the only true old school way to light fire is to wait for lighening strike
I prefer to use lava
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I prefer to use lava
Some great fodder for thought here.
I do lots of hiking-- some near home, some farther from roads. My day pack/survival pack contains a Mora Bushcraft Triflex, a 15-inch Sven Saw (a really great tool for quickly converting branches into firewood or shelter components, and an small Estwing ax (great for splitting wood to get a dry surface for fires. Also in the pack at the moment is a Cold Steel Pendleton Mini-Hunter, as a back-up for the Mora. I'm not a guy who has to use a knife for everything. I can break lots of smaller wood with my hands and feet. However, it's nice to know that should I spend an unplanned (or, better yet, impulsively planned) night or two in the woods, I'll have some help. Also in the pack is a Swedish fire steel, strike-anywhere matches, a lighter, and (please forgive me for all of this) dryer lint.
If I need shelter, I'll figure it out.
Yes, we humans get hooked on having all of the best tools to weigh us down, and maybe don't use our brains enough.
If for some reason, I want to cut weight, I'll replace the ax with my ESEE-4, but the saw will always be there, as well as at least two knives. Funny thing, or not, but the tool I most often use is not a knife (though I'd never be without one or two), but a small LED flashlight. That (with spare batteries) is always with me.
Cheers to all of you. Enjoy the outdoors, protect it, and keep voting for those whose policies protect our health and our natural heritage.
I do lots of hiking-- some near home, some farther from roads. My day pack/survival pack contains a Mora Bushcraft Triflex, a 15-inch Sven Saw (a really great tool for quickly converting branches into firewood or shelter components, and an small Estwing ax (great for splitting wood to get a dry surface for fires. Also in the pack at the moment is a Cold Steel Pendleton Mini-Hunter, as a back-up for the Mora. I'm not a guy who has to use a knife for everything. I can break lots of smaller wood with my hands and feet. However, it's nice to know that should I spend an unplanned (or, better yet, impulsively planned) night or two in the woods, I'll have some help. Also in the pack is a Swedish fire steel, strike-anywhere matches, a lighter, and (please forgive me for all of this) dryer lint.
If I need shelter, I'll figure it out.
Yes, we humans get hooked on having all of the best tools to weigh us down, and maybe don't use our brains enough.
If for some reason, I want to cut weight, I'll replace the ax with my ESEE-4, but the saw will always be there, as well as at least two knives. Funny thing, or not, but the tool I most often use is not a knife (though I'd never be without one or two), but a small LED flashlight. That (with spare batteries) is always with me.
Cheers to all of you. Enjoy the outdoors, protect it, and keep voting for those whose policies protect our health and our natural heritage.
Hi. For me small is beautiful. I rarely need more blade than my SAK climber that Ive carried and used fro the past twenty years. As for fire and steel, why bother when you can use a bic! If its wet there is always lighter fuel. If its a survival situation you need fire fast, your life depends on it. No time to mess about if you need heat.
-A "Cook" is someone who gets paid poorly to cook what you want to eat and he has to be very good at that.
-A "Chef" is someone who gets paid very well to cook (or direct others to cook) what he wanys you to eat and he doesn't neccessarily have to be any good at it, just able to convince you he knows better than you.
I carry a pocketknife of some type on every trip, but mainly because I carry a pockeyknife everywhere anyway. I have since I was about 7 or 8 years old. I usually vary my other knives according to what I'll doing. If freshwater fishing, I have a 6" fillet knife (but it's usually in my tackle box rather than being worn) If saltwater fishing, it's a larger 9" filleting knife. For a general purpose trip into the wilds, I'll be wearing a larger folder such as a Buck 110 or a 2 blade Case trapper with 3 & 1/2 inch blades. For longer trips or if hunting I'll have a medium (about 5" 0r 6" blade) fixed blade knife and likely a machete or hatchet.
As for "survival" knives, I think the current trend is smaller rather than larger; extremely small to be precise. Think of blades (usually without handle scales attached) that will fit into a survival kit which in turn will fit into a pocket.
As for "survival" knives, I think the current trend is smaller rather than larger; extremely small to be precise. Think of blades (usually without handle scales attached) that will fit into a survival kit which in turn will fit into a pocket.
Don't get me started on firesteels.
I can't for the life of me understand why they have become so synonymous with bushcraft at the expense of the actual methods our ancestors practiced (the materials for which are, more often than not, readily available).
Even worse, the firesteel has become such a fully integrated item of kit it is now 'standard issue' to have a knife sheath made with a loop for one.
Firesteel sparks are hotter and there are far more of them than a flint and steel with charcloth, never mind the bow and hand drill. For such a fundamental skill as firelighting I think firesteels should be banned from all bushcraft courses until AFTER bow and hand drill, or (even easier) the fire plough, have been taught.
Thomas J. Elpel's "Three Days at the River - with nothing but our bare hands" should be standard fodder for anyone claiming any interest at all in bushcraft. It is as humbling as it is eye-opening.
No, I don't expect folks to go hardcore with little or no practice or experience, but I don't realistically buy into the kit-driven ethic of bushcraft either, which places itself at the opposite pole.
Firesteels - handy to have, and about as bushcrafty as an iPhone
YES! 100% of what you said!
Because for lots Bushcraft isnt not about reenactment, but about making use of the most practicle tools for the job, while still maintaining the knowledge and skills of the history, yes a lighter will work but not when its empty or broken, matches the same a ferro rod will work even if snapped, I have used feather sticks and a fire plough in South America, but the best method by far was using a lighter and a thick strip of rubber both stored in a plastic ziplock, I really enjoy using a flint and steel or pyrites but I would not take it when i go for a trundle, just like I take a gas stove to cook on some times, Fair enough don't buy into the kit thing but get lost in the romance either
About the kit thing, and the magpie acquisition of sharps and so on - I count myself very guilty on that one, but only for the last year or so.
