Reading Oldjimbo’s site and his many articles on Mora knives got me quite interested in them. Seems as they’re so cheap (I bought them from this ebay store – easy to deal with, cheap postage and ok delivery times) I’ve got a few now, so I thought it’d be worth a bit of a mini-review.

Mora “Classic Craftsman” 612

Carbon steel blade, red painted wooden handle, half guard.
The first Mora I purchased. I didn’t like the look or feel of the wooden handle, so i stripped it back and oiled it with linseed oil, like oldjimbo suggested. I used a butane blowtorch and wirebrush to strip it back. I also did not like the gap where the blade meets the handle, as it would surely be a repository for gunk. While a lot of sites seem to mention pulling the handle off, none seemed to explain how to do it.
I’m still not sure on the handle attachment method, but what i did was drilled a hold down through the base of the handle until I hit the tang. This was about 5cm from the base of the handle. It looked kind of bent over.

I couldn’t figure out how to get it out easily, so rather than risk further damage, I plugged the hole up with a piece of brass rod, held in by quick steel epoxy. the plastic handled knifes don’t have the issue of gunk getting stuck, so i’ve made this one a garden / workshop knife, and any food work I’ll do with the plastic handles knives.

As far as the edge goes, I’ve started honing it back using wet/dry (emery) paper of 400 grit sitting on a sheet of glass. It took quite a lot of effort to form a wire edge, so I’m guessing that the bevel was ever so slightly convex from the factory, as others have suggested. I ended up resorting to a aluminium oxide stone to hone it back quicker, and will use the wet/dry paper to clean up and polish the bevel sooner or later. I actually chipped the edge prying some nails loose, so I’ll need to hone back the bevels quite a bit. not in a hurry to do this though, as it is just a gardening knife now. Still probably my favourite looking knife now though, as the handle has come up very nicely.

Mora Outdoor 2000

Sandvik stainless, ugly but grippy plastic handle and molded plastic sheath

The most expensive Mora in my collection, at a cost of around AU$25! V/ery ugly looking knife, but seems to be functional. I only used this one as a kitchen knife so far, however my first impressions are that the thin blade and unusual profile (secondary bevel which tapers distally from about 2/3 along the blade) means this knife slices much better than other Mora’s, which have much thicker blades. The wider blade makes paring and some other fine work a bit more difficult, compared with the normal, narrower Mora blades.

This one is supposed to have a high quality Sandvik stainless steel blade. I haven’t had enough use yet to tell whether or not it is any better than the normal Mora Stainless blades, or how this compares with other steels.

The handle and sheath seem functional, despite their ugliness.

Mora 711

Carbon steel, red (red for rust?) grippy plastic/rubber handle, molded plastic sheath.

The knife locates in the sheath firmly, with a friction fit. No click like on the hard plastic handled knives.

Mora 511

Carbon steel blade, hard red plastic handle, molded plastic sheath

The 511 has a shorter blade than the 711 or 612. handle seems good, but not as nice as the grippy plastic handled versions. The knife clicks into the sheath and locates very definitely.

Mora 746

Stainless steel, soft plastic/rubber handle, blue (for water/stainless?) trim, molded plastic sheath.

A quick and dirty double boiler for melting wax. Get a PET softdrink bottle and cut it like this:

(photo to come)

Put the wax in the cavity, and float in a pot of boiling water. Takes a while to melt the wax, and the bottle gets a bit deformed, but works pretty well. Not sure I’d use this for food, as the PET bottle might leech chemicals on heating, but perfectly fine for candlemaking wax melting.

A quick fix for a lost hinge pin on a wheelie bin – get a suitably sized coach screw and washer, and screw into the handle. Then, put a few hose clamps on the handle around where the screw penetrates, to prevent the handle cracking.

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A few alternatives to for when aftershave might not be available. For me, shaving rash seems to be caused by bacterial infections in irritated/cut skin, so something that kills the bugs seems to work well.

