Monday, September 28, 2009

A Simple Survival Kit and Knife



This is one of my favorite outdoors knives although I prefer RAT Cutlery Co. edged tools to the Ontario models designed by RAT - Randall's Adventure Training.

Here are the RAT-7 (Ontario) Specifications:

NSN: 1095-01-523-1972

1095 Carbon Steel Blade

Zinc Phosphate Finish

12" overall length

6.5" cutting edge length

Blade .1875" thick

Thumb grooves in spine

Green Canvas Micarta Handle

My RAT-7 rides in a now discontinued SpecOps Survival Sheath with a large, expandable pocket on the front of it which houses the following items that I have put together.

Left to right:

A water-resistant tube container with 100% cotton balls and #0000 Steel Wool stored inside for dry tinder.

A signal mirror and sighting paddle (heliograph) right above the tinder tube.

EZE-LAP (Pen) Diamond Sharpener, looks like a short writing pen.

ACR Coast Guard Approved emergency whistle (useless for self-defense, indispensable for outdoors emergencies).

Two fish hooks, monofilament line and brass snare wire.

Plastic tube with more fishing gear, lifelike grasshopper and ant lures, flies and braided nylon line and more.

BSA Hot Spark and striker next to it - a ferrocerium rod.

A non-lubricated condom below that. Along with a sock or stocking, you can carry a liter of water in that condom.

Katadyn Water Purification Tablets.

The sheath has a few feet of Mil-Spec ParaCord wrapped around it as well as some non - Mil-Spec Parachute "Type" cord that is braided.

3 comments:

Blackthorn D. Stick said...

Don,

So can I assume that you deep-sixed what was probably a crappy sharpening stone that was originally in the exterior pocket on the sheath so that you could carry all that good shit you listed instead?

Blackthorn54

Don said...

Hey there Blackthorn! Actually, no! I didn't have to do that because that was not a sharpening stone pouch but one specifically designed to fit a bunch of stuff in there just like that! 8-)

Don

Blackthorn D. Stick said...

Really?

I'm shocked! After all these years of knife companies feeling the need to include those atrocious sharpening stones with their knives, I'd pretty much just come to accept it as normal.

Just goes to show ya' that sometimes companies do the smart thing rather than the usual thing.