Bushcraft Camp Update 2 - Log Seat Build | TA Outdoors

Description

Hello guys! Another bushcraft camp update. This time I focus on building a log seat/bench as well as give you some tips on making a cobra weave with your paracord to help you save space. The camp is coming along really well, and I actually ended up doing more than what I had hoped. I managed to finish the second wall and update the fire heat reflector support stakes. I kept thinking that everytime I went to the camp I never had anywhere to sit down! So I finally built a seat. I also got hungry and tested out my new Firebox wood burning stove which was TOTALLY AWESOME! I hope you enjoy the video guys and please give me some ideas for what to do in the camp next! - Mike

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Tags: bushcraft,camp,camping,wild camping,wilderness,outdoors,ta outdoors,totally awesome outdoors,cooking,camp cooking,firebox,stove,woodburning stove,wood gas,fire reflector,heat reflector,fire,starting a fire,survival

Video Transcription

welcome to totally awesome outdoors you join me on a fairly mild December day is right near the end of December at the moment and I'm back at base camp just a little quick camp update really what I'm going to do today I'm going to hopefully film a few videos today but just on a camp update I'm going to finish the wall the fire reflector behind me finish that one up and I'm going to restring this one over here just to tie the support sticks a little bit tighter because it starts getting a little bit loose this one's been up for quite a few months now so just a little bit of a kind of update and if I get enough time on what I might make myself a pot hanger or something like that

okay so as you can see here is my unfinished wall got the a-frame there got one finished fire heat reflector there and this is more of a wall than a heat reflector but it's also actually a bit of a windbreak because the wind does tend to come in from that side those of you who watched my previous videos I have my fire just down here usually so yeah I'm going to finish building up this wall and what I'm going to use for it is little bit of string I have used I do use paracord but personally I can you know I don't really want to waste my paracord its purpose very expensive so cheap ball of string will certainly last me the season holding these support sticks together I'm just going to tire just weave them and pull these closer together just so that because for more logs you put on here the more pressure it's going to put on these sticks okay finish that one there and I've also finished that one there and in my a frame those of you watch my last camp out but update video will remember that I didn't quite finish this wall so I've kept my a few of those logs back for that wall just to finish up and I also keep some dry always keeps a nice dry sticks in here every time I finished coming out for the to the camp I'll go and collect some dry sticks purely for this reason we've had lots of rain lately and those sticks are now nice and dry so I can start fire so let's build this wall back up and then update the for hot fire reflector over here and there is the finish wall and actually I have to admit people I'm pretty pleased with that and obviously in the summer time I hope to do an overnight to hear my a-frames looking a bit sorry for itself that's mainly because I've used Bracken over the top and obviously it's winter now so the Bratton's die back but you can see that I've got a nice enclosure I'm probably going to shut off that corner as well with a small wall which I may or may not do today I just have to be aware it's quite lumpy there with that wood tree roots coming out it's fairly raised but just to stop any wind coming through there and I hope to have like a pot hanger around here so as you can see I'm slightly building the camp together but I don't think that looks too bad at all and I've sort of put the support string in place I need to update this one take that power cord off there and put some string on instead just to save a bit of money we're all about saving money and but yeah pretty cool one I'm liking it so far right let's update this one over here

we go all done secured that and they're so cute that and they're just with a bit of string guys to be honest in hindsight I know it doesn't look great with white string I'd probably prefer to use green-screen straighting I had the green paracord but let's face it guys you can never have enough paracord so I've taken that paracord off there because I can use that for something else strings cheaper you can find string really cheap nowadays in pound land and pound shops and things like that it's fairly durable probably obviously not as durable as paracord but it's strong enough to just hold those supports together in hindsight maybe in the summer time I'll go get some green string and update that and see how these walls are doing but to me I'm pretty chuffed with it camp is coming along nicely

so here's camp from the back kind of view you can see the bracken still lasting well there and there's the old walls they're nice and enclosed to be honest I might even add up another wall just along there just to keep it all enclosed but so far that's looking pretty good

because if you find yourself having leftover paracord like this rather than just kind of you know wrap it up into a ball like so or just you know screw it scrunch it up and put it somewhere you can actually definitely do something with it you can make bright you can make a paracord bracelet and put survival things in it like I've got one with a whistle in that's integral within it and things like that but it's just a bit I'll show you basically a better way that you can store it rather than just having it like that let me show you okay so I have with me here carabiner clip and all you do is basically like a cow's hitch I think it's called or 1/2 it's you just put you just make a loop with your paracord like so push it through your clip like that then bring it over itself and back through so you put all that lock back through and then just pull that tight like say this is how I do it anyway I'm basically going to do what's called a Cobra weave fairly simple to make once you know how to make it say I want my comb

