New (ish) from FOX The FX-611 NATIVE BUSHCRAFT KNIFE

 New (ish) from FOX The FX-611 NATIVE BUSHCRAFT KNIFE

This is the FOX FX-611 NATIVE Bushcraft knife from Fox knives in Maniago Italy. I've had my eye on this blade for some time and now I'm going to tell you all about it and later as usual show you it being used as intended. Firstly, it is a design from Andrea Todesco. It has been designed for the horizontal carry position ( you can avoid handing your rucksack up on it -like what can happen if you carry a big big knife vertically - ok it depends really.

The Carry System

So as you can see down below is a beautiful leather scabbard, welt design and thoroughly stitched.

The retaining strap can be easily switched for either left or right handed carry positions.

Here we can see the straps for the horizontal carry.

Even strong looking stitching throughout the construction of this scabbard.

Now for the Real Business

A knife blade made from D2 and micarta scales for the grip. A shape with good curvature that could be used for skinning, a good weight distribution for chopping. The semi sabre grind lends itself for good cutting.

The blade is essentially 7"/17.5cm long and the spine almost 5mm/ 0.2"thick.

The D2 blade has been coated with Idroglider Teflon treatment.

Now to the Really Interesting Features of the FX-611 NATIVE

You can't really have a knife intended for bushcraft if it is not comfortable in the hand for along duration. That being said, all the right areas have been rounded where any hand pressure might occur under severe usage. (Specifically, note the images below).

CONTROL

However in keeping with a good grip and control there is a generous amount of finger/thumb gimping were it counts. This gimping, I'm sure I will be able to use to strike a fire steel against.

Again for a knife designed for bushcraft, one does not want a pommel that is going to injure the user, so we see a flat and slightly smooth pommel/lanyard hole/slot at the butt end.

Smooth comfortable grip with a palm swell. stainless steel fixtures throughout construction.

Ok, enough talk let's put the FX-611 NATIVE  into action. 

So stay tuned @BushCampingTools

What was one of the best things I did to gain hunting skills?

 Q: What was one of the best things I did to gain hunting skills?

A: It had nothing to do with what model bow I shot or what model gun I shot!

Ok let me break it down.

A long long time ago, or shall we just say, "back in the day". I really got into shooting stuff but with a camera. That stuff happened to be animals of all shapes and sizes, as I really didn't know what I wanted to shoot in photography at the time but wildlife stuff seemed (like I guess it is to many) to me to be very alluring. So basically it was soon apparent that in order to get anywhere near close enough to what I wanted to shoot, I needed to learn several things. One was simply about the behaviour of what it was I was trying to photograph and once I had understood this the next phase was to practice stalking skills because I cold not afford as a student some ginormous telephoto lens* to keep my distance.

 

The Exceptions To The Rule

Stalking skills does not mean crashing through the undergrowth like a bulldozer on steroids. You may be laughing saying, well no one hunts like this but you may be surprised. I was such a person who thought this until  one such bow hunt where we were after wild goats and there were 4 of us who split up to begin with for the greater part of the day  and then all met up again at the end of the day to continue hunting but as sort of 2 groups. I was with "Uncle Kevin". 

He wasn't my uncle actually but we sort of called him that behind his back as a sort of affectionate joke. He was indeed the uncle of one of my mates who was on this particular bow hunt. Now Uncle Kevin at the range was a crack shot. I mean the shots he could pull off, especially at distance up or down hill were nothing short of remarkable. Don't ask me what bow he shot I can't remember but of course it was a compound and I seemed to remember he had it wound up to 70lbs because one day at the range I asked if I could have a shoot. Well that was a laugh as I couldn't even draw it back LOL! 

Ok, so here I was with Uncle Kevin and Uncle Kevin literally broke all the rules for hunting; I mean he was walking  and breaking sticks all the time, smoking constantly (ok the wind was always in our favour) and too much talking for my liking too! But I was assured by his nephew that he was indeed a very successful bow hunter. So this day late in the afternoon, him and I came to the edge of a large tree lined depression which reeked of "goat sign", as we neared the top I saw a prize winning billy with horns I thought at first were part of the tree branches LOL. A difficult shot from above with many medium sized pine trees between me and the quarry. It had to be a high shoulder shot into the lungs, preferably the heart; distance maybe 15 meters. As I manoeuvred into position and about to draw, I hear from behind me: "Look out Franky" I turned slightly and it is Uncle Kevin, bow drawn and in the next instant that goat was shot (from a slightly different angle of course)- avoiding every tree; and going down. The cigarette smoke still swirling before my eyes as he had no doubt let out a breath before firing. What to say, that was (god rest his soul) Uncle Kevin!

