Review: MIG - SORD Mad-Stick holster

My mate Shane from Rhino Ropework (note: they've gone through a branding change recently, now trading as MIG (Mark's Innovative Gear) have teamed up with my friends over at SORD Australia to put together a line of pouches for the most excellent and useful MADSticks by Rhino Ropeworks. You'll recall the MAD Sticks are a compact solid breaching and pry bar, and be pleased to note that they've gone through some more design iterations and are even madder!

One aspect that Shane / Mark wanted to address, is their very pointyness, which even when looped through PALS/MOLLE, can jab and scrape, and the pen-clip type retaining clip sometimes just weren't up to the rugged outdoor needs of some folks, so he and SORD Australia have come up with this 1000d Cordura pouch. I experienced the need for this myself after months of carrying the MAD-Stick around in my fairly rugged Mystery Ranch 1DAP , the point worked its way through the Cordura nylon and stated to poke me in he sides as I walked. This I could mitigate by shifting it around but one time I picked the pack up and the MAD-Stick fell right out and nearly spiked me in the foot.

  As I'd rather not have this happen whilst out in public I had to retire it from my EDC until they good folks and MIG could set me up with a holster.

One did magically appear shortly after I got in touch with MIG, cudos to their customer service. So. The Holster. The MAD Stick is a 400mm (15.7") long, 12.7 mm (0.50" yeah, fifty cal!) length of 4140 high tensile tool steel,  and the SORD design suits it perfectly. Not too snug as to make drawing it an issue, not so loose as to let it rattle about.
The main opening flap is rimmed with hook and loop strips to secure the stick, and backed up with a webbing strap and a Fastex style clip to ad bomb-proof jump-safety to it. Nobody wants to accidentally catch a MAD-stick I assure you. The heavy 1000D Cordura lends itself nicely to giving the whole holster structure and it is heavily stitched throughout. inside the opening flap is a "pointy end down" indicator graphic, but the holster itself is ambivalent. a metal grommet in the bottom of the holster acts more as a drainage point than as a capture point for the spike.  I have also found the chisel end doesn't pull at the hook and loop closures as much as the spike end when doing vigorous runs.
Speaking of attachment:
The back side of the holster features two PALS/MOLLE straps with reinforced stiff panels and a terminal hook and loop strip closure.
Each strip is suitable for 3 rows of MOLLE attachment for a very sturdy fixture. You could strap it to the back of a plate carrier, to the side of a pack or even off the hip of a MOLlE equipped battle-belt such as the Platatac Bongo or SICC belts.

The black holster by itself is fairly innocuous looking but at 16" long it will stand out swinging on your hip. Not very Grey-man. The side-panels of my 1DAP are already pretty crowded so I stow the whole thing inside my pack, unsecured but safely wedged in now that I'm not worried about pointy ends jabbing though my pack. Check out the whole MIG range and new developments here: Now I can keep my totally legitimately useful / rescue tool handy without causing a public panic!
Well done Mark's Innovative Gear and the whole MIG Crew.

Review: Aldi - Tomohammer

Been a while since my last post, but I have content again!

We like to shop at Aldi from time to time. They have an eclectic range and reasonable prices. They might not be a reliable place to get the same things week after week (as their range shifts with the tides) but there's always good stuff to be had to fill a pantry and add to your preps. One thing I like is the middle isles are always filled with neat items like tools, hardware and adventure-wear. Every six months or so they do a big sale and lots of their odd-ball stock goes on deep discount. At one such sale, I picked up this item; The Aldi Camp Hatchet with Hammer.

It looks like a straight-up clone of the redoubtable Mk 48 Rangerhawk, but with a hammer face replacing the spike end. The form of the Tomohammer mirrors the MK 48 almost exactly, from the geometry of the axe-face to the design of the handle. It's vital statistics are as follows: it comes with a blade pouch with Velcro strap and a strap with button snap on fastener, it weighs 605g and has a total length of 377mm. 

