Carving Perfect Feather Sticks

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Video Transcription

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a switch near survival let's go over for the stick technique and a good source to use

so let's use the dead branches on under the pine tree they tend to stay drier longer than the other branches have a lot of resin in them and make first-rate feather sticks

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okay say it's Goodfellow stick nice and wholesome as my buddy calls it so by taking very light slices you can put a lot of curls and even when it's snowing out it's not a problem as long as you grab something that's dry that's dead and then attached to a tree in this case I use pine you know had a good snap - I knew it was dead and there's always something somewhere in every woodland you can find that's dry you know so you have to learn your local materials to see what makes the best feather sticks and pine has a lot of resin in it so it burns really well and as you can see it makes excellent feather sticks okay so let's talk shape so on the stick I'm going to use I like to use the area that has a dip on it like right here as a shallow dip so that way my knife can go right along the geometry of the stick whereas if I use the opposite side where as a hump when you cut with your blade you end up going off the hump and you lose your feather this side you can ride it the whole way and the feather just keeps curling up as you go like to have them off to the side of my body so I'm not cutting towards myself at all and plant it in the ground hold it nice nice and nice and firm and I test to see there's going to be a good spot to make feathers so what you do is lightly go over the surface of the stick as you go down and you change where your focus is let's start here and I slowly work my way over every time you cut it creates a ridge on each side creates a flat area now Ridge and each side then you can go down each Ridge and get a nice light curl I also like to use the edge of the stick as well so my curls are multi-dimensional they kind of go around the stick and not just in one plane over each other so you have to have a keen mind for your bevel you have to know exactly where it is what it's doing while you're doing this you just cleanly going through the layers of the stick doing your best to have a very light touch

it's pretty much all there is to it now when you pitch your knife the curl will go one direction if you pitch it up the other way the curl will start to go the other direction I don't do that too much I do it a little bit but I find that when I touch up my blade this way I end up cutting some curls off on the other side as my knife gets deeper so I don't do that a whole lot I do use that technique but it's not something that I rely on I actually do it just to the left because in that way my knife isn't cutting deeper and like it does this way and allows curls to kind of stack on each other

easier it's pretty much all there is to it okay so you can use whatever you like to ignite these feather sticks I've struck a foul rod under feather stick curls you can get them too like they're real delicate so you can go Ferro rod straight the feather sticks you could use a match you could use a fellow out on birch bark you know there's thousands of different tenders that will make you a little flame and then from there you can just go with the feather sticks it's all good there we go make a little X with my fellow sticks and put my twigs on top of that so fellow 6 give you a good heart for your fire they really give you a good source of heat to begin with so you can ignite module kindling you don't want to snowing raining

everything is just real wet from a recent rain or ever the case is now I like to use a teepee fire way especially for this occasion because it gives everything enough air and enough room to dry out so the heat of the fire is drying all these sticks out which allows them to burn more efficiently but still gives enough fuel for the fire to climb and get bigger and generate more heat so there's enough gap where the flame is happy enough gap so the fuel is happy whilst I mentioned native survival appreciate your views your comments in your support good luck on carbon your fellow sticks remember it takes a light touch and you'll get plenty of curl take care