The 30 Day Victorinox Huntsman Challenge!

[JNieporte]

I've used my Huntsman for many things, including construction site work and EDC for about three years. I'm sure it will survive, as long as you don't use it as a hammer or go out of your way to break it.

[Jothra]

Challenge accepted!

Also: my Outrider handily survived a stint as a hammer last year. No harm, no foul!

[RVER]

I'm  EDC'ing my Workchamp for the month of Aug - in my jeans pocket! Trying to decide between this or a LM Wave as my daily... My "Sunday Church" tool will be my "hookless" Vic Climber...hate that stupid hook - glad my WC and OR are hookless.

[Jothra]

Days 7 and 8 were both super slack days for Vicky. There was lots of food prep, which isn't very hard on tools, and miscellaneous grooming (fingernails, mostly).

On Day 7, Vicky's blade pushed a few pieces of wood farther into a fire pit when I was too lazy to get up and walk over to the wood pile for a log to poke things with. Also, we sharpened some sticks with which to make s'mores.

On Day 8, Vicky helped open a new Kobo Aura HD ereader. New-job-and-upcoming-moving-day present! I could probably have opened this package with anything from my fingernails to a cup of Jello, but frankly I just find the small blade on Victorinox knives far too perfect for this kind of thing to use other objects.


I'ma cut you so bad you wish I no cut you so bad!

To be honest, throughout the challenge I've been doing far more with this knife than I've been sharing. All of it, however, has been boring stuff like personal grooming and cutting food (mostly at work during lunch), so we already know Victorinox knives can handle these things. We already know Victorinox scissors are excellent for trimming fingernails. We already know the Victorinox blade can slice through food like it's butter (especially if the food is, in fact, butter). I don't want to drown this thread in inane descriptions of boring things that don't remotely test the limits of my Huntsman, but rest assured that they're getting done nonetheless.

Anyway, off to read a good book!


A good book!

Days 7 and 8!

[Gareth]

Love the book cover!

[Nhoj]

Cool picture you made there!

[NG VI]

This is outstanding!

Cool to see the opener actually standing up to use as a pry bar!

[Grathr]

Fantastic bookcover! 

[enki_ck]

Love the book cover!

+1

[Jothra]

Books, right? Totally!

Anywhence, Day 9 basically made up for the slow weekend. Granted, much of my work required wire cutters, but there was a lot of knifey-bladey work as well.

Removing the hoarding tarps from the building was easy, but getting the tie wire cut out of the grommets was very time-consuming. In some particularly old, shredded, and tangled pieces of tarp, it was nigh impossible without a little help from your friend and mine:


Knifey!

And another tool:


Beefy scissors!

At one point, I did a stupid thing with my Leatherman Rebar, and managed to wire its jaws shut.

Really.


I've done dumber. Occasionally it involves fire.

The corkscrew worked well. After all, it's meant to open things.

At the end of the Tarp-a-Thon, I had to roll up the tarps (the big, insulated kind). Easy! One of them, though, had seen much better days, and I was asked to trim off its entire edge.


Cut harder, not smarter!

And, as a final (and ridiculous) cherry on top of the day, at one point my wire reel (a loaner) had just enough wire left in it to tie absolutely nothing useful. It was time to throw in a new reel! To do this, one turns the reel while holding the bottom layer of the reel in place. Unfortunately for poor Vicky, this reel was jammed but good. My only recourse: enough WD-40 to lubricate Mario Cipollini's hair, face, and torso, and the nearest hammer whatever-I-could-get-my-grubby-mitts-on-that-could-be-misused-as-a-makeshift-hammer.

Sorry, Vicky.


Action shot! I would have felt dumb if this shot hadn't turned out.

Surprisingly, it worked (the second time, after I added enough penetrating hoo-haw to drown a small county), and didn't leave any noticeable marks on Vicky at all!

Now Vicky just needs a go at some finishing nails to prove that Outriders don't have all the fun. Day 9!