The head is stainless steel and appears to be either anodized or coated but the kind of steel is not listed, so I'm guessing its something like a 440C or some such. The handle material is some kind of glass reinforced polymer. More on that later. The head is fixed by a set of three screws on each side, exactly like the Mk 48, down the length of the tang of the head. The handle has a series of rings moulded into it to give gripping texture and a hole for a lanyard at the base.

It also shares the half-way point double sided knuckle up the shaft, which is a nice addition to keep but I've yet to find myself so elbow deep in gore that I've needed the haptic feedback it provides. Perhaps shoring up the beaver-dam during a storm after fending off Zombeavers. We'll see.

My original Mk 48 has taken some punishment, requiring me to regrind tips of the horns after chipping them off. Looking up close also points out the three bolts fixing the head to the shaft. The Tommohammer uses much broader headed bolts, still reset in the handle material but bigger and deeper.

One difference I noted was the jimping on the back of the beard of the axe head. Initially I wasn't very keen on this as it seemed prone to gouging my knuckles when I held the axe all choked up for fine chopping. However what did occur to me was that I could grip the whole head and use the blade much like an Inuit ulu knife, for skinning, mincing or slicing.

 As a tomahawk it worked well enough, the weight of head, length of shaft and blade geometry made for a good swing and a decent chopping power. The forward balance was much the same as that of the  Mk48 but the hammer head brings the center of mass closer to the center for a quicker turning circle. Good if you have to switch between choppy choppy and happy hammertime in a hurry, maybe to fend off the more insistent zombeavers.

Putting that hammer to the test, I used it to  reseat the nails in our rickety gate. It made short work of the timber nails, right down to the cast iron fittings, without a scratch on the strike face. I also used it to drive both steel and wrought iron tent pegs to no ill effect. As hammers go, the 40cm handle was a bit much and having an axe face was a little disconcerting but no great issue. It struck well, and had a good resonance when striking, something one comes to appreciate in a hammer if you use it long enough.

And them I went and did something dumb. I'm generally of a school of mind that says "don't throw your weapon, dummy!" but at an event I was going to there was to be an axe throwing contest, so I wanted to get some practice in. After finding a suitably remote location with a clear line od sight and a suitable target tree, I set to practicing throwing my two most closely matched tomahawks, the Mk48 Rangerhawk and the Aldi Tomohammer. I quickly got my range in and was successfully sinking blade into tree when an awkward release saw the Tommohammer striking off-true, and with a disheartening "crack" become quite permanently detatched.

You reap what you sow. I threw my tomahawk, no doubt voiding a warranty and broke it. Interestingly, testing to destruction is useful in that it showed that the internal cross section was NOT glass fiber reinforced. Just a single material polymer. Also, it broke at the point of the recessed attachment bolts. So much for bigger is better huh?

 Odds are that if I hadn't been abusing it it wouldn't have had its catastrophic failure as it did, but better like it did rather than in an alley outside of Detroit or off the coast of Mombasa.  I should be able to re-haft the head onto some nice Tasmanian oak I have kicking around or even onto the Mk48 shaft, should I irrevocably screw that one up too. All in all, it was a good piece, part chopper, part hammer but what it wasn't was quality. you get what you pay for.

Review: PRC Compressed Ration Biscuts

I was lucky that one of my contacts Jayson Moloney of Blade and Stone AU started stocking a very unique product I had to get in on. These are a long shelf-life survival ration biscuit that looks to provide long term reliable food source as an emergency backup, much like the Mainstay Survival ration bricks I've reviewed in the past.

The rations, produced by ;Qinhuangdao Ocean Food CO.,LTD.formerly known as the Chinese people’s Liberation Army No.4003 factory a supplier for the Peoples Republic of China's military, https://qhdhysp.en.alibaba.com The rations themselves are in the form of compressed biscuits individually wrapped and stored in Mylar foil bags. The 4kg tin carries 20x 200g vacuum wrapped packets. When kept in optimal storage conditions; stored at normal temperature in a cool, dry place they have a minimum 24 month shelf life.

