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BUSHCRAFT & SURVIVAL CHALLENGE!! - Lighting a Fire with ONE HAND ONLY!

Description

I decided to try a Survival Challenge in the woods... This time I have to try and light a fire with my only one hand! Give me some more suggestions for another Challenge in the comments section below :) Thanks for watching - Mike

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Video Transcription

hey guys thanks for clicking on the video and welcome to ta outdoors going to be doing something slightly different in this video it's going to be focused slightly more on survival what I'm going to try and do I was just thinking the other day what I was lighting fire what would happen if you injured one of your arms whilst out in the field was trying to get fire going and you know trying to basically cook food or boil water so I thought I might try a video I've never done this before but thought a try video where I try and get a fire going with just literally my knife and my fire skill so that's all my in my sheet is just there's my fire skills there's my knife okay so just knife fire still going to use whatever I can find in the woods here as a resource to try and get fire going maybe I'll try and cook something I don't know yet but the target is to see if I can get a fire going with one arm let's give it a go okay

everything from here guys is one hand only ok so first things first guys is I need to find the resources to light the fire I'm in a coniferous woodlands here which is full of pine trees pine is really resin it's very good for starting a fire and getting a fire going it's not very good for a long-lasting fire but for the part this video is just to get the fire itself so it's a soft wood there's plenty of it is loads of dead forwards you can see in the background behind me so I'm first things first I'm going to collect some squeaks and then some slightly bigger sticks and then hopefully I've got to find something to actually get the fire going in the first place

let's see what I can find first things first guys little fire lighting tip here I found this fallen tree with branches coming off it going into twigs here at the tip now these are well off the ground and they're south-facing I've noticed that they're in the Sun at the moment they're in the sunlight they've been south-facing which means they're going to be very dry so they should snap nice clean nice and easily okay now I can only use one hand it's going to take you some time but that's the roughly the link that I need for my fire so I'm just going to snap these off this is this part isn't too difficult with one hand as you can see my other hands touch it on my back but it's important thing to remember when you're getting dry wood is it should snap really clean first go it doesn't snap clean first go and it to spend a wobble a bit AAC the too wet or be is too green and it's not ready for fire lighting but this stuff is absolutely crispy dry so it should get going nice and easily plus the twigs quite high up off the ground which means again they're away from the moisture that is coming up from the actual forest floor another important tip for fire lighting that should be a good enough bundle but I might get twice the amount of that because I know this could be quite difficult when I actually get the fire going if I get it going okay so collected plenty of twigs with that with one hand that's the easy bit that's going to be enough to get fight once a flame goes that be enough to hopefully grow that flame into a small campfire next thing I need to do is get sticks slightly thicker about the fitness of my farmers not a little bit thicker and probably about the same amount if not twice as much because I don't know how this is going to go so I'll leave those there upright so I can see where they are when I come back to them so again number fallen tree this time thicker branch coming off it about the thickness of my thumb and it's sticking upright which means it's going to be off the forest floor so nice and dry this I'm going to try and snap right down by the actual shoulder joint first by leaning on it with my knee probably didn't see that the camera and then now I can just lay this against the tree on the floor and just snap it with my feet

