Scott says this is his Sunday-go-to-church loadout. Because the need for gear doesn’t stop on the day of rest. Check out what he’s chosen at Everyday Carry . . .
Scott says this is his Sunday-go-to-church loadout. Because the need for gear doesn’t stop on the day of rest. Check out what he’s chosen at Everyday Carry . . .
That’s a REALLY nice watch. Not too pricy, but dead nuts reliable and virtually indestructible. I’m wearing mine on a daily basis now.
* or – how many seconds a month?
I started wearing it a month ago, haven’t seen it drift from my phone or computers.
Everything Citizen has in their Eco-Drive line is solid as fuck. My Pro-Master dive watch from this line is 11 years old and still runs flawlessly (though I did send it in for service when it got some dirt in the pressure (depth) sensor). My other Eco-Drive has been running perfectly for 16 years.
The number one thing that will affect any quartz-crystal-oscillator (quartz movement) based watch is a consistent or inconsistent temperature. Really, if it’s properly made the same thing is true of a mechanical watch. Regardless of what “watch nuts” might claim, the resonance of quartz is determined to some degree by the temperature at which the crystal is kept. If that temperature changes the frequency of the oscillation will change slightly. The idea that the oscillation of quartz at a specific voltage is “fixed” is a myth [insert long thermodynamics class here]. Don’t take my word for it, ask a crystallographer about this, they’ll tell you I’m right.
If you wear the watch consistently it will keep good time if it’s a quality rig. If you take it on and off a lot during the day and leave it in a cool environment when doing so it will keep time less reliably. Ditto for a really hot environment. In a modern watch this shouldn’t translate to more than a few seconds per month unless it’s a cheap piece of junk.
Due to this, most of what you hear about “watch drift” is unreliable at best because the people doing such things either 1) keep the watch at the same temperature the whole time to measure the reliability of the build or 2) don’t take varying temperature into account, which for purposes of info for the general public, is pointless anyway because no two people treat their watch exactly the same way.
Yeah, I’m fully aware there are ways to TC (Temperature Compensate) X-tal oscillators. Some sort of *feedback* signal of some sort. My memory is fuzzy on whether that came about before or after phase-locked loops became commonplace.(PLLs were all about feedback tweaking things).
If they didn’t, modern radios pretty much wouldn’t work…
It’s not about feedback or electronics it’s simply about the fact that what we call “temperature” is the amount of energy in an object.
If temperature reaches absolute zero all movement, even on the atomic level, stops. That is, in a roundabout way, why absolute zero isn’t reachable but that’s another topic. As temperature increases movement increases.
If you were to chill a quartz oscillator down to near absolute zero the watch would record time very, very slowly compared to reality. If you heat it red hot it will run quite fast compared to reality. There is nothing that any electronics can do about this. It’s a physical phenomenon that cannot be stopped or altered. The quartz will oscillate faster when hot and more slowly when cool. If you cool the watch, even by 30F it will lose time to some degree. If you heat it by 30F it will gain time to some degree. That’s just the breaks of the physical universe we live in. If you keep the watch at a consistent temperature the “drift” will be minimal and predictable provided it’s a quality quartz oscillator at the heart of the device.
For ~$100 this watch will be a good buy if you don’t already have a watch that fills it’s niche. Not having to worry about replacing batteries for 16+ years (so far) is damn nice.
If that SOG doesn’t have “Seki Japan” stamped on the blade then the stainless is cheap Chi-Com crap.
I basically dropped SOG from my knife and tool list when they moved most of their manufacturing out of the US and into China. The blade quality went to shit. So did the quality of a lot of their multi-tools. I bought one of them after they moved production to China and the one of the arms of the pliers broke when I was turning a nut.
Their old stuff was rock solid and any of the stuff made in Japan is top notch but if does’t SAY it was made in Japan it’s made in China (or assembled in the US from Chinese components) and questionable at best.
This may be an elitist thing to say, but I will only buy, carry, and use: Benchmade, Spyderco, or Cold Steel. In that order. Cold steel makes some beefy knives for trashing on, Spydys are light weight and budget friendly, Benchmade is as top tier as I’m willing to go. $400 dollars for a Chris Reeve or something like that, that I might (more than likely will) lose, is ridiculous in my eyes.