The ingredients are Wheat Flour, Palm oil (uh oh, that's not eco-friendly) sugar, glucose syrup, salt, and sodium bicarbonate. These are mixed into digestive style biscuits and compressed into blocks. They have been heat-treated but don't appear to have been baked. Following high temperature and high-pressure sterilization, they are suitable for long-term storage and transportation, The biscuits are tightly plastic wrapped and outer-layer foil bagged plastic bag packaging  creating a package  both hygienic and convenient, suitable for military and civilian use.

Each foil sachet holds four individually wrapped biscuit each pressed into two distinct portions easily  cracked to share or for ease of eating or sharing.  The vital statistics are listed as follows:

The  unopened sachets are 8cm (~3") square and 3cm (~1") thick.

	Per 100g	/NRV%
Energy	1988kJ	24%
Protein	7.1g	12%
Fat	19.4g	32%
Carbohydrate	67.6g	23%
Sodium	238mg	12%

Given that each sachet is 200g and has four biscuits, each 50g portion has half these values. So two whole sachets gives you 100% of the daily recommend intake and most of the daily protein and carbs. That's not bad for 400g of dry biscuit. Obviously you'd want water to go with it and I found they go very well with a nice cup of tea.

The compressed biscuits are non-moisture absorbent, soft, and easy to break up and eat. but not mushy or crumbly. They are a high energy,  rich source of nutrition, making them anti-fatigue, and promote the rapid recovery of physical strength. They are dense with a tight texture which leads to you being more likely to feel full after eating.


Although they are made of same flour used to make wholemeal cookies, but because the high quality of the  material used which is more closely refined, the use of the anti-orangutan palm oil softener to lower its moisture content, and not easy bibulous (moisture absorbing) which means even minor punctures to the protective covers will not be too much of a concern , make cookies in the active ingredients can supplement physical strength (ingredients) under the same volume content more, so to make it more resistant to hungry. A long-lasting, sustaining Digestive Biscuit.

The foil sachets are small and sturdy enough to be put in a pocket, or stuffed into the bottom of a bug-out bag. They also fit four into a Platatac FUP dual magazine pouch.  That's 800g of nutrition ready to carry your adventure on over hill and dale for a bit longer.

The biscuits are tasty and wholesome, my kids liked them and even put smiles on our faces after some arduous crafting on the couch.

They're tastier than the Mainstay rations and have a much nicer mouthfeel. Apart from the palm oil I have no qualms recommending these as survival rations and suspect  they will  become a hiking and camping loadout staple for us.




BREAKING NEWS: Jason tells me he will be getting in a new order including the pork jerky flavour through the Blade and Stone site. If your dietary restrictions allow you should check it out!

Review: Tactica Talon

Here's a thing. How often do you find yourself in need of a tool for a quick fix? A loose screw, a non-twist bottle, a package to open. Often, the tool you need is buried in a drawer or lost in the tool shed, turning a 20 second job into 5-10 minutes. Or worse, you find yourself in a tricky tool situation away from home. Even the most efficient bug out bag or EDC can be a pain to rummage through. There's only so much you can load your cargo kilt up with before you get the jingle-shakes or worse, slippage. One solution to this is to combine multiple tools in to one lightweight system.

One such system is the Tactica M100 Talon. It certainly qualifies a "the tool you keep with you". It's lightweight, compact, versatile and might just be your new best prepping lifestyle friend. Whether it's mountain biking, snowboarding or just around the house, the Tactica Talon has got your back. Right there in your back pocket.

The Talon is designed and made in Melbourne. My home town so it was especially exciting or me to back and support the Kickstarter for it. So, here's what it is. Primarily a Hex bit driver, with a climbing carbiner form factor. At its core a hardened stainless steel frame wrapped in a pocket tech friendly lightweight composite material that won't scratch your valuable iDevices as well as being 40% lighter than titanium.

