Wood Carving & Crafts: Bushcraft Fire Lighting Set

Description

I made a Bushcraft Fire Lighting Set for a 50th birthday for a subscriber called John. This is a full set including a bow drill set, flint and steel, marcasite, ferro rod (fire steel), Tinder pouches, Far wood, tinder fungus and leather patches and sheaths.

MCQBushcraft:

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Video Transcription

hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to another video in this video I'm going to present a gift to somebody out there somebody who I was commissioned to make something for on behalf of one of their relatives a lady contacted me a couple of months ago and commissioned me to make a full fire kit I have lots of items that she specifically requested for a gentleman out there john cummings it's John's 50th birthday today on the 15th of August when this video is released and John if you're out there I hope you like the present that I made you it's all thanks to to Nina who commissioned me to actually make it and I've spent a great deal of time working on it making sure everything's absolutely perfect and I've even thrown some extra stuff in there for you as well so for those of you watching this video this video is a bit of a presentation for John there just to show him this kit show him everything I've made him so he can understand the kit properly because there's a lot of items in there and if you just receive it as it is it might seem a bit confusing unless you're really really honed up on your bushcraft skills so John I hope you enjoy this video I hope you like the kit we're going to explain everything in it so hopefully you'll get an idea of how to use it so this is the full kit I've made you and there's a lot of different items here each one of these pouches has something in as well so that's kind of really what I needed to explain to you because there's a variety of things in there that you might not be sure how to use but you can kind of see the gist of it really in terms of what you've got if you've done a bit of bushcraft and some of these items will ring familiar for you but let's start with what we can visibly see and then I'll get the pouches open one of the small items that I've made few is this patch here this is my logo here the MCT bushcraft logo from the channel and it's a four and a half centimeter by four and a half centimeter leather logo three mil thick it's pretty punched so you just need to get a needle and thread and stitch it onto any garment you like you don't need to actually push the needle through it because it would be very hard to do that with such thick leather so it's all ready to go on a garment for you and that's been waxed and burnished so it should fend off the weather for you as well and the same applies to the the Ferro rod here this is a very Syrian rodder a five inch by half inch a very large one with a really nice piece of red deer antler at the top handle there as a particularly special one that I made and thought it would be perfect for you and I've polished it so you can actually see your face and it's very very shiny we've got a leather sheath they made from the same leather as the patch stitched with red thread and that's all burnished for you as well but to open it up you just pull this cord here it will be a bit stiff because obviously it's new it will loosen up in time and that just comes straight out there like that and obviously this will stay on your belt and there's the ferrocerium rod really lovely bit of antler that and some nice strong cord as well and the knots are actually stitched so they can't come undone unless you cut the stitch so I've punched straight through both sides of the cord stitched it up with with a very thick thread so it can never come undone you know not just gonna suddenly find one day that it's all coming on and you've lost your ferrocerium rod it just goes in like that the loop goes round you just pull the tab like this as I say it's a little bit stiff because it's new but that will stay on your belt belt and it goes up that way so it doesn't hang upside down I used to have one like that but they go up that way like that or else you get too much of this sticking up and it can interfere with your belt so that's a nice very Syrian rod for you I've included a striker as well I've just put this on a separate piece of leather and you can attach it to the end of this if you want to we'll put it on a separate clip and that's really just because you might not be comfortable with striking it with a knife I am and I much prefer that using the back of my knife it's not just a gimmick I actually do prefer it quite a lot I think of you've got much more control and strength in a whole hand than you do in fingertips and I prefer it that way but you've got a striker there just in case you find that more comfortable another piece of fire lighting kit that you have is a flint and steel kit there is a little bit of iron varieties in there but I wasn't able to source you a particularly good piece so you might have difficulty with it but let's see how you get on you can always let me know but it's just a small leather bag to keep this kit contained and I've lined it with a nice bit of suede as well so you can actually take that piece of leather out and lay it down and use it to put things on if you want to keep them dry but it's one by sharp designs it's a very very nice steel striker and you have a piece of iron varieties as well or marcasite as I should correctly call it this is a very very small chunk you can actually see the oxidization in there and you can clean that up and shine it up and you can get sparks off of it they won't be particularly hot but if you're feel skilled enough and you take enough time with it you might be able to light some of the tinder that I've gave you or given you but this one will produce some good sparks I put a few pieces of Flint in there for you I have some more pieces to pop in just before I send this out you can see some nice sparks there to that kit is ready for you to use it's a nice little wave of keeping your flint and steel kit I didn't want to put it in with all the other stuff because it tends to rattle around in the bits of flint Kanna can actually damage things so you've got a flint and steel kit in there if we if you wish to use one and you can just loop this up pretty easily just like that

