- The site that greeted me upon opening the first box.
Howdy kiddos, what did you do yesterday? Anything fun? I got to cuss about starting my own business and being self employed.
I received a shipment of over 6,000 firesteels that had, well, not the most effective packaging I have ever seen. I cringed when I picked up two of the three 60 lb boxes, not just from the weight, but from the tinkling noises I heard inside. You see, thousands of firesteels are not supposed to make tinkling noises until after I remove them from their packaging. Every single bundle of 14 different sizes of the rods were busted open, save one, and, of course, that was the only one that was in a box by itself.
So, I got to spend several hours yesterday sorting the rods into their appropriate bins. My hands were stained black from the protective coating and I am pretty sure the nice jeans I was wearing are now work jeans.
- Halfway through sorting the first box.
The good news in all this is that I have seven new sizes of firesteels, filling in some gaps between the sizes where I thought additional sizes would help. This brings me to a total of 16 different sizes, with a few more on the way in the coming months.
A couple of shipments ago, I decided to name all of the sizes after animals. I had a couple insects in there and some other random critters, but now they are all named after North American mammals. Hopefully a cheetah or leopard did not sneak in there to showcase my ignorance of wildlife.
Here are all of the new sizes:
Mouse Firesteel – Misch Metal Ferro Rod Blank – 1/8″ x 2″
Hedgehog Firesteel – Misch Metal Ferro Rod Blank – 1/4″ x 4″
Otter Firesteel – Misch Metal Ferro Rod Blank – 5/16″ x 4″
Beaver Firesteel – Misch Metal Ferro Rod Blank – 3/8″ x 3″
Coyote Firesteel – Misch Metal Ferro Rod Blank – 13/32″ x 4″