Axe Care Made Simple

Description

http://www.thepathfinderstore.com

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

afternoon Geist a camera at the Pathfinder school what I thought we'd do today is have a quick discussion about axes real quick and maintaining our axe in the field I've had a lot of questions about that and I thought while we were in this winter camping series this basic bushcraft knowledge series we would talk a little bit about that I've get quite a few questions about axes I've answered a lot of questions and past videos about axes but I've got two main axes that I carry and I carry them for two different reasons but I thought we'd talk a little bit about that today and then again how to maintain those axes in the field quick and expediently and then how to repair those axes or refurbish that axe once it gets a little bit more dull than it should have gotten maybe you made a mistake and you glanced onto a rock or something like that and put a neck into your axe there's ways to repair that it's hard to do in the field but in a Basecamp situation it's a little easier so let's talk about that stay with me we'll get started okay so let's first talk about Brandon's size of axe now as far as Brandon backs goes I'm going to say this irrevocably basically a wetterling's an SI wetterling's axe or a grand Spurs Brooks axe is going to be the best axe that money can buy for use by the woodsman anything else is going to be inferior to that so if you ask me in the comment section what about this action what about that axe I'm going to say refer back to when I said in the first 10 seconds to the video wetterling's grants was Brooks those are the axes that I prefer doesn't mean it's the best thing for you the two axes that I carry the majority of the time are the hunters axe which is a 19-inch handle and I carry a full size four stacks which is about a 23 24 inch handle and you can see the difference in these two axes side-by-side the handle is quite a bit longer on the forest axe the heads quite a bit bigger for just a camp situation short term in the winter time I prefer to carry a smaller axe I like to Hunter size axé if it's the bedroll perfectly it's about the length of your bedroll so you can slide into your bed roll it fits that really nice also fits well on the side of a pack frame on the back of a Roycroft frame with not much overlap in either direction so it's comfortable for that it fits down very well in the sleeve of the bushcraft pack the one is sold by Duluth pack company so again it's very good for that so that makes this axe just the right size for a lot of things it's got enough beef to it and heft to it that you can cut down any tree with it up to four inches with no problem process any firewood you need to four to six inches that you need to take care of in camp and you can also skin game with this axe if you need to and I have a video on YouTube skinning an animal with an axe if you want to go back and look at that video now as far as the forest axe goes or the full sized axe goes this would be the axe that I would prefer to carry in a longer term scenario if I had conveyance like a horse a canoe an ATV a sled something like that maybe even possibly if I were walking I would choose to carry something this heavy only because of the capability of this tool in a longer-term situation it doesn't matter you know whatever tree I'm going to have to cut down even if I were trying to build a log framed three-sided station camp type shelter this axe is going to take care of that for me

