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- Homemade Drink Holster
- I <3 Wild Game: A Bachelor’s Valentine’s Day Dinner
- Drinking a 27 year old bottle of Coke
- Happy Valentine’s Day from The Post Apoc
- Ancient Copper Filet Knife
- Father’s Day Fighting Cane
- Humans Are Ridiculous: 1-5
- Custom Painted Woodsman’s Pal
- Where’s My Effin’ Can Opener?
- How to Make a Pocket Flamethrower Out of an Adjustable Lighter
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I <3 Wild Game: A Bachelor’s Valentine’s Day Dinner
I <3 Wild Game
What better way to celebrate the day of love than to eat the actual symbol of love?
Two of my cousins took deer late last year and sent me the hearts at my request, which I froze for safe keeping. Deer heart is actually one of the leanest and tastiest parts of the deer – the first deer heart I ever had was from a reindeer, and it was smoked. While the flavor was good, the meat was a little tougher than most people would enjoy. This time, I decided to slice and pan sear the hearts fajita meat style. Cardiac muscle is VERY dense, so cooking the heart whole is not recommended, and tenderizing is a good idea if you’re not a fan of thorough chewing.
I recommend removing the pericardium and thawing the hearts in salt water to remove some of the gamey flavor – I’ve heard you can also do this in milk, or buttermilk, to further tenderize the meat, but I’ve never tried it.
To start, I sliced the thawed hearts in half and rinsed all the remaining blood out of the chambers. There’s more blood than you think in there, so explore the valves and chambers with your fingertips and be sure to rinse out as much blood as possible, unless you don’t mind it all over your cutting board. I sliced the hearts along the major arteries and veins. I removed and discarded all of these, along with the tough, fibrous ligaments on the inside walls of the heart. Lastly, I shaved the white fatty tissue from the outside surfaces of the meat.
beautiful pieces of meat
I cut the chunks into thin slices and simultaneously melted butter in a very hot skillet. I added salt, garlic, and black pepper before dropping in my slices and searing them only for a minute, turning and stirring constantly.
I wish my house smelled like this every day
I could’ve (and possibly should’ve) added mushrooms, onions, some herbs and spices, and some cooking wine… yeah. Whatever. I ate this, and only this, straight from the pan with my bare fingers once it cooled enough that I could touch it. Did I share some of it with someone I love? You bet! I gave some to Max and Lucy, my loyal canine roommates.
Ancient Copper Filet Knife
A few years ago, I was looking for authenic Roman coins on ebay, and stumbled across a series of auctions purported to be from a museum overflow sale in Germany. For those that don’t know, what you see out on display in a museum is often a fraction of what is stored and catalogued behind the scenes, and for every pristine artifact in a glass case, there are five in a drawer that didn’t get the starting position that season. According to the Ebay seller, this museum had an abundance of poor quality roman artifacts, and was auctioning them to raise money.
I bought an interestingly shaped knife blade covered in a thick green patina, and listed as Balkan in origin, and from somewhere around the 2000 B.C. range. Of course, I couldn’t verify any of this, but I bought it anyway.
I got it home and displayed it as it was, patina and all. I posted photos of the blade on some various historical and metalurgical websites, and was told the same thing repeatedly: “It looks fairly authentic… don’t mess with it. Put it somewhere safe and don’t touch it.”
The thing is, wastelanders, I’m not very good at just DISPLAYING something that doesn’t give back to me in any way. If I were a 4000 year old man, naked, and covered in a thick patina, I would want someone to love me and return me to my youthful state. So, to the ire of nearly everyone else I spoke to, I decided to restore the knife.
I ground off the patina to find a BEAUTIFUL hand-hammered copper blade. The hammer marks and irregular lines were art to me, and the copper shined as brightly as ever. The spine was significantly thicker than the edge – a necessity with such a soft metal, but the cutting edge was surprisingly thin and sharp. The blade had about an inch and a half of tang, so I set it tightly into a shed antler handle I’d already made. The ornament on the back is a fossilized cave bear claw.
When I look at the completed project, I think the knife is happier this way. He’s back in fighting form and wearing the appropriate garb. Leaving this knife in a state of useless disrepair only to appreciate its age would’ve been silly. People have told me I ruined its value – what value? It had very little to no monetary value, but it’s value to me as a project, and now as a functional display item and conversation piece is immeasurable!
