Feathersticks MasterClass

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My class at the Nova Scotia Bushcraft Gathering.

Video Transcription

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you

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fella sticks okay fella sticks Emeritus dicks

pretty amazing right that means at all times or is available very cool now that means any season any condition that's very important it could be brutal conditions but you're always going to find them which is a good thing this is very valuable it's not just a toy that's something that looks cool it's a critical tool to live in the woods if the quality to them because it they can be tinder initial tinder to get started a stick something not something you think if we pick a tender you can cattail you think Oh George bar that's thick also dualities kindling does nigga fellow stick I have to get a little plan going for whatever the means you got there you put on one of those it amplifies the flame drastically you go from a little candle flame now you have to explain that's growing along and it's massively bigger than it was so that's incredibly important the best way is to use two three because it's almost like a flash thing you can go up and go fast and you have the harness that amplify heat and amplified space radiation with it so you throw another one on there another one on there you almost like choking it out with feathers and it's just going to get triple the size tripl to be really fast which is incredible because we're now we're talking all through the seasons bopping through all conditions you can take something small in a week and turn it into a blaze with very small effort it can be in a rain forest it could be I can also use it like a tinder bundle so now instead of being spark driven fire it's now primitive driven five so as long as I can make an ember I can make a fire and that's a huge one because in all seasons in all conditions finding a tinder bundle is not an easy thing to do anyone who's trying to do that on the fly finds out real quick they keep a spare one in their kit for those days because it's very adverse and hard to do but it isn't because just make a feather stick put some cattail right in the middle of it visitin the fungus on continue on make your emperor whether it be by fluent steel whether it be by fire plough bow drill and drill make a number drop it in the middle off you go I carry cattail and my kid for that just so no matter what that's like the most amazing initial stage of a tendon bondage

tinder bundle has melted the stage it's three stages first stage is the finest stuff

right in the middle that is going to take an ember make it bigger and it's a taps like what a feather stick does to a point takes a little small number and makes a huge magnifies a teat right then you need your your material that's the next stage pass that and it has more it's like grass and whatever it is in this case it's a feather stick so you make them find and it's like little fine pieces of grass now it looks like a tinder bundle can make them fine enough and then the outside of aterna bundle is the structure for a feather stick that would be like the handle because structures will hold the bundle together so it's not falling in in between your fingers so for a feather stick if you like the stick is the third step the second step would be all the curls and you put the cat tail in the middle as the first step so it's true tinderbox tellin ya its abrupt determine the stuff that explodes like that when I'm clapping last tentative last finger yes aye sir okay now next is about the condition with seasons and tough scenarios it's like a secret weapon that makes it easier so if you're in a really hard up situation philo sticks are a solution because what we do when were in those situations were constantly trying to find a solution when I was in Vancouver it rained twice a day everything was rotten actually it wasn't dead standing was rotten Stanley and I had to cut down trees as big and get to the middle and maybe a wet layer over the heart was dry and the first inch and a half of the wood all the way around is fully soaked I couldn't burn that until I had an ember base at least half hour and then that stuff will burn if not put it out so here I am taking a log to get down to actual dry material because everything else can't go get twigs can't go get anything is everything literally like I walk up the tree grab the moss squeeze it it just water comes dripping out everything so everything's rotted me dying feather sticks was my solution I do not struggle to make fire at all I just need photo sticks from the middle you like it fine struck a spark right on to the most delicate of curls I take a little handle a little hand pull over now there's my little flame and then would have do extra I would take that one that I took the delicate ones lay it on top of that flame magnify it put two more over it and take all those little splits that I made from the inside of the log and off I go for that goes for a while

I put the wet stuff on there every day we're probably you don't want to be dry rot because it's just going to crumble when it goes to separate you're making it very thin and if it's a little rotten and crumbly instead it just stones for the dust basically falls apart and now another thing is you want to you want to carve on a down curve cuz in my blade can run right along as a hump right here it goes up and set it down so when my blade comes here it's going to continue in that direction and to fall off every time I get I'm not going to be able to do this with my knife but I can do this with my knife very easily you just ride the wave I get the top of the wave and come on so I can see on this stick I can make curls from about here to here if I flip it over I can make curls from here to here it's the opposite the other one right so if I had to I could do both if I was really hard up that the details that count I can make more curls if I needed to

