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Making Primitive Stone Knives for Survival

Description

Website: http://nativesurvival.com/

Mitch, Mitchell, Alone, History, Channel, Survival, Nativesurvival.

Tags: stone,tools,primitive,skills,abo,aboriginal,hand axe,knapping,flint,quartz,chert,jasper,point,winter,bone,cutting,knives,knife,stone knife,arrowhead,camping,hiking,survival,nativesurvival,stone age,outdoor,hunting,fishing,outside,hobbies,outdoor recreation,shooting sports,shooting tips,hunting tips

Video Transcription

it's missionary survival today I'm going to be making one of the most important things in the woods cutting tools Oh

that's a nice one oh yeah

nice little bundle of cutting tools right there

still got some larger unprocessed rocks on the outside and a bunch of little blades on the inside lots of little crazy sharp shards leftover take some of those stuff that's left over on the bottom here these can be used for really fine work

I mean the edge on that right there that front that

I can actually see through it so it's very very very thin okay so finding cutting tools in the woods really just starts with understanding the materials in your area it just takes you know experience and you know just kind of time honing skills you need some practice experiment with the stones in your area now some quartz right here

me it's all around me and I know that in my area quartz breaks to very sharp edges so this is my go-to cutting tool stone right here so next you want to find is an anvil so you can break the rocks easily I always look for stone that's naturally buried in the earth like this but I test it by moving a little bit see how this has some play in it I'm going to skip that one so you don't want that you don't want it to have any play in it because that absorbs some of the energy you know you want the shock waves to explode into the stone when you take your hammer stone and you you hit the piece that you you know that you want to fracture so I really want to find a piece of stone that's really deeply embedded and find a stone possibly with a flat surface if I can as well because then that makes it easier to break the stone when I put it on top because if it's slanted then the below is a glancing blow you know if it's at an angle and when the stone comes down and hits it it's going to end up shooting off and and instead of staying in one spot and exploding out now this would be a really good anvil right here obviously doesn't have any planing at all all right large stone this will work great alright so the stone right here is one that I just used

and I just fractured a bunch of stone on it and I initially started off with this hammer stone let's get hammer stone you can see

where it had impact it also helps not necessary but it does help a little if the stone has some flatter areas you can use which is why I use this face I use this a few times but it has an angle on it so this way it's flat when it hits a stone it lands flat so it's not like a glancing bouncing blow this way it hits crushes down real simple so I did a few with this but I wanted a little bit of a heavier stone because if it's a lot of stone you have to start from a higher up drop so you have to either throw it harder down which I don't really like to do or you have to drop it from a higher distance so it just has more momentum when it hits more follow-through so I went with this larger stone because it's heavier has a pretty good flat area at the bottom and allowed me to I mean it's considerably heavier allowed me to drop it about the same distance and break every single stone I want it to and again you know it's really easy you just take a stone and again I'm using quartz you know your area might be chart might beep City in you know all sorts of things not look like tons of different stones that fracture you know Jasper you know so um yeah you know you just put it down there and you apply enough force to break the stone there nice controlled break broke right down the middle right in half that's what you want you want to try to break it so it's not like you throw it so hard that it powder Rises the whole stone is if you do it hard enough it will just completely eviscerate the stone it will just explode into nothing and obviously that's not useable you can't use that so I just easily and cleanly made two cutting tools I mean these are very sharp these very sharp edges and if I wanted to work further it's as simple as putting it back down and hitting it again this time I can put less force guess it's a small stone on breaking right so I just broke into a ton of different pieces 1 2 3 so you know or a bunch of different pieces so basically all you do is you just keep breaking stone breaking stone you know until you get handfuls of all these sharp edges and you can use these flakes to use as cutting tools to skin game to make tools to make bow drill kits and drill kits you just to make needles whatever you have to do you know a cutting tools a cutting tool so I like to make little batches like this you know you can make arrowheads whatever you want out of them this one might make a good our head right here I already has a basic shape it's pretty thin it's pretty flat too you know it doesn't have a great curve to it so it's the arrow will fly straighter that's a pretty good I might save that one and this and that's really what what you tend to do when you find things like this a flake like this that happens like that you know you don't waste it on using to make a hand drill kit you know you use something else I can get the job done and you take that rare special piece you put it aside you know you put inside your rucksack put inside your pocket inside your auto head pouch whatever you want to do so that's pretty much all there is to it very simple you just have to find a anvil and a hammer stone to break your stone all right so a cutting tool is a cutting tool you know one of those flakes is going to have the attributes needed for the job done whatever it is you need to get done for your cutting tool you know whether it be from making friction kits or making feather sticks doesn't matter whatever it is skinning game you know you'll find a piece that will have the shape and the attributes that you need you know you just have to search through them and that's why you you want to make so many of them they're so easy to make and when it takes a few moments just break a bunch of them up and gives you more options to work with when the time comes okay so common tasks in the woods is processing up some birch bark either to scrape it to use with the fell rod or to describe it just to make tinder for tinder bundle whatever the case is you know that powder works really well as the first initial tinder inside a tinder bundle that makes your coal grow larger so I have all those pieces just in my cup here probably work it's a good edge right there so stone tools are actually incredibly easy to make and very versatile because a blade like this can be used for scraping or for slicing whatever the case is you know as you can see it's scraping it up just fine nice little pile right now I'll press with my Ferro rod like so all right

get incredibly fine curls out of it you can see right here so anyways get a bunch of curls all around me here so you can't make a feather stick I prefer a bigger piece than this so I think I'd have to break a few more pieces but I found something a little more ideal for this particular task but I found something that work I mean I do have some feathers on there if I just keep going I can make them a little bit bigger make a little bit more it's definitely more difficult on a metal knife you know but it can be done you know it can't be done some good curls on there very good curls these are actually the best curls when they're really really small like this because they ignite so easy with the smallest amount of combustion

all right so there's my curls let's see I can ignite these with my thorough haha then we have it excellent so stone car feathers and they ignite it alright let's we mention native survival thanks for joining me today as we make some cutting tools in the woods appreciate your views your calm through sport see you guys in the next one take

About the Author

NativeSurvival

NativeSurvival

Mitch is a Wilderness Living Skills Instructor, he has been featured on The History Channel's program "ALONE" and written articles for Outdoor Magazines; he owns and operates The Native Survival School which provides woodland living and survival classes, as well as offering quality outdoor gear he's designed. Defintely, he is a master at bushcraft's techniques.

You can find all his videos on his YouTube channel.

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