Tools and Honing Discussion

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Tags: Dave Canterbruy,Pathfinder,Pathfinder School,Survival,Bushcraft,Camping,Trapping,Hunting,Fishing,Primitive,Search andRescue,SAR,Wilderness,Trekking,Archery,Hiking,First Aid,Boy Scouts,Scout,Scouting,Bow,Drill,Fire,Making,Shelter,Scout (Scouting),Outdoor Sports

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afternoon guys Dave Canterbury the Pathfinder school thought I would shoot a video today to answer a couple questions I've had lately on Facebook as well as YouTube on how to care for your tools in the woods one of the things that I want to talk about real quick with you before we start this video is you know what makes a good knife and you know I carry a Pathfinder knife that doesn't make it any better or any worse than the other knife just because the night that I carry and I designed but it has the design features that you need for a good survival knife or a good one tool type option I want to explain those to you because you can get custom manufacturing other people to make you a good knife but there are certain features that you want to make sure you have the first feature that you want in a knife is you want this thing to be you know four and a half to five inches in blade length and the reason for that is most of the material that you're going to process in a short term survival situation or self-reliant situation is going to be something around the four inch diameter is going to be the biggest log you're going to want to process or split down or cut and if your blades not longer than the log is in diameter then when you go to Baton through it you're not getting anything sticking out so once you get this buried in the log you have nothing to hit against except your handle okay you don't want to do that so you want to be out on the edge of this blade so that's why I say bigger than four inches maybe five five and a quarter up to six okay anything smaller than four inches is not going to give you what you need a chopping tool or your batoning tool anything longer than six inches really becomes a little bit more unwieldy and it's hard to do fine carving tasks with if I carry a large knife like that in a jungle situation like a machete or a bigger tool of some sort I've always got a smaller knife to back that up the other thing is very important with the knife is that it's high carbon steel the reason you want it to be high carbon steel is so that in an emergency situation you can find a rock with a hardness of 7 or above like quartz Flint's shirt things like that and strike sparks often this blade onto char cloth to affect fire if you have to the third thing I think is very important is that this knife is full-tang in other words the knife is made out of one solid piece of metal with the handles bolted to it that's a full tang knife that's very important because if you're going to baton of this knife we're going to be very rough with it you don't want it to break rat tail knives rat tail Tang style knives which means they just have a small piece of metal that's inserted into the handle sometimes capped off on the end like in the case of a K bar will break given the right circumstances same thing with more so you have to be careful with that the last thing that's very important with a survival knife of any kind is that it's not coded number one in any way shape or form if the knife is coated you're going to have to use the blade to strike sparks off of the pharisee Emraan or you're going to after you some type of secondary tool that comes with the pharisee M rod like a hacksaw blade or striker if you want to be able to use your knife and just carry a raw ferrocene rod you need a good 90 degree solid spine on this thing not beveled over a good solid shelf on there with a sharp spine and it cannot be coated in any way those are the things that I think make a good survival knife now one of the things that you know a good friend of mine named Abram Elias told me and I really kind of took this to heart and I thought about it and it makes a lot of sense and what he said was he said that you sharpen your knife one time and you hone your knife forever and that makes a lot of sense because every time you have to sharpen your knife you're removing material every time you remove material you are expending a resource so you want to keep this knife good and sharp which is why it needs to be high-quality same thing with the rest of your tools and then you just want to hone it every once in a while okay so what I do is I carry two tools with me most of the time for all two sharpening tools for all the tools that I carry the first one is I carry a small Baco

file okay and it has two different grits on it and this is good for things like your axe okay this would be a rough sharpening tool or something you put a nick in it or you did something heavy-duty damage to it or you used it for quite a long time without sharpening it this is a sharpening type tool okay but it doesn't weigh much so I can afford to carry it the second thing I carry is a Lansky's diamond rod that's retractable it folds out and screws in alright it has a diamond rod inside the sleeve that you can screw down the thing it doesn't go back in on you and then it has a set of carbide sharpeners on the backside

now in and of themselves these carbide sharpeners aren't worth a whole lot as far as I'm concerned for anything but if you have a multi-tool that's not going to have the highest quality blades on it anyway it's very good for sharpening your multi-tool blades we'll talk about that in a minute let's talk about this diamond rod okay this diamond rod does 99% of all the sharpening I do to my tools in the field okay it's very simple you can feel it bite into the metal you know when you've got the right angle and that's what's important is to maintain the right angle when you're sharpening okay and you just want to push it up onto the blade just like that

