Garant Grizzly Pro Series Axe (CHS17526) Review

A while back you saw me review the Garant Cougar axe. This is one of the larger models made by Garant, and was shipped to me from Canada by the same friend who sent me the Cougar axe. The Garant axes are not available in the US, although their parent company, Ames True Temper has other brands available here.

 

Specifications:
Manufacturer: Garant/Ames True Temper
Axe Head Weight: 1.75 lb
Axe Length: 26 inches
Axe Head Material: Unknown carbon steel
Handle Material: Hickory
Cost: $40.00

The axe comes in at a very good price. Here you can see the Garant Grizzly (CHS17526) next to the Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian Forest Axe.

The handle of the Garant Grizzly is of fairly low quality. It is not very well finished, and the fitting to the head is rough. A feature I found interesting about the handle is that the yellow section you see in the picture is not just painted, but rather has some rough coating that resembles course sand paper. I imagine this feature was put there so the axe can be used more easily with work gloves. However, if you are using it without gloves, it will be tough going, and there will be some damage done to your hand after some time.

The head of the Garant Grizzly has a fairly wide eye and thick cheeks. The edge has a secondary bevel that is not convexed. The head weight is listed at being 1.75 lb, same as that of the Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian Forest Axe (which is often incorrectly listed as having a 2 lb head), but it feels heavier than that. I would say it is closer to 2 lb.

 

The head is attached using just a wooden wedge. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time was spent trying to get a perfect fit. In fact the overall grind and finish of the head seems to have been done in a hurry, leaving a lot to be desired in terms of quality.

However, the axe is very well balanced. While to me personally this head feels a little heavy for this handle, the balance seems good.

With all these rough characteristics, it may seem like the axe would not perform particularly well. In fact, that is exactly what I expected when I started testing it. The results however were quite different. Here you can see the results of 25 swings with the Garant Grizzly and the Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian Forest Axe respectively on a piece of hickory.

The performance of the two axes seems very comparable when it comes to chopping. The wider cheeks of the Garant would also give it an advantage when splitting, although perhaps with a bit more sticking (nothing that I was able to detect on fairly small pieces of wood).

Overall, this seems to be a very straight forward working axe. It appears to have been designed for someone working in logging or forestry, who will use it to beat on whatever gets in the way of the chainsaw without much regard to damaging it. It has a fairly low price, and absolutely no energy has been expanded trying to make the axe feel refined. It’s performance is very good for that type of money, although it certainly will not make for a good decoration piece.

Photoburst Goes Big (And Large)

I have blogged about Photoburst, a travel photography daily contest, before...however its website was just revamped in a dramatic fashion, with its daily winning photograph large enough to take up all of my large monitor...and readers of this blog know my often expressed preference for large images.

It's a real eye-candy now!

The basis for the contest is a simple one. The best photograph submitted by its contributors is uploaded, and showcased for that day. The author of the best photo of the month receives a US$50 gift certificate to Kiva.

Gastão Bettencourt, Pedro de Sousa and Pedro Patrício are the three photographers behind Photoburst, and since inception, it attracted hundreds and hundreds of travel photographers and their submissions. I've seen impressive quality amongst the submissions, from well-established photographers with professionally-built websites, and from emerging photographers with Flickr galleries. The submissions range from landscapes to environmental portraiture, from candids to posed photographs.

Photoburst also affirms that all photographs contained on its website remain the property of their authors, as indicated over each photograph.

So whether you seek to participate in Photoburst's contest by submitting one of your travel photographs or just get your daily travel photography fix, bookmark its website and make it a daily destination. You're certain to get your travel photography buzz!

Good heavens! Drinking Yogurts: Review

Good heavens! Drinking Yogurts, are adult treats, made from natural ingredients, probiotic and mostly low fat too. They are made by a small boutique dairy with over 20 year's yogurt making experience.

