Next: a Table Saw

It’s important to marry a woman who has things in common with you. Rhodah and I agree on Christian doctrine and conservative politics, so the big-ticket items are covered. As a bonus, she also likes things like meat, knives, and guns. She even likes my waterproof Keen hiking shoes. Suffering with woman shoes while I walked all over Egypt and Turkey in comfort made an impression on her.

Guns are legal in Zambia, where people are still somewhat sane and remain able to tell the difference between 1) a woman and 2) a male head case in a dress. We have discussed the possibility of getting her a firearm, but we haven’t done anything about it.

I did get her a knife, however. She won’t be able to handle it until we’re together again, because shipping things to Zambia is like shipping things to Neptune. I suggested a Spyderco Manix 2 with CMP SPY17 steel, which is supposedly about like S35VN, only cooler because it was made especially for Spyderco.

There are steels that hold an edge better, but they are harder to sharpen. I don’t see Rhodah becoming a sharpening expert any time soon, so I thought I should make things relatively easy. As much as it pains me, I’m giving her a pull-through sharpener with carbide and ceramic guides. It will not win any contests, but her knife will stay sharper than 98% of the knives within a 10-mile radius of her house.

When I picked the knife out, I was happy to see that it had a pretty blue handle. I knew that would help with the sale. She confirmed that it was “cute,” and we were in business.

I made the mistake of saying I could make a belt sheath for it, so now I have to do that.

When the knife arrived, I liked it so much I was extremely jealous, so I ordered a sister knife in M390 steel, which is harder. It’s not here yet.

The Smith Pocket Pal sharpener I ordered has been tested on a stubborn Forschner kitchen knife, and it put a very good edge on it. It looks rough, but it will cut just fine.

I decided to get a real sharpener for myself. I have hones and diamond stones, and they work, but a modern sharpener will give you nearly exactly the edge you want, all the way down a curved blade, without the need for a lot of skill or youth-grade eyesight.

You can blow well over a thousand dollars on a knife sharpener if you have no life whatsoever and give your knives the names of female anime characters, but it looks like you can do very, very well for two hundred bucks. A company called KME makes a gadget which will put a beautiful edge on knives up to 10″ long. I ordered one. True nerds like them a great deal, and that’s good enough for me.

I hope it works out.

I told my buddy Mike about it, and he said he only sharpens his knives on one side. I had to sit down. I shook for a while. He said it saved time.

Maybe he’s onto something. Sushi chefs use knives sharpened on one side, and they do a fine job. Sharpening one side of a knife takes no skill, and as Mike says, it’s fast.

The big knock on Mike’s system is that it can make it hard to make a straight cut.

MAC, a Japanese manufacturer, recommends a big bevel on one side of the knife and a tiny one on the other. They claim it makes it easier to make thin slices, and it doesn’t make the blade drift. That’s interesting. I might have to try that. I could get another chef knife.

Mike didn’t come up with his system after years of study under Hattori Hanzo. He was just too lazy to learn how to sharpen a knife. What if it turns out laziness has worked out better than work?

I usually use a Mundial santoku with a plastic NSF grip. I think I paid $18. This is what real chefs use when they’re not on TV, by the way. A restaurant will hire a company, and the company will come around every so often with a bunch of sharpened Forschner or Mundial knives with thin stainless blades, and they’ll take the restaurant’s dull knives away to be restored. I know some chefs have knife rolls full of overpriced, impractical Wusthofs and Globals, but you’re probably not going to see 35 greasy Wusthofs if you barge into the kitchen at Morton’s on a busy Saturday night. I have never worked in a commercial kitchen, but I’ll bet expensive knives are only seen in the hands of prima donnas.

The Mundial sharpens to a razor edge in about 5 seconds, it loves the dishwasher, it’s springy, and it can’t rust. If you gave me a big, heavy Sabatier that cost $200, I would thank you, put it in a drawer, and keep using the Mundial.

I’m going to spend $15 on another Mundial and sharpen it the MAC way. It will be an interesting experiment. If it doesn’t work, I’ll have one more chef’s knife. If it does, it could revolutionize my sharpening practices.

I would have to come up with a good lie to tell Mike, though.

Knives are so much better than they were when I was a kid, it’s a wonder anyone still has a knife more than 40 years old. Edges last way longer, handles don’t disintegrate, corrosion is no longer an issue, and most pocket knives now have locks to keep them from closing and severing finger tendons. Old knives look really, really bad compared to new ones.

Today I saw a video from a guy who knew T.B. Joshua. His name is Mfon Tommy. He says Joshua’s last message to the disciples was, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Jesus said this on the night he prayed in the garden, and after he said it, he went away and returned to find the disciples were sleeping and ignoring his warning.

I thought this was all very interesting. Jesus left, and he will come back. He will come back to rapture certain Christians, he will depart for 7 years, and he will return a second time to rule the earth.

While he is gone, the world will undergo a period of suffering called the tribulation. In the Revelation, Jesus called it “the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”

It may be that Joshua was warning the world about what was about to come. You don’t want to be here during the tribulation. The government will inflict all sorts of suffering on you to make you take the mark of the beast. The beast mindset is already setting in. Governments are destroying liberty and crushing protestors all over the world.

Rhodah had a rapture dream last night. She had written a book, and she had to pay a man 500 units of some currency in order to have it published. When she gave him the money, he grabbed her and took her to heaven using an escalator. When she arrived, she met people who had died. Some were people she expected to be saved, but some were pleasant surprises.

Her sister and her sister’s new baby, who was still a baby in the dream, were also raptured.

Rhodah said there was a division between the dead and the raptured. They could talk, but they couldn’t merge.

Rhodah hates escalators. It’s something we disagree about. I took a smug satisfaction in the presence of the escalators.

My understanding of the rapture is that the dead will rise first and stay in heaven. The living who are worthy will go to heaven for 7 years, for the marriage supper of the lamb. Then they’ll have to return. One would expect the dead and the raptured to be separated in heaven.

Jesus is a raptured person. He went to heaven in his flesh body. It makes sense that we would be like him. The Bible says the rapture is a harvest, accomplished with a sickle, and elsewhere, it calls Jesus the firstfruit of the harvest. He is the first of many. He will return to live on earth, so the raptured should return as well.

Was the dream prophetic? Rhodah’s nephew is a few weeks old, and he will only be a baby for another year and a few months.

The book seems to be her testimony. She needs to get it out there. Maybe she needs a blog.