so this is now where you decide how long you want the actual bit of paracord to be it could be the whole length well it wouldn't be the whole length of this because you have to double back on itself so it could be half that length I'm going to do it about that long now yeah but about that long there so that's probably four inches I'd say I want four inches of paracord coming off there so I'll turn it round like this and then what you do is with you've got a left hands on left hand here and right hand side here so you tuck this underneath here like say pull it through so you've got a little loop on that side and it's gone underneath there so you can see it you get this side which is your left hand side it's now going to get under there put it through over and back through this sleep here go to kind of hold it all together and then gently pull each side so that these loops eventually if you put them enough we'll go tight there that's the first start now you have to remember which side you did the loop from okay so I've got I've done that kind of first Cobra weave and I can see that my first loop I made is that leap there so now I'm going to that was on the right hand side this side so I'm now going to make on the left-hand side so I get underneath just spread out the way so you can see this this ending goes under there and through the loop you just made there and there so it's kind of like a figure of eight almost put it tight and as you can see now there's my second loop that I made on that left-hand side so I'm going to have to come to the right hand side again go under put it all out the way under this one then over and through put it through and put it tight there we go now again I can see I made that loop on the right hand side that time so I'm going to have to come on the left hand side underneath get the next one go under there and over back through that leap put it through mmm pull through there you can start to see this Cobra weave pattern coming through now what I'll do is I'll speed this up I'll do one more for you under there under there through the leap pull you can start to see it coming now this pattern I'll finish this off in fast motion and then I'll show you guys the end product okay there's the kind of Finnish bit I can't go any further now otherwise I'll come up onto the Caribbean here and I won't actually be able to make the weave so all I do now is with a knife or a pair of scissors be very careful I'll cut about there that's one side come this side you want to be really careful cutting stuff with knives guys use scissors if you can and that side there now I can either leave that as it is or what I'd normally do because to save these from pulling through these tag ends from pulling back through is I can get a lighter which I don't actually have on me at the moment and you can just light those ends and then using that as it burns down towards there using the back of the lighter you dab it down and it basically seals it against itself on there and this can now you know I've now got fairly quite a bit of paracord stored there which I can now clip onto the back of my backpack like so I can clip onto you know my waist belt if anything I can put it on my belt anything like that it's just a great way of saving some paracord and being able to store it in quite an efficient way let me show you a paracord bracelet I made a while back okay so here's one of the paracord bracelets I made a few months ago from the st. paracord as you can see from the olive green using the Cobra weave that I just showed you I just had some leftover paracord and actually what I've made it looks like a normal bracelet but this can actually save my life one day because on the underneath here where the two clasps are I actually have basically a survival whistle and all you need to do to blow that whistle is just pop the catch there there's my bracelet fits on my wrist perfectly and there is my whistle and I'll show you that now how loud that goes okay so here's the paracord bracelet just there and here's the little whistle when I know you probably want me to be able to hear it as well

on the camera microphone but so guys they little tip there if you get any leftover paracord you can do it with string as well to be honest I've done it with string I've done it with leather lacing it's great fun to practice when it's a rainy day and you're indoors have a practice students in Cobra weaving it's great fun and it just saves you from wasting any leftover paracord that might get tangled up and get into a mess and things like that I actually put them on my zips on my backpack and things like that you never know when you're gonna need paracord there's a good amount of paracord on this and this one I just made here I'll now untie for you just to show you how much power cord is actually on this three and a half to four inch a bit of paracord Cobra weave there I'll show you how much length of it is there the great thing about Cobra weaving is that you actually when you do the weave is you're doubling up the line the paracord on itself so you've actually got more than you need that's why it's clever because it doubles up on itself and wraps around itself so for example there looks like I've got about one and a half to nearly two feet but why undo it like that it's double that because it was folded on itself so from here so it starts all the way to there is about three and a half feet nearly four feet there I'd say good through a good two three and a half feet three three and a half feet and all from you know a tiny three-inch four-inch Cobra weave I can get that much now if you look at my bracelet if I can find it there that's double the length pretty much of the one we just made that I showed you which means that's going to be nearly five five to six feet of paracord you know you can do it you can do a lot with that paracord if you're for example if your tarp ridgeline is broken and needs repair you know you can fit up to six foot nearly on a paracord wrist bracelet so it's really really good way of storing some extra Perigord just found something quite interesting guys is if you don't I've just retied this kind of attempted to retie it again therefore I just pull that out with you guys and if you look if you don't melt the end of your paracord with a lighter or something like that with a bit of flame you can see that the actual cordage comes through and it slips back from its protect this kind of sleeve protective sleeving so it definitely worth actually putting a flame to the end of these you know cutting that off and sealing it and you can see this one here that's on my bracelet