It is currently on display in my older brother’s man cave, which is far more fun than any museum I’ve ever been to.
Your homework assignment, wastelanders, is to rescue something from an antique shop and restore it to its former glory. Preferably something dangerous.
Father’s Day Fighting Cane
As you’ve seen, I often make weapons for my dad on father’s day. I was over at his house recently working on a new project that will debut on the site soon, and ran across something I made for him YEARS ago, and had completely forgotten about. Behold, the Father’s Day Fighting Cane.
I started with a brass bedpost that broke down into three sections (and twist-locked back together tightly) and ended in a big brass knob. I added a rubber furniture-foot at one end, spray painted the entire thing with hammered copper rustoleum, and topped it with an onyx cuff link.
I implanted an entire knife (handle and all) into the top portion of the cane and affixed it with a shit-ton of epoxy. Thus, the cane breaks down into a club with a finishing spike and an escrima stick.
The escrima stick twists apart into NUNCHAKU! Because nothing elicits trepidation in an attacker more than suddenly pulling out some chucks and flailing them around like a crazy person.
The chain recedes completely into the hollow cane and fits tightly enough that it doesn’t rattle.
Posted in Tools of the Trade, Wastelander Skills
1 Comment
Humans Are Ridiculous: 1-5
I got the idea for this after recently recounting an apparently harrowing story from my childhood: In the short version, I was a child and ordered rocky road ice cream from a local creamery. I was absent-mindedly licking away and felt something scratching at my tongue. I assumed it was a sharp-edged piece of almond and tried to dig it out with the tip of my tongue, only to eventually look down and see the half crescent of an abnormally large fingernail clipping sticking out of the side of my scoop. I casually walked back up to the counter and showed the clerk who promptly took my ice cream and replaced it with a brand new scoop for free. Problem solved.
When I tell that story, I inevitably get wretching, cringing, shivering, and comments like “I’d have sued” or “I’d never have gone back”. Personally, I wasn’t really that worried about it. I wasn’t about to let a simple fingernail stand in the way of me enjoying my favorite ice cream, let alone let it ruin my day. I bite my own nails, and they’re probably WAY dirtier than someone who works in food service.
Anyway, on with the show:
Custom Painted Woodsman’s Pal
Woodsman's Pal: Long Reach
My friend Doug bought me a Woodsman’s Pal for a recent birthday. If you’ve never handled one, do yourself a favor and pick one up. They’re extremely well made and well balanced with intense chopping power. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to somehow customize this beautiful sumbitch… just look at that broad blade – it’s like an eager canvas! The one thing I would change is the length of the chopping edge. As you can see in the picture, it stops a couple inches from the end of the blade. I would extend it all the way to the end, around the corner, and an inch across the top, to give the weapon a deadly striking point right on the sweet spot – this would effectively push it over the thin line from tool to weapon… as intended.
Instead, I got antsy while watching “Snatch” for about the 137th time and decided to decorate it. I started by sanding the clear finish off of the handle with the intention of staining the wood darker. What I ended up doing instead was decorating the handle with markers and spraying it with a coat of lacquer. The lacquer made the markers run together, which actually improved the final look, in my opinion.
Lastly, I roughed up the blade with coarse grit sandpaper, painted it teal, and then painted a design in metallic silver and covered the blade in a few coats of lacquer as well.
Here’s the final product. Obviously, the paint job on the blade will get effed up the first time this is actually used for its intended purpose, so I’ll either use it as a wall hanger or wait and actually kill zombies with it. I put too much work into this to go recklessly chopping through the woods with it… which is actually okay, because it gives me an excuse to get the military premium version.
Another reason to decorate a machete like this is to arm someone who would otherwise NEVER keep a weapon around. I have more than a few friends and family who’ve looked at me sideways when I’ve gifted them a weapon of some kind.
Me: “Here ya go, loved one – a tool with which to defend your life and liberty from monsters, aliens, malfunctioning robots, or evil human beings!”
Unarmed Loved-one: O_o
Inevitably, the weapon ends up in a closet, or rusting in the garage. However, if it were to look like THIS… well… they might be more apt to keep it around for its aesthetic qualities (or at least they’d feel more obligated to).
