FEATHERS WITHOUT THE STICK! FIRECRAFT!

Description

This is a complete how to with facts, tips and the reality of this method of starting a fire.

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Tags: feathersticks,firecraft,starting a fire,bushcraft,survival,wilderness,fire,ferrocium rod,firesteel,instructions,how to,bush knife woodlore clone,maxpedition,outdoors,forest,splitting,batoning,woods,woodland,hardwood,Firelighting,Wood,Fun,You,bushcraft skills

Video Transcription

today we'll be talking about feather stakes stay with me all right so let's talk a little bit about feather sticks now this video is will be probably more for you guys that are starting up by the way good for you if you are it's very really encouraging this bushcraft community is really growing and you know it's just a great encouragement so it's calling more specifically for you guys you older experienced friends out there may not have to see this but anyway now when we talk about feather sticks it's probably the most well known way of starting a fire when it's raining or more I should say not raining but when it's been raining and everything is just so wet you can't find any tinder anywhere best way is the feather sticks now I want a pin point because you know we see a lot of videos and people are trying to make perfect feather sticks which is not the case I'll explain a few things but what I want to tell you guys is especially you don't need to leave the feather on the stick I think that's one of the major problems with people having a hard time doing this because they're to concentrate on wanting to leave it on the stick and they're not concentrated enough on making the feather so I'll show you a simple way of doing it that you don't have to leave it on the stick and it's still very effective so the first thing you want to do we're going to pretend this is a scenario it's been raining for two three days everything is wet now what you want to do is find a dry piece a standing piece you don't want to get anything on the ground because you're going to have a hard time and most of the time it doesn't work having a dry piece standing you're pretty sure that at least more than oh I'd say a good inch in the middle of a piece this size will be completely bone dry that's what you want to get for your main ignition one way of you know spotting if you're not used to it a piece that's dry is something like this now I got this there I saw this off just to save some time that for this film but one way is seeing the bark that is naturally off it's it's completely off so you know that your piece is dry now you're going to need to make some tests sometimes it could be rotten or punky but most of the time is gonna be dry and this is the piece you want to get absolutely so first thing we have to do is to get the middle part which is the driest so give me a second I'll change the angle of the camera and we'll be doing just that right so we've found our dry piece one thing I want to add you know if it's still drizzling or something like that it's important to take cover if you have a tarp you know you want to protect what you will be doing or natural shelter that you know you know that rain won't be dripping on you at all times and also if it's a dry day and you still want to use this method there's no use in splitting it you can absolutely you know you can use the outside of it to do exactly what I'm about to show you so the first thing you want to do is split this guy in for as much as possible for even parts if you can because remember we want to get the middle part the driest part for a mating mission which is going to be very important so you can use your knife for this and by the way I baton or I will baton just in this case otherwise we're splitting any kind of wood excuse me I have my axe so you want a solid ground okay it'll be a lot easier when you do a hit take another piece and you just make sure you split you know sometimes it won't follow but so now you want to split for it didn't split quite in the middle but that's okay all right so now we've got our four pieces which is the other step done let me change that angle of the camera so our pieces are split now it's time to make the feathers now remember this was split in four so you want to go and make your first feathers from the middle point so that's what we're gonna do and as you do this it's gonna be in three stages actually that we're gonna do this you know to have an effective fire going so what you want to do is of course have a stable ground and you know a lot of people will say you start in the middle of the stick this way and that's fine turn around that's also fine but I rather start higher right so my I'll have bigger curls when I get down here so this this takes practice alright so don't get discouraged and of course you've got a sharp point which helps you with your first feather sticks so let's do a few here now sometimes as you go down the wood is not even as you can see here you know it stops here it goes down so you'll have you'll have some wood that will leave from all kinds of places that's okay so let me do this first we're just making it even there as much as I can first sometimes when it's harder you got to get rid of the crappy wood okay that's kind of even you want to keep these pieces here still a little bit to do but anyway now the main thing you want to keep these curls the first feather sticks that you want to do our feathers I mean now forget about trying to keep it on the stick just concentrate on the feathers that's what's most important because the first part that we want to take off are the most important ones because they're the ones that we're gonna have to start with our fire steel because that's what I mean if you got matches it doesn't really matter what I'm showing you right now but what's important I'll show you now the curls are really important okay because once you put it in a pile it's got all kinds of oxygen going through and it's you know it makes the pile stay together so that's fine but as you do the curls you want them to be as soon as you can as you possibly can that's what's important because your fire steel or that the spark is going if wind does catch it's going to catch either on on the side or on the tip here around the tip of your little feather right so it's important for these pieces to be thin for your main ignition so you just keep on you know taking your time just taking a big piece off here make it even okay so what's important is that you just make thin thin slices and again it doesn't really matter if you got the super super duper curl to it it's really not important and what was I mean what's not important is that it's staying on the stick so I'm just taking my time and making sure that I'm staying in the middle of the stick when this starts going down I'm gonna have to start changing sticks you know to get at least the middle part so my concentration right now is on thin slices it doesn't matter if it's wide really okay doesn't matter if it's wide as long as it's thin that's what counts this part anyway even look this part of course I'm making a small-scale out of this so as you can see I've taken enough off of this one so after that you want to concentrate on another one make sure you put your pile somewhere safe now this is a small demonstration I'm not going to make a huge pile out of it and you do the same thing with this one now you see here I've got the problem of a knot knots or a problem so just turn around and get as much as you can from the middle