another way of making fire that I've I've provided you here is a with a bow drill kit friction fire set in the form of bow drill one of the methods used for friction fire but I've designed the bow a little bit differently it's actually a walking stick as well as a bow it's quite long I'm not sure how tall you were John so I've just made it a little bit longer than mine I'd normally have a bow for myself it usually come from the center of my chest to the end of my fingertips there and that would be a nice length for me so it's a couple of inches longer and it's suited for about somebody from about five nine to six foot in terms of a walking stick so hopefully this will be OK for you so you can carry it around the woods as a stick as well probably pretty good for bashing stuff as well and this is a nice bit of hawthorn here and came out very well actually it came out really nice very smooth at any age with time as well get better with age or smoothen off and and as you use it will actually look nicer but in terms of the actual half and the drill I've got you some hazel and some poplar here so you've got a nice bow drill set there I do have some cord for you to go on this the cord can be strung on quite easily you can just pop the cord over the actual bow like that and it just goes over the ends there just like this and I've adapted that so it actually fits this drill quite nicely you can hear that there so nice nice noise yes hasn't been waxed yet either so when it arrives to you it actually be waxed as well but probably the nicest part of the set is the bearing block it's the end of some red deer antler a very large antler that I managed to get and I've mounted a copper Cup in there and hammered it so the actual drill will stay central when it's spinning in there and he shouldn't really affect this too much because the way I've put it in it should be pretty permanent really but it's very very comfortable and it's designed to go in your hand like this actually sidon like that so you place it in like this so this slanted part is on the outer of your hand on your left hand if you're right-handed on your right hand if you're left-handed so you would operate the bow with your dominant hand and it could be in your hand just like this if we move into the Tinder's now that you can actually use with some of these fire lighting methods I provided you with a range of Tinder's these two here are very resinous and they're from conifers this is fat wood if you watched any of my videos you'll be familiar with what fat wood is this is the resin escora larch tree and the wood is infused with resin it can be scraped and lit with the ferrocerium rod and it's very good for wet weather conditions and I've put a leather tag on it for you so you might be able to hang it off of a belt for example if you wanted to carry it with you as an emergency bit of kit if you are struggling to make a fire another item is this pine pitch here on a leftover piece of red deer antler that was used to make the bearing block and the fire steel will come from the same animal and you can see a huge lump of resin on the end of that bit of antler there the actual piece of antler you might want to use for other things as well you might be able to do something with the tip of it and use it for actually working with flint for napping but that might be something that will come later on down the line you can source your own tools for it but this is a huge bit of resin mixed with beeswax it's also mixed with rabbit droppings and charcoal and it's a really lovely texture quite supple actually and when you heat it up you can really work with it but it makes a fantastic glue and it also can be used to exaggerate a fire or perhaps agitate a fire to make it burn even brighter but I've put it in this little leather thing for you because it's very messy stuff and you know it's a it's going to get all over your other things there if you put it in the same bag as some of your other Tinder's it will just consume them and they're on warm days it can be a can be really bad actually it gets quite soft so it does need to be contained in its own little leather pouch this is a nice English tan pouch one of the extra ons I put in and the reason I put these extra ones in is because they're really needed to control some of the Messier sharper stuff that can just affect all the other tenders and ruin them it all looks nice on display but you want a degree of practicality to it but these are cramped walls and you can see already they've dusted the inside of this Tan pouch quite considerably and that is just what they do so we've got some good ones here there that's a really nice one probably one of the biggest I've found in a while but cramp ball is a dialed in ear concentric as the correct name it's a type of funky gross predominately on ash not only actually found on other things as well but you'll find it in its greatest quantity on Ash dying ash trees all dead fall from ash trees and it's an amazing tinder and one matured and downed like these husks are here in the brackets done its job they produce an incredibly hot ember that burns quickly and can ignite tinder very easily tinder like this here you can put a spark in one of them and blow it into flame quite easily with this material here this is the main pouch that I've made you an extra large tinder pouch you've got a leather bracelet op it stretching and the toggle there stretching the leather of the holes there that's generally all it's for you've got a nice Road ear end point there as well not from the same antler as this obviously this is row much smaller deer finding the safe and this is red deer which is a bit further up north so if we just open that up for you it's a really nice strong leather this quite water-resistant so it should last you a long time but we have a range of Tinder's in here first of all something I've just put in more as a utility tool is beeswax and this is going to be used for your bowstring cord you can use it for other things as well and it can be used to agitate a fire make it burn brighter but I wouldn't use it for that it's a probably better use for your bow drill strings or any natural cords you choose to strengthen I've put some jute twine in there a type of natural cordage very nice to use good for nest material and can be used to practice with and I thought I'd put that in there really just to give you something to have a play around with one nice Tim that I've spent some time making and was this a Madhu here and this is from a type of bracket fungi called foams Foam antarious you

