Bushcraft Instructionals: Fire from a Knife and Firesteel.

Description

Watch in 1080.

The video actually ends at 7:45, for some reason I screwed up the editing, and it replays part of the video after that...

In the past, I have stayed away from doing instructional videos, so this is something new I am trying.

In this video I demonstrate all the steps needed to make a fire using only a belt knife and a firesteel.

Tags: Bushcraft,fire,firesteel

Video Transcription

how much gear do you carry when you go to the woods some of us just bring a knife and a firesteel on a day hike I don't wonder how much of us know how to get a fire going with just a knife or firesteel sure it sounds easy I've seen me do it a thousand times but there's little things like wood prep wood selection knowing how to take down a tree with just a knife and knowing how to use your fire steel correctly in this video I'm going to show a little bit about that the first thing we're going to talk about is wood selection a very important part of it see this Deadwood behind me there's lots of small twigs lots of dry stuff it's been down there for a long time the problem with that is it's laying like this even though it's up off the ground it's lain flat and water seeping in there it's still going to be dry after you get a fire going you can use that as firewood all you want but to get a fire going preferably you're looking for dead standing and we're gonna go show you one right now I'm still walking around looking for that perfect piece of wood but in the meantime I'm gonna grab this bark to make it as a platform you've got to grab resources while you can so even though this isn't the step that I'm on right now I'm going to grab this because I'm here I just hold on to it that is a funky loss Wow I should do it we found our piece of wood this second one here there are a few reasons why I picked this piece first off it's dead standing like we wanted it's straight grained it's a maple goes straight up I know it's dead because the bark is peeling if that wasn't happening and it the leaves aren't on it yet like it is now you could take your knife just score it a bit and you'll find out if it's dead or not real quick and on a live tree you'll just see a little tiny bit of green that's not gonna hurt to trade all I didn't go past the cambium layer the diameter of the tree is very important as well you notice this is really small takes up only a little bit of my knife that's fine this isn't going to be our fuel this is going to be our kindling and some of our fuel we don't have to have our whole fire with just this one piece but this is a nice useable sizable piece to work with a knife if you could pull your tree down without having to cut it with a knife even better but this one's on there solid so we're gonna shop or down with the knife so because of the location of this tree it's a little bit different I can go all around it otherwise but I can't because it's bigger one we're just going to go at it from this hit this angle going on 45 ago there you can see I got about halfway through it just with that one angle if that tree behind it wasn't there then you go around the circumference of the tree and be a lot easier and more useful but I'm just going to push it over like this you guys get the drift drove the piece away back to my camp now it's time to break it up obviously the most easy thing to do would just be to break it so let's do it one already split just by doing that if you get to a part on the stick on the log that you can't break any more with your hands or for some reason you want to be more clean-cut than just jagged you just do the same thing I'd go on an angle on a 45 flip it around if you want go at it again from a different from a different spot and by then it'll be easy to break I've only got little four little small pieces to work with here but with this amount we should be able to get the fire going and the rest of the tree we took down will be the few laughter we're just going to worry about this part first so this is a piece that split while I was breaking it you just want to make a lot of little so all all of this wood I'm going to want to get to about pencil that pencil thickness at the most maybe thumb thickness so I'm already able to get long thin strips out of it which is good maple is good wood for split wood fire this is my preferred way to split wood when the spin drive it into a log like that with the tip for a couple of these bigger pieces will have the baton nice and easy though no problem okay that'll be all about all I'll show of that you can see there I split all that would took maybe five minutes and I got a ton of little little stuffs and outs on to the shavings so shavings are very important you can see that I have my hat on the ground there to collect the shavings in you want your shavings to be airy lots of curls and thin those are gonna be the best for you even if you only make a few of those and you make your other ones bigger like that the smaller ones will catch the fire still and the bigger ones will keep it going it's better to have good shavings oh all the way through all done doing the curls you're looking for about a hat full of shavings we're all set up for our fire with our shavings our knife are smaller kindling and our bigger kindling I'd call this pencil lead and I call that pencil and that's all we have for now but normally you would have then your fuel ready to go on top as well so you want to make sure I put down that bark and then have a piece of wood on top because the bark is kind of flimsy piece of wants to be a stable piece this is your brace you need your brace to support your sticks and you put it on but the piece here is important because when you're pushing down on your fire steel you need something sturdy so we're going to put our fire steel right into the shavings strike down hard okay fire you take the rest you shavings put them on top of the fire and right away

grab your secure kindling and lay it all on it once across the brace to keep it up off the flames a little bit to give it air and you don't even really need to wait any longer you cross your other pieces your bigger pieces across the other way on top of the kindling that's it guys hope you learned something from this I know it's been gone through a few times this is a more in-depth look at it so please feel free if you have any questions let me know Thanks

I've only got little four little small pieces to work with here but with this amount we should be able to get the fire going and the rest of the tree we took down will be the fuel laughter we're just going to worry about this part first so this is a piece that split while I was breaking it you just want to make a lot of little so all all of this wood I'm going to want to get to about pencil pen pencil thickness at the most maybe film thickness so I'm already able to get long thin strips out of it which is good

maple is good wood for split wood fire this is my preferred way to split wood when the spin drive it into a log like that with the tip for a couple of these bigger pieces will have the baton nice and easy though no problem okay that'll be all about all I'll show of that you can see there I split all that would took maybe five minutes and I got a ton of little little stuffs and outside of the shavings so shavings are very important you can see that I have my hat on the ground there to collect the shavings in you want your shavings to be airy lots of curls and thin those are going me the best for you even if you only make a few of those and you make your other ones bigger like that the smaller ones will catch the fire still and the bigger ones will keep it going it's better to have good shavings oh all the way through all done doing the curls you're looking for about a hat full of shavings we're all set up for our fire with our shavings our knife are smaller kindling and our bigger kindling I'd call this pencil led and I call that pencil and that's all we have for now but normally you would have then your fuel ready to go on top as well so you want to make sure I put down that bark and then have a piece of wood on top because the bark is kind of flimsy piece of wants to be a stable piece this is your brace you need your brace to support your sticks and you put it on but the piece here is important because when you're pushing down on your fire steel you need something sturdy so we're going to put our fire steel right into the shavings strike down hard okay fire you take the rest your shins put them on top of the fire and right away

grab your secure kindling and lay it all on at once across the brace to keep it up off the flames a little bit to give it air and you don't even really need to wait any longer you cross your other pieces your bigger pieces across the other way on top the kindling that's it guys hope you learned something from this I know it's been gone through a few times this is a more in-depth look at it so please feel free if you have any questions let me know Thanks