this axe is going to cut down any firewood that I need or trees that I need to cut down for a lawn fire scenario for an open-face shelter or anything like that this actually going to handle that so this axe is just going to handle a lot bigger wood than this one and the only difference is how much weight do you really want to carry and what are you going to be doing on the trip that you're on and that's important if you're just going to be bushcrafting you're going to be out for a week on a hunting trip whatever the case may be this axe is going to be fine for you if you're going to be out there longer than that or you plan on cutting some bigger trees down or you want something with some real beef to it in case you're getting that scenario then you want something like a full size four stacks myself I wouldn't recommend anything smaller than this now there are a lot of things written by greats like Horace Kephart like creps like a lot of those guys and a lot of them carried a smaller axe or hatchet with what they call the hatchet with them as well as something like this but again like in a situation where they had a conveyance so for me I like to split the difference because most of what I see written by them is they carried a small camp axe or can't patch it or they carried something like this and I think this 19-inch axe is a really good split two different split the middle type axe and this is probably the axe like carry the majority of the time this one being only used in the dead of winter or if I'm doing a class where I know I'm going to be doing a lot of heavy processing of wood things like that then I will carry this axe so let's talk about how we maintain these axes in the field or how we maintain them in a Basecamp situation to keep a good keen edge on okay so the tools for an axe to keep it maintained in the field are very simple a puck is really enough and this is a Lansky's puck it's got multiple grits one size coarse one size fine and again I use water with my stones I use I don't use a wheel with them I do use oil in this container to oil the ax itself with to make sure that doesn't rust and a rag but that's the only reason I use the oil for sharpening purposes I always use water it's easy to come by I don't have to worry about it it's not going to gunk up my stone oil gets really dunkey on your stone and sometimes it's hard to get the metal shavings and things like that cleaned out of it that clog up the pores if you're using water all the time then you can take it down to the creek and scrub it off with sand or whatever and we'll get this mail from metal filings out and it's not going to be mixing oil with water on the stone stick with water all the time it's much easier so let's talk first about the stone because this would be a backpack type item a backed backpack type maintaining item a file and a carborundum stone would be something more for a base camp or longer-term scenario so we'll talk about them last now one of the things that you want to remember about an axis you and I've got a Kydex cover on both of my axes and if anybody's asking about that or wonders about that we do have someone making custom Kydex work at the Pathfinder school named Brian Lemaster I'm sorry at self-reliance Outfitters at our retail location Indianapolis Indiana named Brian Lemaster you can call him up and if you send him your item he can make you a some Kydex axe face just like this one or axe covered just like this one um is I know somebody's going to ask me that question now what I like to do with a puck again I use water and I've just got a tub of water here and it's muddy water I'm not worried about that I'm not going out and trying to find the cleanest water I can find what I generally do if I'm just trying to hone my axe is I stand out axe up in front of me just like this and I start off with the coarse side of the stone and I will just find the angle just like I would with anything else and I'll rotate that stone in circular fashion just like this looking straight over the top of that blade so that I'm maintaining that angle keeping my fingers back on the stone so I don't slip down onto my fingers and get them on the blade out axe and again a lot of things I do are a little bit unorthodox and some people are not going to agree with it I already know that but in my experience this works for me once I've done that I'm going to run my finger over just to feel the edge I have no problem with laying that axe on the side just like this on a flat surface like a stump overhanging on one side and work in the stone in circular fashion this way either way will work whatever you feel most comfortable with that's what you should do either one of these methods will work fine for you and just rotate that stone in circular fashion trying to maintain that angle make sure you switch sides often so you're not causing a burr dip your stone every once in a while if you haven't let your axe get too dull you really don't have to get on that coarse side that stone for very long you clip it right over to the fine side and you can hear the difference between the fine side and the rough side with axes don't let them go guys it's you really want to keep that axe honed a lot you know there are have been several writings and I can't quote to you right up top my had an exact date when exact person that said this but it has been said by some pretty good woodsmen that you should not ignore your axe to the point where it takes you know filin stones to get it back in shape in other words carborundum stones and files because at that point you're forced to I have to be at a Basecamp scenario or I have to get back to the civilized world or my camp or my cabin or my house or whatever the case may be to get to those implements because I'm probably not going to be carrying them in my pack or it's very easy to carry something like this puck right in your pack and it doesn't take that much room and generally with an axe I'll give it the same test as a knife I'll put it on my nail I'll scrape my nail with it and if that axe head is removing fingernail without me pushing down with just the weight of the axe head that thing is plenty sharp no doubt about it and that axe is plenty sharp I can tell you plenty sharp and once I was done sharpening my axe I would first dry it off really well with a rag pushing away from the blades like this dry it off and then we'll just take a little bit of oil probably put it on the racks and run all over the place and I use olive oil for this because then I can cook with the same oil that I'm maintaining my gear with I don't have to worry about that if I decide I'm going to cut meat or whatever the case may be with my implements my axe my knife I don't have to worry about those petroleum-based products on my blades so I always use virgin olive oil to maintain my blades I get a lot of questions about that as well when I get that done I'll put the cover on it and move on to the next tool okay so now let's talk about the four stalks that you can see this thing's been out in the weather quite a bit and it's got some rust on it right now right here it's just surface rust it's not really hurting anything but it has not been maintained really well for a while so in this case we're going to use other implements now I'm never going to take a file and you always want to use a mill file a fine medium mill file for this but I'm never going to take a file to my axe unless I put a nick in it where I've got a rolled edge if I've got a rolled edge on there then I'm going to do the same thing I'm going to put that axe on the side of a stump and I'm going to remove the material when I feel that bite when I feel a biting into the edge that's when I know I'm taking out that nip if it's running across there really slick like that then I know I don't have to worry about it I don't have a nick in that blade but if I catch on something right there that's going to help me remove that nick same thing on the other side again it's running across there pretty smooth it's not really biting into the metal so I know I don't have any Nick's or burrs on that ax I don't have to worry about that the ax would have to be really really dull or maybe you just bought a new ax or something like that to really have to use a file on that ax you've had to let it go pretty bad now carborundum stone you can do the same thing with you can drink that thing in water really good let it soak up some water this is a fairly new stone that I'm going to use for this demo and it has a fine and a coarse side on it and I'm going to use it very similar to the way I use that puck I can either take it here and do it this direction like this looking over the top of my axe and maintaining that angle and then I can go to the other side and do the same thing just like that or I can lay that axe flat down on a surface like I did before hanging off the edge of a stump and I can run this stone right along the edge just like this just in strength strokes I see a lot of guys using the same type stones on their axe that they use on their knife that's not necessary a carborundum stone is great for an axe I basically went right to the smooth side of this and didn't even use the rough side because this axe isn't that far gone in other words it hasn't been beat up to the point where I think I need to remove a lot of material I just need to get the edge home back to where it belongs now as far as we're moving that rust in the wild or in a situation where you don't have sandpaper or something that you can rub that off there with just get yourself some fine grit stuff like clay or sand on a rag and scrub that thing down and then oil it up it just so happens that here in Ohio where I live I have got almost nothing but that type of soil I've got a clay base soil here that's pretty good thanks pretty good and sharp now once I did this I would go right back to the puck again for that final sharpening I always would go back to the puck but I like those circular strokes in the end but even just with that stone you know that thing man that thing is sharp look at that I think it's like a razor blade just with that okay so now what we're going to do is we're going to get our rag real quick and I know that all of this soil out here that I'm in is clay based so I'm just going to take some of this mud and I'm going to scrub this axe face just like this and that's going to remove that rust like I said sand will work for this as well but it's just like a polishing compound because of that clay so the clay works the best wipe it down and then I'm going to again put a coat of oil on there and that thing will be dandy this is just a piece of white oak I picked up off the ground I'm barely putting any effort into that whatsoever

okay so here's another soaking wet piece of oak right here laying out there in a damp fire pit overnight okay folks i'm dave cameron pathfinders going I appreciate you joining for this short video on how to maintain your axe in the field I appreciate everything you do for me for my school for my family I appreciate your views in your comments I thank you for everything that you do for everyone that's affiliated with the Pathfinder school and the Pathfinder program

I'll be back another video soon as I can't thanks guys you