you'll feel a bite in just a couple strokes each direction and I've done it so much that I pretty much can do it you know with my eyes closed I know what it feels like the good thing about these is a lot of people will tell you never to sharpen towards your blade the reason they say that so you don't cut your finger open but this diamond rod because it has a sleeve on it if I were to go up into that I'm going to hit that sleeve before I'm going to hit my finger and that makes it ideal for me because I like to sharpen toward my blade a little bit sometimes just to knock the butt over bevel off level you sharpen on this side you're going to roll a bevel over when you do that by turning this over scharping toward the blade on the other side you're going to knock that bevel off okay

so that's the way I sharpen my knife very short easy strokes I'm not even pushing down on it hardly at all all I'm doing is honing this knife I'm honing the edge and I can feel when I'm biting I can feel when I'm not biting into it so I know when I've got the right angle and when I don't it doesn't take much to keep a razor edge on a knife alright as far as my axe goes I always carry a wetterling's axe what do I think makes a good axe any hand forged axe with a wooden handle in it is a pretty good axe okay anything else is inferior you want to make sure you can replace this handle in a wilderness environment if you have to if it's plastic or fiberglass you're not going to be able to replace it so you always want to wood handle you always want that high carbon steel forged head again you can strike sparks off of if you have to but it's going to hold a good edge for a long time same thing with diamond rod if it's really dull I'll use the file first then I'll use the diamond rod but I keep my axe really really sharp so I really don't have to do much other than stroke it with that diamond rod and I can hear it I know when I've got the right angle just like with a nine doesn't take near as much finesse as people think it does you just got to find the right angle feel when you're biting into the steel and that's all it really takes and I keep my axe just about as sharp as my knife this thing would definitely absolutely skin a finish and probably shave your own all right so let's talk about multi tools for a minute multi tools I've said this before you know multi tools come down to the tools themselves and the quality okay Leatherman is the best as far as I'm concerned bar none Leatherman is the best

unfortunately Leatherman quit making the Leatherman core and I think that's the best multi-tool that was ever made the reason I think it's the best is because it has most of the things on it you need and not very much that you don't okay what I think you need in a wilderness environment is a good file this one has a double-sided file I think you need a decent knife it does have a good straight non-serrated small pocket knife type blade that you can use for fine skinning and things like that on the other side it has a good flexible high carbon steel saw for cutting fine notches and also this makes a great striker for your ferrous iam rod if you don't have a good sharp 90 degree spine on your knife it has this serrated blade on it as well which I'm not real fond of but the good thing about having this diamond rod is it fits right into those serrations so I can sharpen necessary to blade for the most part with this diamond rod and I couldn't do that with a stone because it sits right into the foot into the serrations okay serrated knives aren't worth much to me in a survival situation they're more for cutting rope and strap things like that it's not a must-have the one thing that's a must-have on here on any multi-tool is a good all okay a good all with a hole in it so that you can drill holes if you have to so if you have to and things of that nature so if you've got an awl a file a good sharp knife blade a decent soft and a good pair of pliers you've got a good multi-tool but all of those tools need to be quality and for me you know Leatherman is the best quality out there now let's go back to this multi-tool for just a minute we talked about sharpening with those carbide sharpeners this multi-tool is the only thing I'd use those carbide sharpeners for but since they're there and they're part of the tool it makes it easy I can just set this thing down on the stump flat it's got a flat edge on the back of it take my knife and pull it through the carbide sharpeners and it will keep this smaller pocket style knife really really sharp where I'm not worried about having the finest edge in the world but at the same time I'm only going to use this for processing food may be fine carving like birds or small fish but it puts a razor-sharp edge on that thing in no time at all with those carbide sharpeners so it's really good for that so with these two simple tools of you know this Baco type file that i have here and this Lansky's diamond retractable diamond rod I have everything I need to keep all the tools that I carry sharp and honed in the field and it doesn't take up hardly any room in my pack and that's what's important to me so I hope you guys enjoyed this short video on you know some of the ins and outs of tools and sharpening I'm Dave Canberra at the Pathfinder school I'll be back with you on the next video thank you very much you