For twenty years I used the same kit - rubber poncho, '58 pattern sleeping bag, army mat, a heavy steel mug that was, I guess, the precursor to the crusader, and the inevitable hexi, or if I wasn't going to be out too long, a little gas coleman. No gore-tex, because it hadn't been invented (or issued) when I started out - those horrible nylon waterproofs which slicked up with sweat on the inside - brrr!
The only sharp I took was a SAK, and I was fine. It wasn't until I became aware of Ray Mears to be honest, and then, fatally, this very site, that I began to consciously lust after various bits of kit. So out goes the old rubber poncho (which weighed a ton, admittedly), and in came a DD tarp. Our went the issue mat, in came a thermarest. The steel mug was retired, replaced by a zebra billy and hobo stove for which I carry meths, or use as nature intended.
Perhaps most dramatically, the SAK was cast aside and a succession of sharps took its place. First a Mora, of course. Then I had the opportunity to buy a Shing Bushcrafter from a member here, and jumped at it. I had now succumbed to full-blown kit-monster syndrome. The old Berghaus Roc went into the attic (couldn't bear to sell it - it's been all over the world with me for decades). In came a Karrimor sabre 45. I acquired a Lance Ockenden necker through a chance trade - again, from a member here. And finally, I bought an axe - not a Granfors, just a cheap (but very effective) Bahco - oh and a Laplander saw, too.
I rarely get to the woods, though I camp out on average one night a week. I live by the sea, and so camp out on a deserted headland a couple of miles from home. There are no trees, so if i want to whittle I have to bring my own wood. Most of the time therefore, the only sharps I carry are a No8 Opinel, for food prep, and the Ockenden necker, because it's small, and just feels so great to use.
About once every three months, I get to camp out in real, deciduous woodland, and when that happens the Shing and the axe are what get used most. I like to fiddle about making camp furniture, and the axe is great for getting things started, while the Shing is the best all around blade I possess, as well as being a thing of sheer beauty - it brightens me up just to look at it.
So I don't regret the kit-monstering. The stuff I've gathered together lately is quality, and will do me a long time - it also, to put it bluntly, does the job far better than the old gear i'd been shlepping around for so many years.
For twenty years I used the same kit - rubber poncho, '58 pattern sleeping bag, army mat, a heavy steel mug that was, I guess, the precursor to the crusader, and the inevitable hexi, or if I wasn't going to be out too long, a little gas coleman. No gore-tex, because it hadn't been invented (or issued) when I started out - those horrible nylon waterproofs which slicked up with sweat on the inside - brrr!
The only sharp I took was a SAK, and I was fine. It wasn't until I became aware of Ray Mears to be honest, and then, fatally, this very site, that I began to consciously lust after various bits of kit. So out goes the old rubber poncho (which weighed a ton, admittedly), and in came a DD tarp. Our went the issue mat, in came a thermarest. The steel mug was retired, replaced by a zebra billy and hobo stove for which I carry meths, or use as nature intended.
Perhaps most dramatically, the SAK was cast aside and a succession of sharps took its place. First a Mora, of course. Then I had the opportunity to buy a Shing Bushcrafter from a member here, and jumped at it. I had now succumbed to full-blown kit-monster syndrome. The old Berghaus Roc went into the attic (couldn't bear to sell it - it's been all over the world with me for decades). In came a Karrimor sabre 45. I acquired a Lance Ockenden necker through a chance trade - again, from a member here. And finally, I bought an axe - not a Granfors, just a cheap (but very effective) Bahco - oh and a Laplander saw, too.
I rarely get to the woods, though I camp out on average one night a week. I live by the sea, and so camp out on a deserted headland a couple of miles from home. There are no trees, so if i want to whittle I have to bring my own wood. Most of the time therefore, the only sharps I carry are a No8 Opinel, for food prep, and the Ockenden necker, because it's small, and just feels so great to use.
About once every three months, I get to camp out in real, deciduous woodland, and when that happens the Shing and the axe are what get used most. I like to fiddle about making camp furniture, and the axe is great for getting things started, while the Shing is the best all around blade I possess, as well as being a thing of sheer beauty - it brightens me up just to look at it.
So I don't regret the kit-monstering. The stuff I've gathered together lately is quality, and will do me a long time - it also, to put it bluntly, does the job far better than the old gear i'd been shlepping around for so many years.
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I don't own what I would consider a survival knife, I have a set of three knives I use for chopping, cutting and food prep.
To me a survival knife should be able to help to defend me from an attack, to chisel through breeze block, to chop, cut and slice through anything I throw at it and to be almost impossible to destroy.
In short, to me, one set of skills (bushcraft) is not an evolution of another set (survival) but is more the difference between a combat sport and a martial art. One is to just get the job done without limits in any environment, the other is to perform in a specific arena. Of course there is overlap but that's a whole other thread.
I do keep toying with getting a BK2 and having a play with something I would consider a good survival knife starting point. My knives could be pushed into a survival situation and would probably be ok but while well made, they use natural materials and the steel is unforgiving of damage.
To me a survival knife should be able to help to defend me from an attack, to chisel through breeze block, to chop, cut and slice through anything I throw at it and to be almost impossible to destroy.
In short, to me, one set of skills (bushcraft) is not an evolution of another set (survival) but is more the difference between a combat sport and a martial art. One is to just get the job done without limits in any environment, the other is to perform in a specific arena. Of course there is overlap but that's a whole other thread.
I do keep toying with getting a BK2 and having a play with something I would consider a good survival knife starting point. My knives could be pushed into a survival situation and would probably be ok but while well made, they use natural materials and the steel is unforgiving of damage.
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