Beginners Knife Safety Part 1

Description

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

only folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school and what I thought I'd do this morning is shoot a very quick and basic video on knife safety and this video can go along with the two videos that I shot recently about simple knife projects and I kind of put the cart before the horse there I guess for people who are actually new to bushcrafting or use that are new to knife use and there should be a knife safety video that's kind of a prelude to those videos so I thought today I would shoot that video so let's first talk about what type of knife to start out with for someone who is not used to doing this type of work and not used to whittling and carving and things like that with their hands and a knife because there's certain knives that are better for the task than others and a knife that you want to use for craft work hence the term bushcraft is not the same as what you would consider a survival knife okay there is a difference there in my opinion in a crafting knife is something that has a smaller blade when I say smaller I'm talking probably four inches or less it has a fairly thin blade as far as the blade width it also has a fairly narrow blade as far as the thickness of the material that blade is made from it doesn't necessarily have to be full tang because it may not be used as a survival knife but it needs to be light in the hand comfortable in the hand ergonomically comfortable for you to use so that you can use it for extended periods of time it needs to hold a good sharp edge and a couple of knives that I could suggest to you really quick off the top of my head if you wanted to get into a knife that was more of a survival slash bushcraft knife or something that you may be able to use for more of an emergency tool if he needed to because you didn't have a saw an axe you could go with something like the Pathfinder scorpion this is a one-eighth inch blade so it has a fairly narrow blade width it has a fairly narrow profile as far as the width goes which makes it good for fine carving tasks and it has a Scandinavian grind it has about a four and a half inch blade so this would be on the upper end of knives I would say would be good for crafting work but it's a good

round knife and it is full-tang with walnut handles so it's a really good knife it feels good in the hand ergonomically to me and it's a very good knife for doing crafting type work if you want to get into a lesser expensive knife to start your quest in bushcraft there's nothing wrong with that and there are plenty of knives out there you know for 20 dollars or less like mora and the more a companion is probably one of the better knives on the market for that right now because it kind of fits in that niche of bushcraft it's got the nice 4 and 1/2 or 3/4 blade on it scandinavian grind fairly thin blade thickness and width and it's got a good ergonomic me comfortable rubberized grip on it a good heavy duty plastic sheath and there's nothing wrong with the sheath right out of the box i have modified mine somewhat and then i have a sail needle taped to the back of it part of my 5 tool rule is something that you can punch and lace fabric with and then it also has just a rubber o-ring slit inside here on the belt loop area for more retention in the bush there's no way that thing's ever going to get lost but i've never had one of these fall out of the sheath without that retention either so this companion in carbon steel is a very very good knife now it doesn't really matter for crafting work whether you have stainless steel or whether you have carbon steel or whether you have laminated steel any of those will work it's really a matter of personal preference for you I know a lot of fine craftsman that would rather have carbon steel because you can get a better edge on carbon steel and it's easier to resharpen carbon steel than it is stainless the flip side of that is stainless doesn't take as much to maintain and once you get it sharp it holds that sharp edge for a very long period of time so there's schools of thought both directions for that and I would say that for a crafting knife whichever one you choose it works best for you is great you can also go with something especially if you're dealing with youth you can go with something more along the lines of the 510 or 511 series Morris which have a nice guard on them right here so that you can't slip up on the blade they have a nice y barrel grip on them typical to amaura they have a nice about a four inch blade on them with a really thin profile and I Scandinavian grind this is a really really good crafting knife in fact it's one of my favorite crafting knives of the more line and it's cheap this thing is like 10 12 bucks again I've just put an o-ring on mine for extra security but the versatility of these morsi's as far as how you can wear them where you can put them where you can stick them and stash them makes them a very good choice for this kind of stuff if we're a beginner that doesn't have a lot of money you know more is definitely the way to go because they're inexpensive and they're quality quality knife alright so we're going to use this knife in our demonstration today and the first thing we're going to talk about a couple things is knife safety in general in your area and personally okay the first two things that I teach my students well one of the first three things is first of all is how to grip the knife and you grip the knife with a fist grip like you're holding a hammer or an axe with a fist grip is how you hold the knife you don't want your thumb hanging out up here you don't want your fingers hanging out over the guard you want a good fist grip on that knife and that's going to give you good control and good safety the next thing you need to remember is what's called the blood circle and the blood circle is anywhere at least within 180 degrees of your work area but really more like 360 of anyone that could walk into your area where is generally in your proximity when you're working with a knife that is your blood circle you want to make sure that no one's within that blood circle while you're working with your knife were you to flail off on something like this which goes back a lack of control but if it were to happen you don't want someone in your blood circle that can get cut the next thing is called the triangle of death and the triangle of death is this area right here between your groin and your two femoral arteries you don't ever want to be doing work in that triangle of death with your knife you always want to stay in front of or outside that triangle of death when you're working with your knife because you can bleed out very quickly from a femoral artery injury if you sever that artery and groin injuries bleed profusely as well so you have to be very careful with that if you remember those three things you've got a good start

