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Best knot teacher
Animated Knots, animatedknots.com All knots are knotty and hard to visualize the first time. This free website is the best knot teacher yet. It beats any of the beginner books I’ve seen, as well as all the other knot websites. The key here is the stepped animations synchronized with instructions, which you can run at any speed. Replay them till you get them right. Animated Knots is the next best thing to having old Pete next to ya. Once you get the basic ones down, try some of the harder ones. There are 75 cool knots animated in total. – KK
Next step beyond the basic knots
Morrow Guide to Knots, $18 Knots are such fundamental tools, and matching the right job with the right knot is so often essential, the important next step from the Klutz Book is the equally lucid and fairly comprehensive Morrow Guide to Knots. Last week my wife Ryan gave a glad cry at the clarity in the book when she wanted to see a couple ways to tie a clove hitch, and learned that it’s easy to put a slip in a clove hitch for quick release. – Stewart Brand
Knot substitute
Nite Ize Figure 9 Carabiner, $7 The Figure 9 carabiner lets you quickly fasten – and quickly loosen or adjust – a small-diameter rope to a fixed point without a knot deploying a clever combination of friction and angles. To those of us with knot-dyslexia, this is a real boon. The only requirement: your fixed attachment point must feature either a place to clip the carabiner (i.e. a metal loop in a pick-up truck bed or a thin, sturdy tree branch), or something around which your line can be looped. That could mean securing a Tarp tent to a tree, improvising a handle around a bundle of cables, or securing a travel clothesline between window-grate and curtain-rod.
All you need to do is pull the rope through in the right sequence and finish with the rope’s loose end tugged into the notched “V” section to keep the rope attached and taut. There are actually multiple sequences and ways to work the geometry. Three methods are diagrammed in the instructions that come with the carabiner.
Thus far, I have used the devices only with standard-issue parachute cord, but they’re sized to work with a range of small-diameter ropes. Though the tying system looks suspiciously wimpy, I’ve found it is as robust as promised. I ordered the Figure 9s to replace the mesh netting that came with the roof-rack basket on my car. Not only do these make a decent replacement (i.e. riding around with a kayak strapped to my car this summer), but tying one more knot under the car is something I’m glad to skip. Note: the device is anodized aluminum and weighs a bit more than I expected (slight downside to ultra-light hikers); still, “Not for climbing” is printed on the packaging, repeated in the instructions, and emblazoned on each carabiner. I think they mean it. – Timothy Lord
Quick, easy tie-down
Rope Ratchet, $20 (¼-inch, w/rope) roperatchet.com I wanted to rig a single line of rope across the ceiling of my garage for a storage solution, but was concerned about getting the line tight enough to keep from sagging. Rather than tie up a come-along winch – which requires a lot more hook up room and has a tendency to release quite hard – I saw the Rope Ratchet and decided to give it a try; I’m glad I did. The contraption is basically a rope that’s fed into and around a ratcheting wheel and bracket that holds the line and prevents backspin; you can release the line with a lever. It’s quite simple, but I haven’t seen anything quite like it. I’m using one to hold up a 70-lbs. tackle bag 6 feet off the floor of my garage and another holding about 80 lbs. of plastic lures on a rope stretched across hooks against the ceiling of my garage. I’m using the ¼-inch Rope Ratchet that’s rated for a working load of 150 lbs., but there are different sizes for different needs: the 1/8-inch will hold 75 lbs. up, while the ½-inch will hold 500 lbs. After a number of months, mine are holding strong with no sign of failure. – Doug Mainor
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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
The Nesco Food Dehydrator is a simple, affordable, and well-built tool for drying foods quickly and thoroughly. Though not an every-day-use item for most people, it becomes absolutely essential when it is needed.
I recently went on a weekend trip hunting for morels and returned with far more than I could eat. Luckily, this dehydrator made short work of the excess. The stackable trays easily fit 60 whole small morels and many of the larger ones which I’d cut in half. Altogether, I fit about three pounds of mushrooms in fivetrays.
Like the previously reviewed Excalibur Food Dehydrator, the Nesco model has a temperature control, fan, and heating unit. The Nesco’s heating unit is built into the top (cheaper models heat bottom-up) that sits atop the stack of trays and blows air through a central column allowing for better distribution and airflow throughout.
I used a temperature of 110F when drying morels, and left them to dry over night for about 8 hours. Since any moisture can lead to a ruined batch, I made sure to let them dry out for a little longer than necessary. They were perfectly dried the next morning, and ready for storage in an airtight container.
While I have mainly used this model for mushrooms, the large trays and variable temperature dial (95-160F) allows for a wide range of dried foods to be made. This particular model is also expandable to 12 trays if you need to dry a truly astonishing amount of food.