where I've actually sealed it there and that now cannot push and slip back through here because it's kind of made a mushroom effect on the top which stops it pushing back through here and it also stops the cordage coming out like this and you basically losing all your actual strength to your paracord so just a little tip worth noting there well I've just spent the last pretty much two hours with the old bowling barcode Laplander which I've done a review of by the way just using this to cut out for pretty pretty much trees as you can see just from the width of the blade I have to admit it's a very very reliable saw takes quite a bit of time to get something that big that's about the maximum I would cut with this saw you can tell by the width of braid so I've chopped four of those the idea is that I'm actually going to make a seat so I've got my main wall where that I built recently that I've finished off then I've got a nice flat platform here where my fire will be here shelter there and I've just got something I can place my backpack on and sit on as well so what I'm going to do is I've sharpened off two steaks that are about two foot it's quite soft ground here so they're about two foot long sharpen them off there I'm going to drive a stake in here and another one at the end there just to stop these logs from rolling forward and hopefully I've got a nice flat secure platform to sell well what can I say guys it was a bit of an impulse a bit of an impulse moment I had there I was meant to actually be doing a different type of video but I just thought I kind of liked every time I come to the camp I want to add something new to it so I suddenly thought I'm not that it's been raining a bit I thought not actually got anything to sit down so I thought you know what I need to get something to sit down on so I tried smaller logs about this thick problem with that being was this the seat was quite uneven you know I don't mind if my walls uneven that's fine as long as it blocks out the wind that's okay I was finding that the seat as I did it was uneven so I went off to find some bigger logs of a big tree that I've fallen down and I used the old laplander saw the barco that manda took me about not rely hour-and-a-half and any two hours of soaring solid touring but it's done and it's comfy you know I put the pegs in there solid it's going nowhere you know if the pegs rot out after six months to a year that's fine it's so easy it took me about 5-10 minutes to make the pegs the support plate so that's fine but there it's nice soft ground here so it's been really easy to get this packed in got my fire reflector but my wall here probably put I say one more layer right I'll put up here of logs just to keep off the back of my neck then I've got a fire here I can sit in obviously later towards Easter time summer time I'll get a bed go a proper bed in the a-frame over here and I'm going to probably actually got a few more legs that logs left over as if I don't need any more soaring I might saw ones about two feet long and just fill in this gap to the side here there's loads of other things I kind of want to add to the camp but you know I'd actually like you guys to kind of suggest some things to me because it's great I've joined some groups recently on Facebook the the great british bushcraft group which is a fantastic group some incredible but bush grafters on there and guys who just have a wealth of knowledge is really really good group very friendly so I suggest you join that one if you're into bushcraft the great british bushcraft group another one is bushcraft for beginners I think it's called another really great group

I think they do some meats and things like that on the group so in certain counties depending on where you are which is really cool I've only joined it recently but they've been really helpful on that so I want your opinions and your views guys on well you know this is a camp I'm hoping to build up over time so if you could give me your suggestions I'll be really grateful because you know you can learn so much from other people and you know the horizons are endless really but I'm thinking to get maybe getting a fire pit of some sort going just here but it's been it's been really fun if ever you get the chance to go out into some woodland and just build a den up over time it's actually really really rewarding especially when you start to see something come together you know I've had a lot of things that have gone wrong with fire walls have fallen over the fire reflectors so they've fallen over the wrong you know the shelter at one point wasn't looking very sturdy and I had to change logs and things like that but you know it's coming along now and and I think it's one of those things with bushcraft where there is no right or wrong way of doing things there is when it comes to safety and things like that and using sharp equipment but when you're creating your own camp I think there's no not really a right or wrong way of doing I think it's a case of use your own imagination the main thing I would say is look for a good original location of your camp the main location of where you're going to eat to build a shelter

