- (A Bunch of Back Issue Stories from Issue #7—new OYB worlds keep opening up, don’t they…)
*Forever Fun Pack for Kids (and Adults)… Here’s an idea for a fanny pack full of goodies to help kids and adults have fun and get interesting things done their whole life. These goodies just NEVER wear out.
*Survival Kits… I have a little stepwise plan for being prepared, from a little to a little more. It’s fun to make lists.
*Flashlights… My 15-yr-old Petzl and Minimag were corroded beyond repair so I looked into what lights are up to. 
4 major innovations are: 1.) LEDs are bright and last for many hours. 2.) Lithium batt’s are small but very strong. 3.) Dual-mode LED/halo’s give you both worlds. 4.) Tactical lights are tiny, quality, and blinding. Here’s a guy who reviews them all. I have 2 kinds of the new breed that I use a few times a week: Petzl Myo-5 headlamp (dual-beam multimode LED/halogen—I use the LED function *every day* and love it! But I really never use the halo). — I have these on all my keychains and in my daybag: super! My brother bought a bunch of super yet cheap LED “Turtle” lights in Canada. They have the usual stead/or/blinky modes but also elasto-strap to a bike handlebar in an instant and actually light the road well enough to ride! Get a red one for a taillight. Super! In our bedroom I have the
Streamlight Twin-Task 2L —it’s a dual-mode LED/halo, small but very powerful, great as a tactical light, but really I don’t use the LED on it much. Probably best just to have a real blaster halo light around if you have a serious emergency/defense interest. I noticed that the SureFire E2 is a tiny tactical that can flood a parking lot.
 *Cameras… They’re only good if they’re there when you need em. My regular digicam is pretty small but gets left behind. So I got a Sony Cybershot U30: about $130, 2mb. The disposable Kodak HQ offers an actual pro lens for $7—great for leaving in bike bags. A reusable cheapy with great lens is the Kodak KB22 for $17.
| Â *Home Distilling… First it was beer and wine. Booze is falling fast. No reason for it not to. Wives’ tales begone about blowing yourself up: it’s not that hard. You can make great booze at home. Yeah, it’s true. Michigan now has a $150 permit for fruit distilling…down from $10,000. The other shoe will drop. Ya can’t keep an everyday market down. Here are some fascinating sites offering all you need to distill or discuss: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. |  |
*Jiffy RV Mini-Van Concept Car… Here’s a scheme. Otherwise, there’s the fine Westy to ponder, for $40K. Just down the street I once saw a 70’s Dodge Sport Van 3-on-tree mint green RV for sale for $1500: perfect. Woulda been sweet!
*Multi-tools and High-Tech units are boomin’! Those Leatherman-style multi-tools are really something! So are those Topeak, $13, multi-wrench thingies for biking. As is this new survival tool from Schrade, $49: it has it all. Then you have your new combo-unit cellphones, like the Treo: cellphone, camera, browser, PDA, GPS…yikes! And I see that wristwatches are including more and more goodies, too, like: compass, alarm, heart-rate-monitor, thermo (actually I haven’t seen one offer all these yet, but close). Man, today’s tech is really loading it all in.
*A Bike Boat! Here’s a Rough Sketch of a fully-faired Bike-Boat “Concept Car”