okay so let's talk about for a minute working with a piece of wood now I like to turn sideways to work a piece of wood and generally speaking I like to draw the wood toward me and hold the knife stationary so if I hold my knife in that fist grip and I'm trying to reduce this material I can control that knife very well by keeping it in a stationary position I don't have any choice or any chance of that knife flying off anywhere or going anywhere and everything I do is going to be easily controllable and when I'm making something like a feather stick this is really the way I prefer to do it is to do it in a brace position like this now you can also brace this thing on something and do more of a sheer cut but remember that a knife blade is a slicing motion they're not made to do push cuts now you can do push cuts with them but they're made to slice if you take a knife and you put it on your skin and you push it down and will cut you but as soon as you move it just a hair it's going to slice you open so you have to remember that and when you are cutting material if you use the entire blade of that knife to cut with like this you're going to get those fine kernel shavings better than you're going to get them if your push cutting and if you draw that material towards you you can draw it up the blade just like this and rotate the material and that will work just fine but any of this will work now let's talk about just a push cut a push cut is used to remove material so if I'm going to push material off that push cut straight down toward the ground is going to remove massive amounts of material fairly quickly I can push cut that material off there to reduce this fairly quickly if I want to

okay now let's talk about what's called the knee lever type grip and what you're going to do is you're going to put your leg up like this so that you're outside the triangle of death again and you're going to hold the knife against your leg like this on the outside so if you're right-handed we'll be on the other side and then you can manipulate that wood towards you to either push cut or to define slicing motions by dragging it up the blade like this again you're holding the knife stationary so you don't have any chance of slipping off I like anything that will hold a knife stationary when I'm using it I would rather do that than to be doing this if I'm doing this I don't have control I don't have even pressure if I pull that material toward me it gives me a more even pressure across the material it gives me finer control to get smaller slices if I'm trying to do fine work and it's much easier to do that than it is to try to hold this thing and move the knife to get those finer cuts at least in this manner if you're trying to if you're actually carving when you're cutting towards yourself that's a whole different scenario when you're doing wood carving those are different than basic knife use in basic knife use you're not going to cut towards yourself most of the time so being able to control that material to get those fine cuts and keep that blade in one particular spot is going to make things much more effective for you and you'll be able to do the task easier than if you're trying to push the knife all the time it's not really a whittling motion it's manipulating the material and you can do full-on push cuts the same way by pulling the material straight up the knife just like this and you can get those same results that you could get the other way but you can do it with a knee lever so you're holding the knife against your knee from a seated position just like this okay okay so the last cutting technique that I want to show you as far as a basic beginners cutting technique it's called the chest lever grip the chest lever grip you're going to take that knife that you have all this time and you're going to turn it around 180 degrees in your hand like this so now the blade is pointing towards you all right and you're going to hold it away from you like this so you're going to turn the blade out the material goes on the other hand and you're going to bring it in front of you like this and you're going to do this and you're using your chest muscles and your back muscles to remove massive amounts of material just like this and this is best for exactly that removing mass amounts of material if you're trying to you carve a tent stake where you've got to get rid of a lot of material pretty quickly to get down to a point or if you're trying to carve a fireboard horn a fire board or a fire hearth those type things work really well for this okay it's pretty controlled it keeps the knife in one spot it's not flailing around but it's removing removing mass amounts of material you're not going to get real fine cuts off of it although you can but if you try to get too fine with it you're not going to be actually using your back muscles you're going to be trying to control the knife with this hand and kind of just do this with your wrist instead of actually using those back muscles this is a mass material removal position alright so that gives you three knife positions you have the normal position of using the knife right here right beside you outside the triangle of death you have the knee lever which is in front of you and you're actually on the ground and you're pulling that material toward you and then you have the chest lever which is here removing mass amounts of material like this okay okay folks on Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the pathfinder school when this has been part one of our simple knife safety series I'll get a second part of this done as

well I will cover a few other knife holding and knife cutting techniques as well I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I thank you for the thing you do for our school for family for business all of our sponsors instructors affiliates of friends I'll be back the other video as soon as I can thanks guys