[Monrogue]

Nice busy and hard day on Vicky

[gregozedobe]

Vicky just keeps on performing 

[Nhoj]

Good job vicky! How has the rebar been doing since your wave exploded?

[Jothra]

Tomorrow being the one-third point of the challenge, I'll update the day's usage and abusage (not a word, more's the pity), and follow it up with an in-depth description of the current state of the Huntsman. Vicky is doing marvelously, but has not escaped completely unscathed.

Instead of construction, we're on walkabout in a nearby town doing some apartment hunting, so I genuinely have no idea what to expect. I'm sure something stimulating will come along to keep Vicky and I on our toes.

As an aside:

Good job vicky! How has the rebar been doing since your wave exploded?

I like the Wave. It is a very well-designed and well-built tool. My particular Wave saw terrible things over five years.

I like the Rebar better.

[Jothra]

On my Day 10 travels today, I found coconuts! No, not because I travelled to a tropical paradise or something, but because they had them at Safeway. Though a few steps were involved, there was only one thing to do:


Stab! For milk. Bad news: none!


Stab! Just to get started for the knife this time.


Cut! You know, open.


My, that looks delic...hey, is that mould? It is! Argh!

The second coconut was mould-free and delicious. I was pretty sure Vicky could handle a coconut, as my Outrider had a couple of years ago.

Right before coconut action was something I think is in the running for Easiest Thing Vicky Has Ever Had To Do...open imitation crab meat for sushi!


Oh, meat, why do you pretend to be something you're not?

That's all for the major challenges on Day 10!

[Nhoj]

Imitation crab meat... it's the imitationiest.

[Jothra]

Okay, it being Day 10, I'll give a rundown of how the Huntsman is doing so far.

The bottle opener, which has both opened bottles and cried into its oatmeal when I pried form pins with it, is now the proud owner of a growing number of minor scuffs and scratches.


The horror!

The can opener closes very slowly, then stops on its own. It still closes all the way if I push it in, and the spring is still all snappy in the open position, which leads me to wonder what kind of crud I've managed to jam in there. I'll let you know if I finally get it back to gold.


Maybe it's going through some kind of awkward conformist non-conformist stage.

The scales are starting to show a little wear (like the scratches and pits reflecting light in this picture), but they're actually not that noticeable.


Well played, scales.

I know we're only at Day 10, but remembering what Coghlan's scales were like by Day 3 of my first challenge, I think Vicky's are going to do alright:


But mommy told me I was pretty!

[Monrogue]

I'm loving this Jothra, good stuff   Looks like Vicky's taking it all in stride so far

[Nhoj]

But mommy told me I was pretty!

Favorite line there

[Jothra]

Today, on a very Special Episode of Day 11, Vicky does a bunch of the usual cutting, slicing, prying, and scraping, then solves what could have been a Very Major Problem.

This morning, it was time to clean out column pockets in the foundation walls of another building on site. There were a couple of corners I just couldn't quite get my hammer claws into, so it's a good thing I have a friend with a bottle opener.


Fortunately, there were only four corners this tight.

Now, if the guys pouring them in think of it, the anchor bolts get duct taped to keep concrete out of their threads. This was the case this time, fortunately.


Trust me, cutting off this tape is way easier than the alternative...

I had to cut the tape on all 100 bolts, and Vicky doesn't mind.

Unfortunately, one anchor bolt in one column bucket was heaped at the bottom with concrete. Normally one can bust this out with a hammer directly on the top of the problem anchor bolt, but this one was one of the most stubborn I've ever seen. Fortunately, Vicky can pry and chip when needed, because my hammer couldn't reach back here.


Pry the...thing! Chip the OTHER thing!

All of that excess concrete had to go before I could cut off the tape and call it clean. After what felt like forever but really wasn't, it looked like this:


Vickytorious!

It was a lot of work for Vicky, but it all got done, and the screwdriver/bottle opener is only a little more scuffed on the tip than before.

