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If you go looking online for the best camp axe, you will find the same recommendation repeated across dozens of sites: the Gransfors Bruks Small Forest Axe. It is hand-forged in Sweden, it is beautiful, it has a 200-year heritage behind it, and it retails for somewhere north of $200. Sometimes considerably north. It is also not the best camp axe for most people. It is not even close to the best value in a camp axe. And if you put it head to head against the Council Tool Flying Fox at a third of the price or less, the...

If you are shopping for a splitting maul and you go looking at the options, you will find a wide range of prices, materials, and marketing claims. Some of it is accurate. Some of it is the kind of confident language that survives only until you swing the thing into a frozen round of white oak in January and find out what it is actually made of. This guide covers what actually separates a good splitting maul from one that will frustrate you for years. Then it tells you which one we carry at Whiskey River and why. What a...

The thermostat is one of the great conveniences of modern life. You push a button. The furnace runs. The house gets warm. You did not think about it, plan for it, work toward it, or understand it. It just happened. Heat, on demand, no effort required, delivered by a system of pipes and wires and contracts with a company that will send you a bill at the end of the month for the privilege. There is nothing wrong with that. Most people live that way and it is fine. But there is another way to heat a house, and the...

Running out of firewood in February is one of those situations that feels like bad luck but almost never is. It is almost always a planning problem, usually compounded by burning wetter wood than you should be, running a stove that is less efficient than you assume, and starting the season with less wood than you counted. Here is the actual math, explained plainly, so you can do it for your situation and stop guessing. What a Cord Actually Is A full cord of firewood is a stack measuring 4 feet wide by 4 feet tall by 8 feet long,...

Some vintage axes surface at estate sales and barn cleanouts and look like any other old axe to anyone who does not know what they are holding. Then they end up on the auction block and serious collectors start bidding. The Sager Chemical Axe and the Connecticut pattern are both in that category. If you find one and do not know what you have, this is the article you needed before you walked away. The Sager Chemical Axe The Company The Warren Axe and Tool Company was founded in 1893 in Warren, Pennsylvania by William J. Sager along with family...