shave that down a bit so I'll just keep on doing the work now did you notice my curls are not super nice and long and perfect they're just normal I just concentrated on having thin slices and that's what's important so you keep on doing that until you're satisfied and once that's done I'll show you the second step that you're going to need to do so we've got our first little pile from the middle of the piece and what's important is to you know have thin curls and doesn't need to stay on the stick

now just before I continue something important of course I forgot to mention but of course when you're in situation where you you know you can't really choose your wood now maybe for some of you this looked kind of difficult but the type of wood is very important now right now I have a piece of hard wood because that's what I had in hand it's not the easiest because it's hard wood but if you have soft wood you'll see it goes just like in butter and you have lot lots of nice control so you know where you guys start and I don't want you to be scared about this it's easier with soft wood for sure but you know you choose what you got what's that what's available so we got our first one here which was the most important where we concentrate on thin slices now our piece of wood is down now you want to get the other you know continued here and this time it doesn't really matter you can you can make bigger ones you're gonna fly all over the place that's okay we want to make bigger fatter slices like this alright this will be to continue fuel your your tinder because this part here will act as a tinder this part here you're doing will act let's say it's kindling so we're gonna make another pile let's put her here continue making another pile I want to use again the continue using the middle part is not here okay now we're at the thinner part where you can stop because we'll be using this as our fuel so you keep on using your piece of wood to create your three different piles I'm not gonna show everything because it's going to be long and boring for you guys so I'm just gonna make a quick pile of kindling the bigger stuff and then we'll just split this one but if you are at the third part of this feather stick type deal video we got our tinder kindling this is from the same stick here and now we want our fuel so all they need to do is just to split these you can use your you know a baton or whichever way you want but because this is small I'll just use my hand here just bring some small pieces you don't have to be perfect there's another way when they get thin enough or he just split them take your time there's no rush to do this let yourself some nice little pieces here careful not to put your knife in the sand

on it so that's what you do you make yourself another little file with thin sticks you know something about this size size of a pencil so that'll be our third pile so we're all prepped up and that was from just one little piece of stick we've got our three main parts that are absolutely essential you got the little kindling or tinder see how nice and thin and you got the bigger ones for your kindling and the fuel all from that same piece now something else I was wanting to point out especially for you guys starting up this is not a beauty contest what I mean by that is that your curls will not all be perfect things will not always go right actually it never does and even when you do want to split the wood it's not always gonna split like you want there's knots to face I mean your piece of wood is not perfect now what's important is that you understand what's going to get this fire going and get going the beauty part just don't bother with that because a lot of people will get discouraged as a curl is not that perfect it doesn't matter as long as it's small and thin concentrate on that that's what's gonna make the difference to get that started and knowing to get it from the middle like I showed you where it's the driest all right so let's set this up and start this fire now it's time to get this fire going I've got my thin from the middle dry part which is my main ignition my tender I've got kindling and I've got the fuel in the back now

remember of this part here the second remember the days were wet this could still be humid because I was getting closer to the exterior of the wood so it's important like any fire you know to make yourself a high higher point here so when you do your fuel you'll have enough oxygen to keep on burning this now if you've got matches and the lighter there's no problem you can just slide her up and continue no just slowly but I just want to show you a little bit with the pharisee Mourad the fire still which we you know love to use because this is an awesome piece of equipment we know of two ways of striking this you can either push the knife or you can just pull the pharisee rod now in this case it's best to just pull on the ferrocene rod of the fire steel because you don't want to mess up your tinder here you want to concentrate a spark on one place if you want to have effectiveness another thing i want to pin pin out a pin point I mean this is wood obviously so it's gonna take multiple strikes to get this going and this is to encourage the you know one starting it's normal it's not like your dry tinder that we usually use like you know birch bark at tail whatever dry stuff you have around the wood is a little bit more difficult so it's normal that is gonna take a few strikes sometimes quite a few now the main goal here is not saying well I started with - I started with fire the main goal is to start it that's that's what you want so what you can do is keep one hand stable with your knife the ground and all I need to do is just pull pull on your Pharisee rod right so it starts let me keep on putting a little bit

remember we're at the kindling start putting a little bit of fuel and that's why this piece of wood there is there so you don't smother it and obviously you want the rest of the piece of wood that you file you know the tree standing up you want that processed already for fuel before you do all this prepping because you don't want to start running and trying to prep your wood the fires going down you can you know injure yourself make mistakes because you're going fast so as you can see you see the strikes it took to get this going well that's your normal general strikes you'll have to do to get it going

now again there's other ways of getting this you know started but I'll just show you in another video sometime well I hope you found this little thing interesting I thought a long time of doing it and I hope you just you know learn something especially the guys starting and again I'm not saying that this is the best way of doing it but it's it's a way that works so hope you enjoyed this and we'll see you next time this is my chrome go chef partners bye