Luscious Strawberry, Succulent Blackcurrant, Refreshing Apple and Pear contain real fruit pieces. Lemon and Poppy Seed is smooth with seeds, but don't let the seeds put you off because there wasn't any crunch with them. The combination of tang from yogurt and zing from fresh fruit is heavenly and I think I may well rename them 'Heavenly Yogurt Drinks'.  The drinks are almost as thick as a smoothie and are refreshing, sophisticated, exceptional quality and come in 250ml bottles. 

Indulgent Salted Caramel is smooth and rich, I found this one to be too much of a good thing and couldn't drink it all at once.  Fortunately, once opened the yogurt will keep safely in the  fridge for a couple of days. This yogurt could be used to flavour the batter mix of a cupcake recipe and also could be used to flavour the buttercream icing too.

The drinking yogurts are available from Tesco Express and Metros, Selfridges, Harrods, Sourced Market (St Pancras), Whole Foods Market, the Camden Food Company (8 London train stations, plus Birmingham and Leeds) and As Nature Intended.

There are 6 non-organic flavours with a RRP of £1.69 and 4 organic flavours with a RRP of £2.10.

Thank you to Good heavens! Drinking Yogurts and Martin.

Christian Witkin: Ethiopia

Photo © Christian Witkin-All Rights Reserved

"You can read people's faces, you can see how they treat themselves, what kind of lives they live, it's all in the exterior." 

Here's the work of Christian Witkin, a Brooklyn-based photographer known for his advertising and editorial work for major publications, who's now returning to fine art, the foundation of his personal photographic work.

His current projects include a massive 16-year study of India, Women, Ethiopia and a Thai Ladyboy project. I was curious to see how an advertising, celebrity and fine art photographer would depict the beauty of the Ethiopian people, and you can judge for yourself how well he's done it.

I was very interested to read in article on Cool Hunting as to how Christian took a medium format camera to 14th Street (which is one of my favorites spots for street photography) in order to build his portfolio, and that he now uses a 4 x 5 Linhof Technika (a large format camera system) when he travels. He also espouses the style of rarely cropping his photographs.

The Thai Ladyboy portraits are also masterfully photographed and composed.

Blades and Bushcraft

On several occasions now I have mentioned the forum Blades and Bushcraft. With the amount of time I have been spending there, I figured it deserves its own post.

The forum was started by two individuals a few months back. Like many of us, they were fed up with the heavy handed approach taken by moderators on some other forums, and the mistreatment of members there who would not blindly go with the opinions of those in charge. Unlike the rest of us, they did something about it.

I found out about the forum from another member and fellow blogger. I am usually not a big fan of forums. I mostly spend time there when I am very bored in the office, but I decided to join this one because the moderators honestly seemed set on promoting truly open discussion. 

A few things that attracted me to the forum were:

1. Members are treated as adults. You do not get demerit points or time out for being a bad boy, nor do you get gold stars for licking the right person’s boots and eating all your vegetables.
2. You can have a blog or a YouTube channel without being viewed as a threat to the forum.
3. Many people who used to put up great content on other forums but “mysteriously” disappeared have now reappeared on Blades and Bushcraft. If you have been wondering where a certain member from your favorite forum has vanished to, odds are you will find him here.
4. You can strongly disagree with the moderators and post your opinion without being banned, and without your posts being locked or deleted.
5. Even though the forum has many knife makers, and other manufacturers, none of their products are being pushed at the expense of others.
6. The moderators seem to operate with a certain sense of integrity, which is often spoken about on some other forums, but rarely seen.

Blades and Bushcraft is a new forum, and it is still small. As of the date of this post, there are less than 300 members. These are small numbers when compared to other forums with membership in the tens of thousands, but the fact that the growth has been so quick, indicates that there is a real need for this venue. Over there I have found a great group of people, who share information freely. I look forward to seeing the way the forum evolves as it grows.

For those of you who might be interested, I have also put up some of my gear for sale in the Members Classifieds section. So if you have seen me review something here that you like, you can either find it there, or drop me a PM.