SRM Knives, You Need To Check Them Out.

 SRM Knives, You Need To Check Them Out!

Mono-chassis construction

Hot off the press from IWA 2024, I looked at some of the latest products from SRM (Stay Ready For More). SRM Metal Technology Company (part of the Guangxi Ruike Outdoor Tools Manufacturing Co. Ltd. 

They (SRM) are using some very cool design features in the construction of their latest folders, namely a mono-chassis liner, that's right, a one piece liner for total frame rigidity. 

Plus the design also incorporates the stop for the blade and no longer necessary for a stop pin between two separate liners.

A patented tool-less pocket clip easily mounted for left or right hand carry! It is removed by simply squeezing the upper section together and pushing the device out of the slot on the scales. The clip os held securely in place by those two small barbs (shown in the above image).

SRM is part of a high tech manufacturing company formed around 20 years ago.

Using CNC, high tech German EDM equipment (SODICK)

A range of colored G10 scales available.

Another way cool feature is the pocket clip can be removed for left or right handed carry, without the need for any tools. They do this by a very clever quick release mechanism where the clip itself forms part of the "quick release" within the inner part of the folder's frame. 

 There is a very good finish on the clips too!

There is also a lanyard attachment point (above image).

Blades are deadly sharp out of the box and the models I'll be showing come in D2, however at a later release date they have some very interesting "san mai" type blades using S35VN. I saw some prototypes at the show and they looked very cool!

The blades were easy to open and close and the retention very very good. The mono-construction of the liner makes for a very sturdy folder.

Blades are mounted on bearings and easy to use thumb studs for opening. 

An large range of colored G10 Scales are available (just 2 are shown here). A classic black and a very funky purple.

Very comfortable rounded spine and thumb/finger gimping on the blade.

Very comfortable to hold with an ergonomic design

If your hands are dirty there is less chance of introducing mud and debris from the back of the knife due to it's "Mono-Chassis" design.

They offer a life time warranty on the product subject to the usual terms and conditions, like you don't try to vandalise the knife or otherwise abuse it.

Warranty? Yes indeed!

Free replacement with 7 days after purchase 

You can also see more about SRMKNIVES here:

Stay tuned on @BushCampingTools for upcoming reviews!

Here it is check it out!

Getting the Most From Your Solar Powered Watch

 

Getting the Most From Your Solar Powered Watch

One of the main reasons why people complain about not getting longevity out of their solar powered watches is simply because it was never charged satisfactorily over the years. For example: This could mean only getting light from indoor sources in an office environment. It's probably not necessary to be blasting your solar watch day in a day out with full sunlight (albeit this will produce the fastest charging, according to at least CASIO and Citizen (and probably SEIKO as well) however, several minutes of full sun per day

will never go astray (dependent upon what functions are used on the watch if not solely analogue).

Because many solar watches do not have any way for a user to determine what charge state their watch is in, for such watches it is important to follow some sort of regime, for many years of trouble free operation IMHO and experience. Of course those who own watches with some sort of indicators such as in CASIO solar watches and or such tanks of watches from Citizen with a "fuel gauge"

one can sort of have an idea of the charge state at any given moment. Although in the case of the latter, be aware these gauges are NOT liner in their representation of charge state of the lithium titanium power source.

Remember when in doubt follow your instruction manuals advice!

Captured by mercenaries A true tale of survival coming to light after 24 years! And Why Travelling in regions of Political unrest you can definitely encounter problems beyond your control.

 A True Tale of Survival Coming To Light After 24 years!

Ok I tell this story 24 years (almost to the date) after it happened. Why so long? Well, simply I never felt the need to tell it to anyone, all those who knew where we went knew what happened. However, I guess with so much BS on the SM these days about people going on about survival; I thought I'd share my non BS story to anyone who wants to read about it. 

It doesn't involve any knives I'm afraid or stuff which is commonly thought about being about "survival" but rather a travel story and those who travel a lot will know that at some point things happen which can land you beyond your control.

It follows on from an adventure we had travelling across the Indonesian archipelago on mountain bikes. 

KOMODO Island (Photo Author)

The location is the island of Sumbawa. We were talking it easy one particular day, in that we had decided to hop on a local mini bus, throwing (actually carefully putting our bikes on the roof with our only big knife) 

                                              This was not our big knife LOL (but there was a similarly sized one on the roof of our bus!

our bikes on the roof and then travelling to a ferry port with a bunch of locals. 

The bus was very packed and there was absolutely zero floor space. Luckily we got  two seats right at the very back left hand corner (it was a right hand drive bus). I was sitting next to a window, which in this case I could open fully, and this was a blessing in that tropical heat, there was none of that western, I demand air conditioning thing happening.

I did have my SLR (yes, the days before DSLRs were common!) cradled in my lap for any rough and ready shots out of the window. We were carrying a load of film with us, Fujichrome 100 and Kodachrome 200 and 64 ASA (yeah, LOL also before ISO!).