The Nesco, when compared with the Excalibur, has the benefit of being nearly $125 dollars cheaper combined with a smaller (though expandable) footprint, a relatively-quiet fan, and similarly adjustable temperature. — JC
I have experience with both the Excalibur and the more recently-reviewed Nesco, a smaller and less expensive dehydrator. The Excalibur is a superior product if you are a heavy user and tend to be drying large batches of produce at once. It has quite a bit more capacity due to the design (no center hole and square racks make a big difference). The horizontal airflow system does dry large batches more uniformly. Although you can add racks to the Nesco, it dries less efficiently, and once you add in the cost of extra racks you are approaching the same price as the Excalibur.
Having said that, the price on the Nesco has really dropped and the top-down heater/blower is a nice upgrade over the older bottom-fan models. Heck, you could almost get three of them for the same price as an Excalibur, although that would take up a lot of storage space and use more energy to power 3 units. — Oliver Hulland
I’ve been using this 9-tray dehydrator once or twice a week for the last three years to make dried fruit, veggies, jerky, dog treats, and dried bread crumbs. Other uses include re-crisping crackers, cookies, and chips, and thoroughly drying wet photographs and flowers.
Overall, this is truly the most flexible dehydrator I’ve found. The thermostat is adjustable (85-145F), so you can customize your dehydrating. The removable trays allow you to experiment with sizes, quantities and varieties of foods sorted by temperature range. If you group shorter-term items by tray, you just remove those trays first, then keep the remaining items/trays inside a bit longer.
Other units heat unevenly from the bottom, require you to manually rotate trays, and — in the case of cheaper units — don’t let you control the temperature. Along with a thermostat, the Excalibur has a fan that distributes heat more evenly; it also features a timer, so it will automatically turn off at a desired time whether you’re around or not.
All of the dehydrators I’ve used generate noise (I now use my Ronco and Home Essentials models exclusively for making dog treats). Since the Excalibur isn’t quiet, I keep it in our craft room. It’s very easy to clean. I enjoy not throwing out spoiled food. We always have healthy snack alternatives for us and our grandkids — and they enjoy contributing to the process as much as they eating the rewards. Ever since we moved to a property with grapevines, they’ve helped us make copious amounts of raisins.
Tips:
1) To make fruit yogurt leathers or work with items high in moisture content, you’ll need ParaFlexx non-stick drying sheets. Excalibur provides a pretty good guide on how to work with different foods.
2) If you buy direct from the manufacturer, it may be slightly more expensive, but I understand they’ll guarantee the unit for 10 years; otherwise, you can purchase a 10-year extended warranty. — Chris Lewis
I have experience with both the Excalibur and the more recently-reviewed Nesco, a smaller and less expensive dehydrator. The Excalibur is a superior product if you are a heavy user and tend to be drying large batches of produce at once. It has quite a bit more capacity due to the design (no center hole and square racks make a big difference). The horizontal airflow system does dry large batches more uniformly. Although you can add racks to the Nesco, it dries less efficiently, and once you add in the cost of extra racks you are approaching the same price as the Excalibur.
Having said that, the price on the Nesco has really dropped and the top-down heater/blower is a nice upgrade over the older bottom-fan models. Heck, you could almost get three of them for the same price as an Excalibur, although that would take up a lot of storage space and use more energy to power 3 units. — JC
Affordable, freeze-dried goods
Dehydrated Food In Bulk
Backpackers, canoeists, campers and scouts have two basic ways to stock their food supply: classic prepackaged freeze-dried meals or building your own menu. Commercial freeze-dried camping food is expensive, limits menus choices and is hit or miss in the flavor department. Most of us have learned to shop carefully at the grocery store and put together a fairly lightweight, nutritious menu for weekend trips. But add a couple of people and extend the trip for two or three days and grocery store options get a bit heavy. Supplementing with bulk freeze dried or dehydrated food expands the choices and cuts down the packed weight while developing a tasty, nutritious menu without blowing the budget. If you are planning an extended trip, I highly recommend assembling your menu with these two suppliers in mind. — Clarke Green
I’ve organized six days of food for 18 people in two crews for a canoe trip (18 meals, 324 servings), which would have been impossible — or just plain expensive — had I not ordered Honeyville’s goods. They offer a wide variety of vegetables, fruits and other foodstuffs in bulk (#10 tin cans, and cases even). While a single-serving package of freeze-dried strawberries (.06 oz.) from Mountain House is $3.00 ($50.00 an ounce!), Honeyville’s #10 can of freeze-dried strawberries (6 oz.) costs just $17.00 ($2.83 an ounce). They will ship an order of any size anywhere in the continental U.S. for under five dollars — just a little more than a gallon of gas!
Soups, vegetables, fruits and textured vegetable protein (i.e. soy-based meat substitute) in large AND smaller quantities so you customize freeze-dried meals for long, big, short and small trips. They also offer a Backpacking Kit, a pre-selected assortment of dried foods that will make a variety of dishes. Don’t miss these two very helpful PDF files: Using Dehydrated Products and a Serving Size Chart.
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
