Packing new gears for this weekend.

This weekend is Bushcraft Finland’s Spring meet up and this time 2 nights 3 days. So I have started the packing and new gears are added this time.
One is a gas mask bag. I have seen weekend woodsman using it with back packing and looked convenient and comfortable, so I thought I will try it as well to see if suite me. If this works, the gives me the solution to when I need to pack little more than my summer kit.

2nd item I got this time is a Savotta Military sleeping bag.
Yes, I finally bought sleeping bag good for extreme cold. I can manage up to about -15 degrees Celsius with previous layered summer sleeping bags, but packing comes little problematic if I cannot use sledge to haul the gears. Also takes some effort to set up and crawl myself in to the bag. So, decided to get one proper sleeping bag.

3rd item is an axe, the one new Billnäs axe. As I have got, the only defect was the hang of axe. The helve has shrank over the time that the head was rattling. I could have just replaced the helve completely, but it is a original helve and is in good condition otherwise. So I wanted to try to save it.

I have managed to remove all the parts without damaging anything. It actually is very interesting to see this, coz usually this part is destroyed in the process of removing old helve.

How the woods are compressed and where are the stressed part and so on..

One interesting thing about this axe is that, how cross wedges are fitted.

Usually the cross wedges are both wood or one is metal. And the metal one is usually fitted against the growth ring of helve. But this one is other way around.

As you can see, the larger slit was the place metal wedge was in. this is usually the place wooden wedge goes. I am assuming that this was the factory fitted.. So hummm…. Was this the normal way to hang Finnish Axe head??? Any reason for this??

However, I have replaced the wooden wedge and put all back together. And now, this axe is ready for work! Also I have made new sheath for it, because I did not like the look of one came with.

With all these new gears, naturally, I needed to figure out how to pack all…

Man… it was as much difficult as final level of Tetris. Took me about 2 hours to come up with some kind of solution. Let’s see, if this works… if not, then I got good excuse to buy a Frame Pack :)