The overall mission was to hike to one of Indonesia's highest peaks Gunung Rinjani at 3726m give or take a metre!; camp on numerous deserted or near deserted beaches; camp on a deserted island (part of that adventure is already told here on the blog-if you haven't read it I highly recommend it) and to make our way across to Komodo island anyway we could, all on mountain bikes! We did indeed do all of that! 

But now I digress, let me take you back to the island of Sumbawa.

So, this was the first time we had decided not to ride and to hitch on a local minibus. Which, considering already the number of kilometres ridden in greater than 30C heat, I think we were justified in not having to "crack hardy" every day LOL!

As I mentioned the bus was really overcrowded, a bit like the Chuo- Sobu line in Tokyo during peak hour-ok, except no one is sitting on the floor there in a Japanese train!

 Ok so at one point we were driving past a field of sorghum which had not yet been harvested. If  you're not familiar with this crop, then let me tell you it is a grain crop that can easily attain heights over 2m. It's drought tolerant and loves the tropics and has big green leaves (now you are well versed in Agronomy!). Ok, so essentially we were driving past huge fields of this stuff, a sea of green almost.

Suddenly I saw a jeep, just like in the movies come out of nowhere within this field to my right. There was a guy hanging off the back behind what looked like a 50 cal machine gun. The sorghum was so high I couldn't clearly see the whole vehicle although strangely enough it looked like some Willy's Jeep! 

My immediate thoughts were, it was a movie taking place, and I turned towards my travelling companion to get her attention, (she was half asleep as it was that hot) and i said: 

"Hey Suzy, check this, they're making some sort of movie"! 

I mean, after all, why not? The perfect place in the middle of nowhere!

The jeep was paralleling the bus, maybe 25-30m away and moving pretty much as fast as we were, despite it ploughing through this sorghum crop. I was still looking for the Panavision trucks, the catering vans and all of the other associated film crew stuff, but I couldn't see anything!

In the next instant the bus came to an abrupt halt and I stuck my head out of the window, just far enough to see that there were some burning oil drums and some other black smoking fires across the road. At that instant that jeep roared out of the sorghum and came to a stop maybe some metres away;  and like the movies, people came out of nowhere armed to the teeth. I mean some even had the good old bandoliers of bullets (for a heavy machine gun) across their chests. Everyone in the vicinity I could see was fully tooled up. Side arms and rifles were the order of the day that's for sure.

I still thought at that point it was indeed a movie set but as reality sunk in, I realised we were in that reality set and it wasn't a movie being made, because as all of these rag tag looking military guys got closer, I saw they were indeed wearing and carrying real weapons and the ultimate crazy thing was that an old guy had appeared, now standing directly outside of my window was carrying a damn spear!

At this point I whispered to Suzy, should I get some pictures? Her common sense prevailed against my, about to get us shot stupidity, and she firmly said no way, keep the camera down. 

Right then, all sorts of things were going through my mind, like we, as the only 2 foreigners on board this bus and both standing out like sore thumbs, of course, would be taken captive, maybe held hostage if we were lucky? Those thoughts rapidly racing through my mind. 

   I was scanning the bush on the opposite side of the road to see if we could simply "disappear" into it but of course this was impossible due to our packed like sardines situation and that the back door was completely blocked by people sitting and or standing there!

Now some guy had got on the bus up front and was having a good look see around the bus. Everyone was quiet and to be honest, I don't remember anyone pointing a gun at anyone and besides that, everyone on the bus was out gunned anyway, in fact we were totally surrounded! 

Looking back on this, what seemed to be an eternity was probably an event which lasted less than 30 minutes. There was nothing we could have done. There was no anger, no time to be frightened (although to this date I don't recall ever having asked my companion if she was frightened, I don't think she was) but what I do know is that her parents way back in the US of A were not happy about her going on such a trip with me and that they wanted her to return home after her  (normal) tour of duty LOL! (she was a fellow scientist in our lab). 

When we did get to the final stop we were quick to locate an internet cafe (yeah, do you remember those things???) sending emails and trying to find out what was going on in this region, which my government had assured me was safe to travel in!

Ok, back to our temporary captors! So after this guy got off the bus, there was a wait and everyone seemed to blend back into the field. I wasn't trying too hard to be purposefully looking at any one of them lest I catch their attention and it go bad for us, because we had, at this stage, no idea what was going on.

The bus started to move and I saw again that the  barrel that was on fire had been rolled off this narrow half dirt, half bitumen road. We were slowly on the move, and as the bus negotiated past what I could now clearly see were burning chunks of wood, our fellow riflemen had all but disappeared!