Inside the body of the composite component is a space for two 1/4" hex drivers retained by a removable silicone rubber slot-plug (Phillips + flat head included). The narrow-eye of the tool is cut to act as a multi-wrench with two versions being Imperial - 3/16, 1/4, 5/16, 3/8, 7/16, 1/2, 9/16in or the Metric - 5, 6.25, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14mm versions. Both versions have a 1/4" Hex socket built into the body as a heavy duty driver. The "mouth" of the storage slot is the primary hex driver, and is fitted with magnetic tool retainer in its side to assist with that.

The big end of the "wide-eye" of the carabiner is also fitted with a bottle opener. A raised notch on the "back" of the tool acts as a snag free, TSA safe Package Opener. ( ha, so they say. )

Inside the lip of the wrench holes are rulers, on either side, metric on one and imperial on the other. They are only small so you wont be checking fish-size or the like but perfect for sizing hardware like drill bits and bolts up. Beside the bottle opener in the "eye" is a hole drilled for a key chain split-ring. keeping it out of the way for using the wrench.
I don't think I'd use this at all as this isn't a tool I would put on a keychain, but it certainly could work for that. One thing I did like about its design is the view-port cut through the side which shows you if a hex- bit is inside. not quite big enough to see what kind of head, but certainly a sanity check to see if its one or two tools stored with a quick back and forth rattle check.

The slot-plug has two friction lugs to hold it in place but is fully removable, which makes the whole assembly easier to put together and reduces the chance of it tearing after repeated use but the fat that it could become detached and lost and the stored hexbits along with it is a small worry. The slot-plug is tight fitting and I have no such worry of it coming loose by accident.

My biggest gripe was the out-of-the-box realization that it shared the "form factor" of a Carabiner, it was in fact NOT set up to clip open. Few moving parts means simpler manufacturing and a stronger overall design.it would be convenient if it would auto-clip to bags, packs and pants, but it is narrow enough that it can be clipped to an existing carabiner and hung ready for use. Measuring in at 80mm x 40mm x 12mm (3.154"x1.57"x0.47") and weighing in at a slight 45g (1.6 oz).

Given its composite encapsulation and lack of any sharp or rough edges, it makes an excellent pocket carry. Ready when you need it and not wearing holes or scratching screens.

The angle of the primary hex driver lends itself to the Talon siting nicely in the palm of the hand though the short hex-bits can leave the access to whatever is being driven to be quite tight. It's certainly not a tool for hard and everyday use, get full sized driver for that. This is a tool for small jobs and "I just need to fix this one thing" jobs. It will however, put together an Ikea Billy bookshelf up like no-ones business.

Go further and do more than single flat or a Phillips head will do but the great minds at Tactica came up with this; a12 Bit Toolpack giving you a great selection of hex bits to use. They have chosen a solid cross selection of bits that would cover most circumstances whether it's at home, work or on your next adventure. The Toolpack contains the following hex bits: Phillips #0, #1, #2 Flathead #3, #4, #5 Allen key sizes 3mm, 4mm, 5mm and most excitedly Torx T10, T15, T25. The full set weighs only 80g (2.8 oz) a small price to pay for the added utility of having the right head to hand.

The collection of bits are titanium coated (for longer wear protection) and ruggedly ground, for greater fortitude. Comparing the included bits with those of the MiniInch tool pen systems and they are stubbier and more ruggedly produced than the grey MiniInch bits but otherwise fully compatible, other than being unable to store two in the Talon's internal storage due to length.

There have been reports that the box opener tool blunts after limited use, but given it is a spire of plastic, I'm neither surprised nor concerned. My only other gripe with it is the lack of an integral clipping mechanism as previously mentioned. And the wide turning circle of the main hex driver which is a bit tricky in tight spots.