sighs I apologize for the audio on this I did forget my main microphone so I'm hoping it's okay so here we have the twigs about 30 centimeters 20 30 centimeters in length and about the diameter of a pencil and here we have slightly bigger sticks about fun bombers I don't need to lift them up but just leaning against the tree there so you can see I'm I can get larger logs but for the sake of this video I'm only just going to try and light fire I'm not doing a long-term fire with big logs and things like that but what I will do is try and actually process some big logs just to show you how you can do it with one hand but I'm not going to use them let me just show you quickly so the pretty big downed pine tree just here that's that's just leaning against this broadleaf tree behind me I don't have an axe obviously I do have an eye so I could use that to process it but I don't even have to use my knife to process this down I'm just going to drag it away and I'll show you what I'll do what's the camera down so I've dragged that log call that tree over to these two pine trees here where there's a small gap now they use that small gap as a bit of leverage to then snap this this brought this tree which has a thickness of about three and a half four inches which I can't snap with my feet to just snap off chunks of wood that I would generally use for a long term fire let's give it a go well as you can see much more manageable pieces some a slightly larger but they'd all burn on a big fire all the same so there's a little tip on how to use how to process a bit of a bigger tree and I'm not the EC's today because I'm not having a long-term fire tiring that give you that place pretty much double the effort that's needed for so you can do arm so definitely I'm finding a lot more time so I processed the twig sub-process the sticks I found an area where I'm going to have the small campfire next thing I need to do really is find some source almost tinder material I'm looking around me and what you can see probably is mostly fine against all Scots pine trees resistant perhaps foodie everywhere around here because we're spring and I'm looking up in the in the trees and I can see leaves coming off some of the trees and these are broadleaf trees so just by looking up and looking around rather than the standard pine needles that I'm seeing most of the most of the time I think the governor should see some green leaves springtime the leads are coming out and they look like birch now that would be ideal birch will be absolutely ideal for fire lighting again like pine it's highly resinous for the actual alder bark it's full of resin so if I could find a bursary that would be spot-on Arlo's case but here's about three however it's a bit big I could process some of the bike with my knife that it's looking quite old this bar and I don't think it's going to peel off very well so onwards and upwards well guys this is interesting

I found some birch and and if you can see this

so this birch actually I can peel small parts off now it's not peeling off great again because it's a bit of an older tree but all that will help that's still resinous that and it may take a spot from the fair road ideally I need a bit here you go this a bit better bit there a bit thicker could peel off I'll have a look around this tree so I can process a bit better higher up that might take a flame for me but I'm going to need this as a kind of tinder bundle so again it's doable with one arm so it's easy to collect then if you see that guy's with its slightly red in there and that would be the resin so ideally if I could get that bark near the red that's going to be the trees resin the SAP would be much much richer there and it will definitely burn for longer so I'm trying to focus on the more the basically the more the red areas of the tree of the bark another example guys the red coming down who resin as part coming down this birch a little tip when you're peeling it off if you can see this curl here is going that way when you're peeling off peel it the same way that it's coming it just gives you a little bit extra if you peel it against itself it just falls off whereas if you peel it and give it a bit of a rip you tend to come off with a little bit more so I'm talking about that is survival goals people couple of facts about this the silver birch or batula pendula is the latin name the sap in this tree is very very good for you birch sap it's full of antioxidants and pretty much anti everything but just so you know these actual kind of slashes across the tree these are called lenticels and this is where the actual tree breathes through its bark so it takes in the carbon dioxide obviously trees taking carbon dioxide and gives off gives off oxygen for us to survive but that's just so so you guys know what these are form and why they're there they're called lengths of cells and they are where the tree actually breathe really really cool tree

you also get the birch polypore funghi which grows off it which is a you know you can use it for stopping a knife and things like that you can also use it for medicinal purposes such as plasters I don't believe it's edible or if it is it's not very tasty but yeah I might be able to show you one of those okay next thing I need to do now found some tinder is a fire lay which is this would be basically on the forest floor like this and that would keep the tinder tinder the silver birch bark off the forest floor stop and get wet even though it's dry here and it would give the fire a greater chance of lighting but it's much better I could just do it like this on the floor and just lie it like that over there and then put my thinner bottle on top however it's much better if I could split this wood and then but that way I could get to the dry you can see the pine the resin in there in the pit of the would much more resin so if I could split this and open it up it would give me a much more stable fire labor B it would also give me a lot more a greater chance of the fire burning quicker and for longer so let's try and split it now with my knife so what I'm trying to do is just get my knife in here if I can and split it it's quite hard with one hand it's almost split there you go so it's not as great split but it's something just a bit of open with a mano be able to do it on all of them but even just that there just to get to that open part is all I need okay guys so I've cleared an area from the fire just to be safe and protect the forest floor unfortunately I could only split that one stick where the night itself wasn't majorly successful but it will still work hopefully so I'm going to put that over in there in the middle that's where the fire is going to retain the most heat hopefully and then just place these other sticks around the edge that's where the tinder bundle is going to go and that's my fire lay so put my tinder in my cargo pouch with my trousers don't be careful don't lose it or place it on there got to keep these everything nearby because I've only got one chance really so twigs their sticks and go just next to them there and I'm all set okay I'm actually going to try and take a step for other guys I can rest out there whilst holding the camera at the same time and I'm going to try and make a pot a simple port hangar so this is just going to be a stick resting against territory make a point in it

