We have been making rain gear in British Columbia since 1988. Saw pants, chaps, rain shells, all of it cut and sewn by our own crew for people who work outside in weather that does not negotiate.
This journal has not reflected that.
For a couple of years it filled up with articles that were not really ours: generic pieces about work gear, written to be found by search engines rather than read by anyone. Some of it recommended other companies' products. Some of it made claims about our own gear that we would not make out loud. None of it sounded like the shop floor.
So we cleared it out. What is left, and what comes next, is written by us.
What this will be
In Conversation. Interviews with the people who build and use gear that lasts. The first is with Bill Challenger, who has spent 51 years in the chainsaw business and still makes guide bars to his own steel recipe in Langley, BC.
Field guides. How cut protection actually works. What you are paying for when a pant costs more. Which pant for which job. The things we explain on the phone five times a week, written down properly.
Notes from the shop. What we are building, what we changed and why, and the occasional thing we got wrong.
Who it is for
Fallers, arborists, slashing crews, utility guys, anyone whose office is a hillside in the rain. If you have run a saw all day you already know more about this than most gear writers. We will not explain your own job to you.
What we will not do
We will not make claims we cannot back up. We will not tell you a pant is indestructible. If a cheaper option is the right answer for the way you work, we will say so, even when it is not our most expensive one.
That is it.
Less of it, more of it true.
If there is something you want explained, or someone in the trade you think we should sit down with, hit reply on any of our emails or call the shop at 1-888-840-2031. A real person answers.
Brian Payer
Rain Gear Pro