Cheap knives are just a waste of time, and I believe SOG is a brand that falls into that category. I’ve got a couple Kershaw Shuffles, just because I think they look cool, but I won’t put much stock in them for anything other than that.
Not to nerd out about blades but I agree with your selections. CRKT has never let me down either. Dark Ops seems decent. I have one of their Vendetta knives. I have a few older SOGs too. Ka-Bar has always been good to me too. As for Kershaw, I’ve felt for a long time that they make their blades too thin for the materials they use. It’s way too easy to break the tip off of them.
The older SOGs were most definitely NOT cheap crap. As I said, the ones that still have “Seki-Japan” stamped on the blade are top-freaking-notch. I have one of their SEAL Pup knives in my car and it’s great fucking knife. It’s pre-Chi-com but that same knife is still made in Japan and is still made very, very well.
The problem with SOG is that they moved most of their knife manufacturing to China on the DL and didn’t do anything to advertise this. So people familiar with SOG pre-move think they’re buying a top end knife when they’re not. Currently SOG makes knives in main-land China (crap), Japan (awesome), Taiwan (so-so but generally sliding towards standard Chi-Com quality) and the USA (from imported Chinese parts except on select models so generally crap).
The real issue here is that the Chinese are terrible at metallurgy. Steel, stainless, aluminum it doesn’t matter. They SUCK at manufacturing this stuff and, with the exception of the knives made in Japan, this is the base product for the blades SOG makes.
The other issue is that you have to be careful here because SOG makes the “same” knives in different places but you can generally tell where it’s from based on the price. For example: that same SEAL Pup knife is made in both Japan and Taiwan. The ones you see at Wally World/Amazon for ~ $35 are the Taiwanese knife and they suck. The ones made in Japan however are ~ $130 and well worth the price.
As always, caveat emptor! Check the blade for that stamp before you buy.
“The real issue here is that the Chinese are terrible at metallurgy.”
The Chinese are behind in metallurgy, they *desperately* want to develop a native military turbine engine and not need to buy Russian versions.
Don’t expect it to stay that way though, they will throw engineering resources at it, and I suspect they are focusing on their usual way, industrial espionage to steal it…
I must disagree. Knives are inherently consumable and disposable items. I carry at least two at all times and if one breaks, it’s not the end of the world because I refuse to spend more than $50 on a product I know I will break eventually. I keep a drawer full of decent Gerber $20 locking folders (ok, maybe 3-4) for just this reason. The entire pack set me back $100 and I don’t get concerned if I lose or break one.
I keep spares stashed in my range bag, my battle belt, and my plate carrier. In full battle rattle, I generally have 4-5 knives on me at any given time. (2-3 folders, my KaBar, and my MUT)
Gerber makes decent knives I’ve got at least one… somewhere around here. I think the point here is not that knives wear out or break but rather that cheaply made knives do so with greater regularity.
I keep some beater knives around the way that you do and I abuse them not caring if they break. OTOH, if I’m gonna drop $100+ on a knife I want something that’s going to last for years no matter what I do to it. Getting beat up doesn’t bother me but having a blade snap in half after a month of use because the steel/stainless has crystalline inclusions in it that create fractures in the metal is unacceptable. That’s what happened with my multi-tool. The arm of the pliers was simply made of shitty metal that had a fracture in it not visible without some sort of inspection method like X-ray, liquid penetrant (maybe) or magnetic particle inspection. That’s a poorly produced product.
A truly well made blade that’s used properly and taken care of should last for decades if not multiple lifetimes. Keep in mind that back in the day the greatest heirloom a father could pass on to a son was a quality knife. If they could make knives to last lifetimes 500 years ago, we can do it today.
That is a awful light load out considering churches being a primary target for terrorist, physcopaths etc. When going to church I always have my glock 19, 3 more spare 17 rnd mags and a good spyderco knife. Can’t be too prepared.
Oh look, a plausible EDC dump!
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