so I've wedged this in with my knees done that and now got a nice stable platform to try and make a point on this stick so it's more skate like it's not going to look at macula guys but the they go it's like a spade like okay so got my ten centimeters everbilly I've got to test the pot hanger first before I get a fire going so I'm only going to put it halfway if I can boil water I can survive so let's test it with some water in to check that it hangs properly before I get fire going no easy with one hand that will work he says

yes it works with one hand get out of the way for a moment time to light the fire okay guys so this is the difficult part the fire steel so I want to practice this away from the fire first before because I could screw it up and damage you know all the tendon I'm thinking I can lean against one but somehow that's Parkton I think it's part of my foot is too rounded maybe if I try on the side somehow and actually this proud this bungee cord is getting in the way so maybe flat on my on its side here's the side of my foot so it doesn't roll as much okay so works now I have to try it on that ah so hard to keep the fire still built so this is really difficult I'm not gonna lie guys really difficult I just can't get it to right

I tried ramming it in the ground right everybody come on come on that's not working not working at all the birch bark shaving is just not catching I can't get enough power on the fire still fun to catch so what I might do is look around and see if there's any dead birch and maybe trying to stick a bark the only thing I can think of it subliminally I'm going to try some of this absolutely rotten birch tree but bark is one of the last things to survive on a birch tree it rots from the inside out on silver birch so let's give this a go this should do it guys there with me and a scrape away get a pile going and then hopefully get Friday please work I just need to get that little spark and I reckon I could do it yeah get some of these curls in there lost my brace Oh God could it be guys could it be could I actually be onto a winner here

please Lord come on I can see the flame oh yes yes come on come on come on oh wow oh yes oh yes oh yes come on come on one-handed fire what an achievement if this works

getting that my friends is a one-handed fire as mr. Joe Robinette would say but I am son but I am okay one hand yes

get in for boiling baby oh yes for a celebration

to be triggered the pork nothing like a bit of coffee to celebrate a one-handed fire and save that bit of water to put the fire out she is achievement unlocked King well guys thank you very much for watching the video it was a bit of an eventful journey to be honest it was a lot harder than I thought and I've got the utmost respect for those people out there who have lost limbs in injuries and things like that it's really tough I'd say as a challenge for you guys definitely go out there and try it I'd like to try it with different methods maybe feather sticks and things like that maybe a bit of flint and steel maybe bit friction fire who knows it's not easy it wasn't easy and that was probably one of the easier ways of doing and I said it was survival on this video because it is technically a good thing to have in case of an injury did occur it's not primitive survival so it's not you know some of you guys might be going oh you've got a knife and a fire still you know that's cheating I didn't state that it was primitive survival just said I'm going to try and light a fire with one hand using a knife and a fire still I said that run beginnings well guys thanks for watching please click subscribe and give the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and see you next time on tea outdoors leave no trace

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About the Author

TA Outdoors

TA Outdoors

Bushcraft, Wild Camping, Wilderness Hiking Trips, Solo Overnight Camps, Shooting, Hunting and Backpacking. My dog joins me on some of the trips. His name is Jaxx.

My name is Mike. And I'm addicted to adventure...

Check out our other YouTube Channel TAFishing: https://www.youtube.com/user/TAFishing

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