So now this takes us back to that internet cafe with loads of questions flying backwards and forwards between the both of us and conversation centering around our luck not to have been hauled off the vehicle. But here you go eh? Typical of the foreigner thinking of their own self importance and why we should be the ones who would be "hauled off"!

Ok, so by now I guess you are wondering what had happened and it wasn't until some months later we found out the cause of our unscheduled bus stop; these were mercenaries who had been hired to 'look for gold miners' who were on their way to a large foreign acquired open cut gold mine. I believe that (if one can believe any of these stories appearing in the news print-yes news print!) that there had been one miner captured and killed. Thank god we weren't miners on our way to this mine!

 Supposedly this mining concession or whatever was given to a large US company and the government really didn't own the land upon which the mine was and there were some "locals" who were a bit pissed off at this. That's the story I read in the news papers and it made sense and we just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time as they say.

So like all adventurers, the moral of the story is, and I know you know it but  for the sake of my piece of mind:

Travelling in regions of Political unrest you can definitely encounter problems beyond your control. 

So the title was:

 A True Tale of Survival Coming To Light After 24 Years!

So how did we "survive" this adventure? Well believe it or not, by keeping a cool head and certainly  by NOT doing anything in the slightest bit stupid that could draw any unwanted attention to ourselves. As I've written in past blogs, survival, has nothing to do necessarily with guns or knives, it has all to do with keeping a cool head at all times.

BCT

Read about part One here:

Extrema Ratio RAOC In Depth Review by @BushCampingTools

EXTREMA RATIO RAO C

THE EXTREMA RATIO RAO C COMES in a rigid cardboard box sporting the 25 year history new Extrema Ratio logo emblem.

Simple presentation boxes are what come from Extrema Ratio but even the box, despite it being simple is well made and tough- and Italian Stylish!. 

Heck, I use my old boxes to transport my stuff in suitcases all over the world! Shame on me!

The Extrema Ratio RAO C comes in 2 variations. All black (but of course!) and this one shown above (Tactical Grey). I liked the sound of "Tactical Grey" and it certainly looks the part, so that's why I got this model.

There are "greys" and "greys"- seriously, there are many shades of grey (memory serves me correctly we can see about 256 scales of grey)!; and the one they have chosen for the hard anodising is very nice. 

Because some greys can look "old fashioned and boring"! Nothing old fashioned or boring here, let me tell you.

The Construction

Well, IMHO the best folders have a fully enclosed back. Why is is good? The more material in contact with the two scales or liners makes for a  more rigid folder and hence stronger. 

It doesn't matter what that material is (G10, carbon etc.) and some manufacturer's use G10 or similar. Extrema Ratio use steel, in this case N690. The liners are made from 420HC.

The aluminium scales are milled from 6082 grade Aluminium and as mentioned hard anodized for extra corrosion and scratch proof durability. (getting a knife scratched has never worried me as I'm not really a collector of knives but a user, however as a collector, one might also be very interested in having their collectors items as resistant to scratching as can be).

The milling pattern looks very funky however, providing very good grip in what is otherwise a straight sided handle. Whilst it may look like the milling goes all the way through the scales, it doesn't.

The closed length of the Extrema Ratio RAO C is 130mm (basically 5") as measured from the arc of the blade to the glass breaker/persuader at the butt end. The maximum closed width is approx 50mm (2"). This IS a pocket friendly EDC folding knife unlike it's bigger brother/cousin/sister etc etc. whatever! (see below).

Seen side by side one soon realises the RAO Expeditions is a ginormous folding knife! Well I guess you can not have some little itty bitty  knife named "Expeditions" can you ?

Here in this above image one can get a glimpse of the width profile and one can easily  see that the widths of the 2 knives are not that dissimilar. THE RAO II Expeditions being about 16mm wide and the RAO C approximately 15mm wide. Unlike the RAO II Expeditions (and the other RAO's), the RAO C sports some 420HC liners and this construction probably accounts for the similar width profile.

Now it's really easy to see the ginormous size of the RAO II (the Expeditions model shown here) as compared to the new Extrema Ratio RAO C.

Now for a quick bit of "Eye Candy"

Not So Obvious (but a really great design improvement and a big PRO IMHO) let's talk about Functionality.

Notice the angled lock release bar? (see image below) It's at an angle instead of the vertical orientation of the locking bar in the RAO models. Well guess what? This makes for a much more ergonomic release of the locking mechanism because your forefinger and thumb will want to naturally pull this part towards you unlike the movement of the lock bar in the RAO II (and other RAO's) whereby the movement in directed upwards, which is not as easy IMHO. By "pulling" the locking bar towards you, you can easily keep your entire hand gripping the RAO C spine/knife body. The RAO II and other RAO models are more likely intended, once open, they are staying open, hence the capability of easily carrying these much larger folders in a sheath like a regular fixed bladed knife via the screw in safety pin.

How Does This Lock Work?

A very nice beefy spring is used as part of the locking mechanism!