another thing is you might notice wasn't not at the end and there wasn't on it the other than where it broke it off from yo stick you don't want to use knots not to destroy what you're carving to be carving does it not it's gone but if your carving is gone if it doesn't if it does hold on this happens sometimes everything can happen the fact that you're going to hit that spot that catches your blade every single time it changes your cadence your tempo changes the angle of your knife it causes their smooth actions to run into a speed bump of course that's when problems happen you just get this little kink and keep going then you realize you really have to just go in between the knots alright so the technique you want to be built in a few ways you want to be light the light curls I mean they'll be feather light you can see through put some light from if you have a real light hand give I mean you're barely it's like sharpening when you're sharpening you get to the when it's as sharp as possible whatever technique you're using it's like whisper light if you're using a rod it's whisper light you're barely touching that metal if you push hard you know it's too much right at that point it's like as light as feather and it'll be a sharpest blade you've ever seen the same thing with feather stick when you make an offender really like it will be you know forty curls and it'll just be so small that you know you can just move it around and gravity will rip it apart they're so delicate and that was the one just so spark on and off you go heavy when you dig in so now it's like carving it's still going to do the same thing that's getting more robust thicker and it's going to be more like fuel instead of tending more like kindling right so that brings up another point maybe some people make a feather stick for the first batch make a feather stick that is a whole bunch of light curls during adverse conditions when they know it needs to work and make a feather stick all light stuff because even if I have almost nothing this will work but they know it's going to go up like that become so then the next one they'll do half of one half of the other the third one they'll do all hard and they'll put it in that order and that last them that burn longer than all the others stages when you're in the worst conditions those are the details you have to be mindful long strokes long strokes the longer the better the longer the better if you're using a small stroke you're only going to have the ability to curl an inch so you might get a little wave you know sometimes you see just like a like like a wave like like one snow just kind of does that the tongue level six can look like that like in the Boy Scout books they call it a fuzz stick and it looks like a guy just push this knife in half an inch I mean kind of rotated a stick around that's from lack of length there's a longer you carve the more it goes more of those more it goes that's how I get my feather sticks you know to to be like turkey legs

ya know I mean they're they're like thighs they used right I'm like okay yeah so mine the ridges when you're carving when you're carving a long distance because sometimes in the grain there will be a ridge you look like this but in the middle here the tree will just do that just in its growth and still have the same shape and when you get to that you'll probably lose a couple that next one dig in underneath it and do a hard one and like force it cut across the grain you'd be like this is what we're doing instead you know and so you have to kind of work with the material to make it happen it divorce it it can't just be nice and gentle and I'm going to do you know what you want to do unfortunately get the kind of manhandle it okay so for use so for tender you can do fail recognition and like I mentioned earlier right on the curls and for tender bundle

any ember like I mentioned bow drew hand-wrote raw cloth you can a module chaga whatever you want to do try cattail if you want to do natural trial off by you just draw a tail put a spark put that inside the it doesn't matter it's irrelevant it doesn't matter what makes the amber kindling again that's for explosive growth two to three at a time usually the TPS how I do it that's gross the flames I can start with a flame anyways I can take birch bark scrape it strike with a Ferro rod I have a little candle flame I can take a match the most amazing invention probably of this dominant culture was the match I mean it's a dead material and now it's on fire

that's like mind-blowing really just think about that it's fine but really it's my book okay um what else oh right okay last one rebuilding a fire so if your fire burns down and you're like scrambling oh man I was out doing that's why she to come back it was really hard to get that started I'm in a rain forest or a blizzard it's dying what do I do oh my god I can't go run out and grab my killing over and twigs and I don't know this big to-do I got a minute grab the nearest stick make even just four or five put on top it's already starting to smoke a little keep going a little more and then make a real feather at least now it's like doing something and then you can put that right on top of the Hut source and then unifiers back and now you can just do you think right so you can rebuild your fire rekindle it if it's dead which brings me to the other option is the next morning it's the next morning one of the things I like to do I get quite actually great pleasure doing search around move the white powder around oh there's a hot spot I put my hand directly in there me a third-degree burn off to go in for five inches but it's there right carbon I try to stick a really flying one put it right on top of there shift it around a little bit as you shift your educate and the heat radiation sentence and move around all of a sudden you're on your way it would just start smoking and it'll just ignite on its own put two more on it carry on as you were I like to fill my thumb fool here that croc already see how dangerous is going to be careful with this one so I go down my thumb first to make sure that I'm at the bottom because it's gone off a little bit when I do that kind of twist see that I think I think I'm there obviously we can see I'm not a father so good now if i push it kind of move on its own right to the spot that's the bottom of the valley every time if I go here I think I got it let me just try it with push let start pushing my knife pushing my thumb it lines it up that's a huge one for some reason Norma brings that up to me it's key then I just grab a spot let me go light especially at first testing the wood now when I first carve it creates two ridges so now I'm going to go to this Ridge see now I'm going to go now that bridge that carving created a rich to the right and over to the left I'm going to go back to the second Ridge though alright now I have another bridge in the middle with a met the ridges make the finest curls now angle of knife light goes straight on the curls not going to go to the side it's going to stack on top of itself see that I just curled right on top of itself Disick a fiddlehead tangle my knife it's going to go way off to the side can you guys see that you can see that right okay I tend to not do the opposite it does the same thing goes that way I tend to not do that because I tend to cut a lot of curls off when I do that I dig my my belly my believe right into what I've already created and I've lost a lot you can do it to use front so the opposite way see how much this way okay I don't like to rush this take my time now when I pull the blade out well straight out and I won't cut off curls because essentially what I'm doing is I'm going into a layer I'm picking it up for making a curl I'm underneath every layer of every other curl come back and I dip underneath and I go underneath that last one I just made if I come up I'm going to sever those and lose if I just go underneath and slide out continue and I don't get breakage all right you can please kind of stick on there and off you go [Music]