I would suggest needs to be a good one needs to be relatively near water supply not too near water supply otherwise in the summer months you're going to get that mosquitoes and things like that and also water obviously if it's a running river it makes noise if you're in need of help

and you need an SOS call or something like that and you've got noise and people can't hear you calling out and things like that it's another thing to think of so relatively near water but not too close flat ground I says another one when you're building your shelter and your walls think of where the actual prevailing wind kind of is coming from so the main wind direction where is it coming from because you want to protect yourself from the wind and look for deadfall around you that's another thing if there's lots of deadfall you've got access to lots of material to build your shelter and

you know and I just think they send this really but they're the kind of basic things are good I thought about when I started building this this base but give me your input guys I want some of your feedback next thing I'm on up to what I'm gonna build this little wall now don't waste any offcuts guys these are going straight in the a-frame shelter to keep them dry for an hour next have a campfire

well as you can see I got carried away and started to build that little third wall in the gap just there got a few more logs to put on top but I'm so done with sewing today those of you if you use those little pruning sores I've literally saw on all those big logs down there all these ones here and a couple more on top their arms are killing me I'm pretty chuffed with their amount of work about done today what I'm going to do now is it's lunchtime Abby know quite a few hours now for hours I'd say so going to get some grub on and test out the new firebox stove so no campfire today just going to get the firebox stove going down there hopefully and see if I can get my energy back fuck it's looking good after me it is looking good it's all hinge so you don't actually it all stays in one piece it doesn't actually pull apart when you fold it up it's all hinged which is really good compacts down to a really small size and and it's got like an air vent there that you can shut down and feed sticks in here nava I've never actually lit one of these before so I'm just going to chuck loader sticks in this first time for me juggler these big sticks in 2:00 a.m. with

that probably light a bit of cotton ball I'd say I've got some wood chippings here as well which I'm just going to chuck in as well hoping that some of that is might like some slightly smaller sticks here as well which was very calf and get in there this might not work because some of these sticks these smaller twigs especially a fairly done that that'll give it a go it doesn't work I'm going to go hungry I've seen them I've seen them used before and I know that they're very efficient but some we will see that snappy sticks down a bit smaller actually nice I stole my Scott wall in a little bottle cap survival storage thing which you can see I'll put a link in the corner of the screen you can see how to make this bit of fun bit of recycling get some cotton wool out because I'll use all of that that's some good stuff yeah just really handy they're waterproof obviously and free to make just recycling some old ball caps get that going

might not work guys who knows might not work we can only wait and see okay the wood burn is going really well actually now that fires fire box is really really good once you get it going just the air and the oxygen flow through it is really good say on the menu today because I've only have only come from pretty short session good old British boobs can't go wrong with some Heinz baked beans I stick him in a little little sauce / mini saucepan just a solo saucepan and get these cooking get him in the grub down me before I wind down and finish off for the day quite like doing kind of half days actually sometimes it's nice obviously I've got to edit my ta fishing or other YouTube channel tonio some fishing I've got to edit those videos as well as well as editing these videos as well as doing school teaching as well so it's very busy so half days generally all I can do at the moment but let me show you the stove it is going it is going really well

look look at that that is really really good really chuffed with that really really shot for that now that I've got a bed of embers down there that should burn really well and I can just add to it whenever I want I'll let it die down a bit if I was cooking something you know meat or something like that I'd let that get a really good bed of embers you don't want to cook meat on flame really you want to cook on embers but because it's baked beans you know that flames obviously too high at the moment so I'm going to let that all die down a bit and then get the beans on the go while it and loads of different options on these fire boxes of different heights you can set it you can put my beans just there and then roast away look at that that's within seconds those beans are warming up already unbelievable really really pleased with this firebox and I hope to be cooking more on this wood gas stove in the future once I get my base you know my camp completely finished although I don't believe a camp can ever be completely finished but once it's pretty much finished then I can come and you know focus a bit more on the cooking and a little less time actually having to get the camp built I can just customize a few things hitting there hopefully with the suggestions of you guys if you can give me some suggestions as to what else to customize my camp with but that's brilliant

and obviously while that's still in there I've got a gap here that I can put sticks in and I can also adjust the levels of the fire sticks there I can you know use different levels this flap here on the side also folds down if I need to let more air in and obviously when it's hot which it will be very hot so I suggest be very careful guys you can actually use guns with comes with four fire sticks and you can actually use these fire sticks to lift they've got hooks here and you can lift all sorts of pots and pans out you can use them to drag these fire sticks out here to open flaps closed flaps you can use the fire sticks so it's very very kind of well thought through this design you can't beat food cooked over wood you know wood gas fire you cannot beat it if you look how hot that's just embers if I take that off that's just cooling embers down there there's an ashtray underneath which is brilliant because means I don't have to clear up after myself basically you know all the ash will fall onto that tray I can dispose of that bury it in the ground obviously when it's cooled and I'll put water on it to put the fire out but it's handy having an ash tray it means I can use it you know on walks and things like that and not have to worry about leaving a mess but these beans are pretty much ready if you look that's just embers and you can see they're bubbling away

till I'm on my new seat that I've made my log seat I've used my new wood gas stove my wood gas burner which is really good

could life get any better well I suppose I could add some sausages to these beans you