Ok, seriously, the skills I had learnt creeping around trying to film animals was a huge help in getting close to animals to hunt them. I guess one doesn't have to go the photography route in-order to become successful at hunting. Because the other thing we used to practice was simply creeping up upon animals (no bow) to see how close we could come to them ie within a fair shooting range, if not get right on top of them as a bit of a joke and startle them. Yeah it might sound childish but you really hone your stalking skills like this, trust me.

ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY

The other key thing one must learn and totally understand is the anatomy of the game you are hunting. No understanding of the anatomy (and don't want to learn), then you had better give up now before you even pick up a bow or a gun. 

A quick note from the author:

I guess what inspired me to write this article is the sheer number of people posting videos to the shorts feed etc of their supposedly "hunting trips". Many such videos of course get tens of thousands of views if not millions of views; I've noticed people are publishing anything even clearly poorly shot animals with many comments, pro- suggesting that the animal doesn't even know it has been shot (ok this can sort of happen bow hunting but it is extremely momentarily- not for minutes etc.) with a bullet, this is BS. In my experience rifle hunting in Australia (large kangaroos, for the pet meat trade) you shoot them properly, they drop on the spot, not wander off many many meters away, not continue to graze etc. AND certainly you DO NOT shoot them (Bow or gun) multiple times! if you need a guide other than for simply showing you where the game is at, then you are not skilled enough to be hunting IMHO. Let's not give those "ammunition" who would bring about the demise of this activity/sport because of stupidity.

(* Nowadays I'd still have to mortgage the house to buy one of those lenses-ok not quite, I exaggerate a little bit!) .

REXIMEX RP 0.22 Cal Comments and what is in store for the future?

 REXIMEX RP 0.22 Cal Comments

Quick Background

The REXIMEX RP has now been on the market for over 2 years globally. Reximex is a large (as in physical) company based of course in Turkey. 

Since the model has been out for so long it should have had any serious issues dealt with now by the company. According to early You Tube reviews, I would say they (REXIMEX) have indeed addressed some issues some of these youtubers raised several years ago about the performance of the REXIMEX RP.

At first glance it seems to be well made and presented. All exterior machining appears to be spot on. The comfort is very good too although it might be small for large hands (>size 9). The great thing is the gun is built around a stable platform of CNCed aluminium receiver , unlike it's competitor the JET from HATSAN (another Turkish company) for which the JET is mainly made from structural polymers, albeit it appeared in a debut as a CNCed Pistol but clearly production models were to be made from plastic.

Under full pressure in the REXIMEX RP I purchased, there were no issues with leaking air. Several Youtubers reported such problems with earlier models.

 It looks the part, although I'm more concerned with performance rather than "looking the part" as looking the part doesn't mean to say it can shoot accurately or precisely.

For example the Zoraki HP 01-2 ULTRA may not look the part (actually I think it does!) but it comes with a test firing sheet/data; something lacking for the REXIMEX RP, confirming it's ability "to shoot straight".

This is a testament to the confidence of the manufacturer about their product. And indeed the Zoraki HP 01-2 ULTRA is an excellent performer with a very well made barrel and good ergonomics along with an excellent and highly adjustable trigger. Plus loads of power if you happen to own the "02" higher pressure version, which is company certified to be pumped X4.

A Copy?

The Reximex RP is a definitely a copy/clone of the Russian ATAMAN P16 and if you know this Russian PCP model you will see the similarities are obvious.

The trigger of the REXMEX RP is not easily adjustable and came out of the box with a very "grating" feeling. This is probably attributable to the sears requiring some attention to detail as has been demonstrated by many a You Tuber, notably from Russian channels, who have recently published completely stripped down the mechanism to demonstrate where the attention to detail has been lacking.

I should say at this point, maybe some of you are saying: "Hey this isn't a very expensive air gun what do you expect"?

I would say with all of the modernistic machinery available to REXIMEX staff, even to mass produce such a PCP, these aspects and attention to detail should have been addressed at the factory and if the Chinese can do this, so can this Turkish company.

Now this brings me to the fact that it appears to be a PCP which can be easily worked upon to improve the functionality of it and bring it up a much higher specification with little effort. If however, one is only "plinking away" at a lousy 10m in your backyard then you probably aren't concerned with such details. (it is also then just an expensive toy). On the other hand if you want performance from it at say 25m then you may have to work a little on it; maybe. I say "maybe" because it seems dependent upon where you purchase your REXIMEX RP will depend upon the overall performance. (it shouldn't matter upon where one purchases it from!).