As the tang,  rotates into the open position, the rear curved section causes the compression of of the locking bar spring. Continued rotation to the fully open position causes the compressed lock bar to slip into the tang notch. The tang notch of the Extrema Ratio RAO C is set at an angle unlike the near vertical notch as seen in the RAO and RAO II models. Once the notch is presented to the lock bar, the bar will simply move into the notch under the energy of the compressed locking spring. 

The ingenious method the this locking mechanism (and similar to the RAO II and other RAO models) is that any force attributed to the closure of the blade, will be totally resisted by the locking bar.  In the case of the Extrema Ratio RAO C, that locking bar is set within both thick (2.14mm) 420 liners and of course the 6082 Al scales for added strength.

Now a sharp blow to the mechanism, as in a downward thrust of the knife to an immovable object in the RAO II and or other RAO models can cause the compression of the locking bar spring via the momentum of the actual bar causing the compression of the spring as the bar will tend to move in a vertical direction and that vertical direction can only be "up". Under some circumstances, this could cause the lock to be momentarily disengaged (only if it clears the deep notch). 

Hence on those models mentioned above, it is highly recommended to use the supplied locking safety pin in order to totally negate this effect and render the knife essentially as a "fixed blade. 

Now for the RAO C, the same movement the lock bar is not running in a vertical slot but an angled slot and thus will resist a movement in a vertical motion and hence not compress the locking bar spring. To further aid in safety, the Extrema Ratio RAO C sports a built in safety lock and when this is slid forwards, 2 steel plates** ( 2mm of 420 steel) slide above the locking bar, (one on either side of the bar) so any motion which might be felt by the locking bar (if subjected to severed forces) will be prevented from moving and hence the knife will stay locked open and can not close until the safety is disengaged and the locking bar withdrawn.

Conversely, the the RAO C can be locked closed by actuating the safety lock with the blade within the housing.

** Remember there is no direct force upon these plates, they are merely there to negate any effects of severe vibration because the forces are applied to the locking bar itself and the notch of the tang.

Obvious Functionality

Lanyard hole and "persuader" butt end. Nothing more to say about this other than one could possibly use this heavy set end to bust up some glass windows etc. You can also see in this above image that the RAO C can be equipped for either lefthand pock carry or right handed pocket carry (see drilled and tapped scales). The bolts are either TORX or Allen key/hex/socket heads. There is no (fine) adjustment on the main pivot bolt unlike seen in all of the RAO models. The rear Torx is a T8x60, as similar to the  RAO II. All other Torx are smaller. BTW, I'm not going to list the other bolt sizes as pulling apart your new folder would surely negate any warranty offered by ER. 

Excellent spine thumb gimping like as in the "older brother" 兄

The design like in the RAO II and others in this "family" allow for easy maintenance of contact surfaces with lubrication. (I personally use Mountain Bike lubricants (ones designed NOT to attract dirt and mud) or silicone gun lubricants for all of my folding knives).

A very manageable sized knife

 Ok so quick summary (prior to my field review- coming soon!) @BushCampingTools

Pros:

Great size for a "large folder"*** as apposed to a "ginormous folder"

Pocket carry/EDC friendly! (see caveat below).

Can be locked closed.

Very ergonomic lock release to actuate with forefinger and thumb.

Grippy scales, wet or dry.

Cleaning a freshly shot dove for dinner

Deep carry- either right or left handed.

Secure safety lock and easy to actuate.

*** Ok so what's a small folder? Like a 2 bladed SAK.

Cons:

Like ALL folders, (you can't treat with total disdain in regards to mud, dirt and sand), they are NOT maintenance free due to their many moving parts!

The scales in certain areas could have been "smoother" (underside closest to the knife tang) as in the RAO II and RAO II Expeditions, although I can see why ER did not do this as it would not allow them to make both scales and liners flush with one another. It's not a big deal.

The original (as seen in the USA at IWA 2023 pocket clip was in Ti but to be honest, I like this steel design better and Ti doesn't necessarily make for a better clip, nor does it really cut down on carry weight in a significant way. however,.........

the "deep carry" clip could be better designed because even wearing this knife on my "tactical" (and knife carry reinforced) Helikon Tex pants, 

the bolts securing the clip (almost) prevent the pants material to slide all the way to the end of the clip. This would not be a problem if the knife was worn on regular jeans or any pants where the material is NOT reinforced and hence thicker.

The original model as shown at IWA 2023  had a pivot mechanism like the RAO II and was fully adjustable, unlike this current production model of the RAO C. Maybe this was cost cutting? (but not quality cutting). 

It doesn't bother me really, as only more screws and bolts to loose LOL!; and these design changes are to be expected when it comes to the production models.

More EYE CANDY!

Ok so stick around for the real test in my upcoming field review where a lot more will be seen and revealed @BushCampingTools

BCT