have to cut out the tram a layer of the bracket which is on the very top surface it takes a very long time needs to be boiled and processed and this is from the best part of the funghi so it's very very supple and it can be lit either with the ferrocerium rod which is pretty easy to be honest or the flint and steel kit which is generally a traditional method of doing it that and I am peratis although with iron varieties it takes a great deal of time and preparation you've never done it before you really need to practice it but incredibly rewarding and something that is really quite a historical way of making fire but yeah very nice a bit of a MIDI there some really nice pieces does behave better when charred but you don't need to do that necessarily if you want a bit of a challenge I've got a bracket fungi here this is Ganoderma Australia has many nicknames really and a lot of the Ganoderma share the same nickname artist bracket artist conch or conch lots of different nicknames for it but this is a nice little bracket this has a trammel air too and you can make a poor of substitute emoji from it in the safe but this can glow as one large ember if you get a cramp bull and you light a cramp bull with your ferrocerium rod or your flint and steel if you're skilled enough you can blow on the two together transfer the Ember from this to this and carry this and this can be used to carry fire for about an hour something of this size if you get moss and you pack it slightly damp moss and pack it into this leather bag and you push this in and draw it up it can be carried and it limits the amounts of what amount of oxygen that actually gets to it and makes it burn slower but you do run the risk of putting it out if it's not quite hot enough in the first place but we've also got some birch bark in here too some nice pieces of birch bark they came off a tree that was pretty much perfect really for harvesting bark off of I've got a lot more than this for you I just haven't brought the Bund light with me and I do have some more of these drawing for you too so you'll probably find those in there when you open this on your birthday so there are a lot more bits of bark to practice with you can scrape this and ignite it but this is really nice thick stuff great for scraping

you can burn the scrap so we've got a range of Tinder's in here and you can put all sorts of things in here if you wished it even the fat would even the scraper you can use this page to pretty much carry everything you're taking out with you although there is a lot more here than needs to be really for a fire kit this is a complete kit it's great for practicing with you can choose to take parts of it out with you if you wish so I hope this video explained everything well John I hope you understand the kit a bit better and the items that you've got and if you're interested on really how to use them and the technique behind it all just have a look for the fire lighting session on the channel there's videos on all of this sort of stuff even how to find it how to source it and process things when you actually find them in the natural world so it's not just about using it in like a classroom sort of scenario like this it's about going out and getting them and using them and what conditions they're in how they grow all sorts of things so um you know is a lot of detail on the channel if you if you do want to know it but I hope you enjoy the kit again a happy birthday from me I'm going to go home there get this packaged up and make sure it gets to you on time for today and hopefully you have got it today and for everyone else who's watching I hope you enjoyed this I've got many more crafts to come if you are interested and just ask me in the comment section I'll get back to you as soon as I can so thanks again for watching take care see you again soon