Talking about performance, I will speak briefly about the cut down version of the is model, ie the MITO which is a sort of restricted version of the RP to satisfy the government laws of certain countries, notably the United Kingdom comes to mind with their "sub 12" limitations, ie sub 12 ft lb of energy at the muzzle. Like buying a restricted Mercedes only capable of going 100 kmph. Ok, sorry I see no point as the cost of the PCP is identical to that of the non neutered version. I have no idea, and I bet that whoever set this rule also has no idea as to why this should be restricted to 12ft lbs. UNLESS the powers that be figured that UK citizens would be firing this thing in their backyards (if they have them) and a lower power may not "accidentally" penetrate their fence and injure a neighbour but I would argue with a lower powered air weapon there is an increasing danger of ricochet due to the lower energy projectile not being able to stay within a target and this in itself presents a danger shooting at such short ranges as 10m and under. JMHO.

 Quality Control in more depth.

As to quality control I have a problem with this as despite it coming with some sort of tag signifying that someone from QC saw this gun before it left the factory, mine arrived with 2 magazines which featured cracks in the plastic housing. Whilst at present these cracks have not impaired the functionality of these magazines, they (the cracks) will no doubt eventually propagate through to the edge of the housing and render it unusable. These cracks were easily visible to the "naked eye" and should definitely have been pulled and replaced by non defect magazines. The tag had a QR code, which I thought would locate it to some QC thingy on the REXIMEX site; no such luck, it was merely a QR code to take me to the REXIMEX company site! Mmmmm?

The glow stuff in the iron sights on my model were/are woeful, I noticed not one gun on display at IWA 2024 had bad fibre optics in them and in fact they were all pretty good. I looked at probably 7 different models.

So I really need to replace my ones with some better materials.

Talking of new models coming out. By the end of 2024 we can expect a 6.35mm (0.25 Cal) version of the RP; they told me that they will revamp the receiver, put a longer barrel on it and a bigger air tube. let's wait and see eh. They (and me) seemed pretty excited about this!

Ok back to performance of the RP. I digress.

AIR

Despite saying they have removable air cylinders, it appears globally they are hard to get a hold of (at least this is what many YouTubers are saying). Although the cost benefit of having such spares to "hot swap out" have to be compared to using a much larger air cylinder for refills in the field and or carefully tethering this PCP to the said cylinder.

A high pressure PCP, ie greater than 200 BAR.

This is a rather high pressure PCP pistol, with a safe working pressure of 250Bar. Shooting 18gr JSB pellets my gun seemed to perform nicely from about 250 until just a tad under 150 Bar. It should not be shot under 100 Bar according to the manufacturer, lest the user end up with a pellet jam.

As to the business end, ie the barrel, well this could have been made a little better and it is clear that REXIMEX are in the business of mass production rather than attention to fine detail.

On a new gun i found the inside of the barrel to have slight chatter marks from making.

 However, this did not affect the pellet (18gr JSB) trajectory over 25m with a pressure above 150 bar on the high pressure side. It's not easily measurable the regulator pressure as there is no gauge present for this part of the airgun. The crown of the barrel was ok and symmetrical however it was not finished as well as the crown on my ZORAKI HP 01-2 ULTRA.

How about the "bang"?

The REXIMEX RP shoots loud so if you plan on shooting this thing around others eg neighbours, then it will need to be silenced. I found an excellent silencer to be the UMAREX K3 NEO, it works very very well and did not affect pellet trajectory at all. It looks cool if you want a cool looking device but more importantly it functions as it should. approx 90db to 77db! dependent upon environment, sound recorder and distance from the closest ear of the shooter to the device. We measured this approximately 20cm away from my left ear, device facing the muzzle.

The RP comes with a good carry case and an extension which sort of converts this pistol into  a rifle configuration, the latter is preferable to use at all times as this will give you the best chances of accurate shooting; it works well as intended and is easy to mount and dismount, although I would add that one should not pick up/ carry their gun by simply holding onto this plastic add on since it is only locked to the pistol in one place and you will soon find that the upper plastic extension from this rifle mount coming out of the pistol which may damage it.

So far so good only time will tell.

The REXIMEX RP came with some spare O-rings, a moderator adaptor made out of Aluminium, an air adaptor (male/male) and a quick fit adaptor. Plus an Allen key, aka hex wrench. The  bag is good and has plenty of space for a moderator of your choice and a cut out for a red dot site of the "reflex sight" design.

The Future??

Reximex will be focusing upon their real firearms production withy many new models coming out but they informed me they will still be supporting the PCP production and i got the distinct impression this part (PCP's) would form a less of an important market for them (as could be expected).

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: