Stein pole kit review - for forestry, arborists

Having seen the video review I made after buying a Stein Arbor Trolley, Fletcher Stewart have kindly sent me a Stein 'pole kit' to review. This is a set of 4' and 6' fibreglass poles which can be connected together and have an attachment on the end, such as a saw, loppers or a pole pick. It's a nice set of kit, very solidly built and useful - here's the video, photos follow further down:

Here's a few stills of the components:

Mike

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Blade-Tech knife sharpener review

Tracy brought me a present back from the show she went to in Yorkshire - a Blade-Tech knife sharpener. I think it's one of the coolest tools I've used in a long time! Here it is:
The two grey wedges are tungsten carbide, which is extremely hard and easily sharpens steel.

Here's a billhook that needs sharpening:
To use the sharpener on a straight blade, you hold it firmly on a flat surface:
In this case the edge of the billhook blade also need reshaping first, and this is done by drawing the blade through the "V" between the carbide blocks at a 45 degree angle:
Then, to hone the blade you move the angle towards 90 degrees:
Finally, in this case, to do the curved part of the blade, you have to hold the billhook towards you and draw the sharpener over it:
Then you're left with a nice sharp edge:
Mike

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Woodgas camp stove demo

You may have noticed in some recent posts that we've got a fancy new stove to use at the wood - well, here's a demo video of how it works. (Still pictures and a text explanation are below)

It's a WoodGas CampStove XL. What it does is "gasify" the wood, burning the gas produced in an efficient manner right under the cooking pot. Basically there's a cylinder inside it that you fill with small sticks:
If you look carefully you'll see some small holes at the base of this cylinder - these allow in a small amount of air to gasify the wood. Gasification means allowing the wood to partially burn, resulting in a mixture of gases, including hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide (so don't use it indoors). These are all flammable gases, and as they rise up the inside of the stove they meet with more air injected through a ring of holes at the top of it:
The gas mixes with this additional air and burns. Right above it sits your cooking pot, resting on a simple but effective pot stand:
The air is drawn in through holes around the the outside of the base of the stove, which encloses a small fan. In the picture below you can see the two power sockets for the fan (high and low speed), and the air inlet holes:
The battery pack contains two AA rechargeable batteries (I reckon my 3200mAh batteries will run it for over 15 hours), and you plug it into the high or low speed socket depending on how much heat you want out of the stove:

Mike

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