Finally, a few of the anchor bolts had twisted tie wire wrapped around them for some reason, much of it wound very tightly. Fortunately, I have a prescription that sounds an awful lot like "Mix hook and tie wire in end loops; just add twisting motion, then yank wire out for extra flavour".


See? Hook+wire+loops+twisting+yank=GONE FOREVER.

Finally, we have this little gem between myself and a co-worker:

"Hey, stop the truck!"
"What?"
"What's that weird sound the truck's making whenever you start moving?"
"What sound? I don't hear it."
"Like rubbing paper or...just turn the engine off."

I don't know a lot about motor vehicles, but I do know drive shafts shouldn't look like this:


This must be one of those new, experimental Tyvek drive shafts.

I think maybe it's a wrapper from a lift of plywood or something. I'm not sure how it got wrapped so tightly around the whole drive shaft, and who knows what kind of mess that would have made if it had stayed there? As is, it took five minutes of hacking and slashing with Vicky to get that tangled mess out. There was no beginning and no end...ALL WAS TYVEK. It was so tightly wound that unwrapping was not an option, so it's a good thing I had a good, sharp pair of blades to play with. If this had led to some kind of breakdown, as the most experienced labourer on site, this probably would have come back on me.

Thanks, Vicky, for really getting me out of a bind. A lucky break on Day 11!

Edit—I almost forgot to mention that cutting all that Tyvek and banging on that drive shaft was hard on Vicky's blades, so I had to give them both an actual-for-real sharpening when I got home. A few seconds with a diamond file and a ceramic rod on each side of each blade, some stropping, and good as new!

[sawman]

This has been a very challenging day yet everything is still good.  I'm impressed!   

[Monrogue]

Sounded like a brutal day for Vicky, yet she emerged fairly unscathed

[Singh]

this thread is fantastic!

[Steinar]

 

 

[styx]

I'm really loving this thread. I've got a feeling that in the midnight hour Vicky cries "more, more, more"

[comis]

That's a "Vickytorious" day for Vicky!   It's the first time I hear Vicky saving a truck, that's quite a story to tell! 

[Lynn LeFey]

Jothra, I was just curious...

Do your coworkers look at you like you're off your rocker when you stop to take a picture of your hand holding a pocket knife like 5 times a day?

Have you explained to anyone what's up with that?

Also, I think saving a truck from tyvek was worth the effort of resharpening. I'm not any kind of sharpening expert, and i find sharpening vic blades back to paper-cutting sharp a pretty simple task. One of the things I LOVE about vics.

[Jothra]

No-one sees me taking the photos, because in these early stages of a building I spend an awful lot of time doing gruntwork on my own. It's just as well, since I'm just about the only person in the company who carries a multitool at all. It's kind of a joke around here, though I don't actually get it, since they're always asking for it.

[Jothra]

Alright, Day 12, whaddaya got?

Well, a bunch of dirt ended up crammed between a foundation wall and its (all together now!) rigid insulation. Since it was already Hilti-nailed on, there were two schools of thought: rip the insulation messily off and spend $21 a sheet to replace three sheets, or very carefully pry the sheets off so they could be used again.

Option 3 (C or iii, maybe?) was the winner.


Cut around that anchor! Heave-ho, ye swabs!


Done, with minimum damage!

Yup! The simplest, least damaging route was to cut exactly around the anchors, and pull off the resulting nearly complete sheets. Good job, Vicky!


Vicky showing off!

The only other significant event today was some plywood template stripping. We use plywood templates to suspend anchor bolts in concrete column bases, so when the pour is over the anchor bolts are already perfectly placed. The four bolts and the enclosed space of a column pocket made it really hard to pry the bottom piece of plywood out. Thank goodness for little knives with hearts of gold:


The section on the end got pre-cut by Vicky before prying.

Day 12!

[Steinar]

Go Vicky!