• Alcohol hand rub, or waterless hand sanitizer. A lot more common these days
• Tea Tree oil
• Chlorhexidene surgical prepwash as a shaving gel. not exactly aftershave, but it will definitely kill any bug that goes near your face. Not all that common, unless you’re in hospital.

When I say in exasperation “it’s always in the last place you look”, before saying “well you aren’t going to keep looking once you’ve found it, haw haw haw”, please consider the following.

What I mean by this, is that an exhaustive search was conducted over the space of all possible plausible locations, and that upon completing the last term of this exhaustive search, the item was found. This means that it was in fact “in the last place i looked”, since I had exhausted all other search options prior to this.

So, if you wish to avoid being stabbed in the face, please do no make such a comment.

A man was recently charged with careless driving, after he cut off the acting police minister, while talking on his mobile. Good-o, I say, this is the sort of thing that needs to be enforced.

However, here I sit, four months after being hit by a car performing an illegal u-turn, with probably at least another three months before I go back to work, wondering why it is that a driver who was 100% at fault and caused serious injury, gets a slap on the wrist, in the form of an infringement for performing an illegal u-turn (the same as if you did a dodgy u-turn at a set of traffic lights and didn’t cause an accident). Not even “failing to give way while performing a u-turn”, let alone Dangerous Driving Causing Grievous Bodily Harm, which is the charge that fits.

What this goes to show me is that if you piss off a police officer, you are fucked. But if you do something wrong that is a bit hard to prove (or you do it to a minority group that the police assume are guilty until proven innocent – such as motorcyclists) then you get off scott free.

Is it any wonder that Traffic Police are hated, let alone not respected?

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/01/2806594.htm

Nermin Hodzic leaves Brisbane’s Magistrates Court after being fined $500. (ABC News: Jason Rawlins)
A man has appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court charged over a traffic incident involving one of Queensland’s most senior police officers.

The court heard Nermin Hodzic, 22, from Calamvale on Brisbane’s southside, was driving north on the Gateway Motorway early last month when he weaved in and out of traffic while talking on a mobile phone.

Hodzic narrowly missed a car driven by Acting Police Commissioner Kathy Rynders who was off duty at the time.

She was forced to break heavily to avoid a collision, which in turn forced motorists behind her to also break hard.

After several attempts she managed to intercept Hodzic and he was charged with careless driving and using a mobile phone whilst driving.

Hodzic was fined $500 and convictions were recorded.

Some pictures of pillion pegs on a 1996 XT600.

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg - closeup

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg - closeup

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg

1996 XT600 LH pillion peg

I would like to propose a new unit of measure – the Geezerbyte.

The Geezerbyte is a measure of the technical ineptitude, typically of older populations, although this could apply equally to any age group.

For example, someone saying “My new laptop has 2.8 gigabytes of hard disk” would rate 2.4 Geezerbytes, whereas someone saying “My new laptop has 15 inches of DDS RAM and a 320 giggabytes CPU” would rate 17.2 Geezerbytes.

I’ve noticed recently that my health insurance company’s privacy policy has changed so that when they call you, they need to check personal details to verify your identity before discussing your account. Sounds like a good idea – make sure they always verify your details, so they don’t give out personal details which might lead to identity theft.

But hang on, they call you, and ask you to give them your name, date of birth, address, phone number, policy details? Sounds like a great identity theft scam to me.

Now, I do actually know that the times i have been called by my health insurance company it actually has been them. But really, if i wanted to scam some identities surely it wouldn’t be hard to pick a common company (whether health insurance or some other service provider), blindly ring numbers (without sending your caller id) and pretend to be checking some account details.

The other side to this is that, often when they do ring, I’m out at in a public space. A public place is not somewhere i’d like to recite my personally identifying details for anyone to hear, just like i won’t use an submit personal info over an unencrypted link, especially not when using a free public wifi access point.

It is reassuring that companies are taking identity theft more seriously, but blindly implementing measures without thinking them through? Seems like security theatre is expanding it’s audience.