Beginners Knife Safety Part 2

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

afternoon folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school and what I'd like to do today is continue in our basic knife safety series with part two and today we're going to talk about a few other tasks that you may need to use your knife for in the bush and for crafting and how to do them safely and we're going to start off with some up-close carving work that you may have to do in case you're trying to put a fine point on something you're trying to define carving and you get up close and personal with that piece of wood and you really can't do that from out here with the knee lever or off to the side of the triangle of death and you really got to get up close and personal with it and do some finer work so we'll talk about that first okay so the first technique you're going to use today is called the scissor cut and again this is a very controlled way to carve the wood or shape the wood and again we're going to use the 5-11 series knife I believe this is one of the best starter knives that Mora makes it's got a good finger guard on it so it's good for youth they're not going to sneak up there and slip up on the blade it's a very inexpensive knife it's less than 12 bucks just about anywhere you buy it so it's affordable now what we're going to do is we're going to hold that knife in a fist grip and we're going to rest our thumb either on the back of the blade or at the base of the handle depending on what we're doing with this knife if we're trying to take mass amounts of material off we want to rest it down here on the lower third of that blade and scissor it using our thumb as a fulcrum and when you scissor cut you're taking advantage of that blade in its true cutting form because you're using a longer area of the blade in a slicing motion you're not whittling with push cuts like this Flay on the knife everywhere and doing single push cuts you are using the entire length of the blade for that stroke to scissor that material off of there and if you sneak up here on the tip of it you can do the exact same thing in the belly area or in the tip area to get very finite shavings if you're trying to do detailed work and it will work exactly the same that way so those scissor cuts again are a very controlled method of removing material and they can be used for massive some material or they can be used for very finite carving but it's very controlled and anytime you've got that knife under control you lessen the chances of injury okay so let's talk a minute about processing materials for fire and how we can safely do that with our knife well first of all if we're looking for material to make fire with it's going to be something hopefully that's dead already we're not going to have to cut a tree down although we can cut a tree down with our knife we'll talk about that later in this segment but we have a Down tulip poplar branch that's laying across this creek bed right here that gives us a pretty good chance of having enough material to at least create a sustainable fire one end of it is down the west's and the other end of it's in the bank but the majority of it is suspended above the creek level so that's going to be probably dry wood so we'll collect that take it back to camp and I'll show you how to process that down into fire material okay so the first rule of knife safety is don't use a knife unless we have to so if we can break this without a knife that's what we're going to do to begin with into manageable pieces now you can see this bark stripping off this piece of wood and we're going to want that so we want to collect that up to use for fire material later because this will give us a great bird nest when the time comes now let's break this down a little bit more manageable for splitting if we can

any thing I can step on it snaps is going to be a great candidate for fire material okay so now that we safely collected some material we broke it down to more manageable pieces to process for fire material we're going to have to start using our knife at this point and the knife we're going to use for this is going to be the bushcraft black and the difference in the bushcraft black and a more crafting style knife like the 5-11 is that it's a heavier blade it's got a 90 degree spine on it and it's made to be abused a little bit more than a crafting style knife it's built with heavier construction a little bit more tang inside the handle a different handle material and it's got a good grip on it it's got a bit of a guard on it here it's very very comfortable in the hand and again it's got a little bit larger and thicker blade to give it a little bit more robust ability when it comes to abusive tasks like processing wood and there's going to be times you're going to want to but on your knife you may not have an axe you may not have a saw and your knife may be the only tool that you have and there are proper ways to do it and improper ways to do if you improperly baton your knife or you baton it through material that you have no business trying to process by the limitations of that tool you're going to break that so I'm going to show you now how to use this tool to baton smaller diameter materials of softer wood like this tulip poplar in a safe manner that are not going to damage or hurt this knife at all stay with okay so we've got this wood broken down now into larger material that we can manipulate a little easier standing this on end is not a good idea to try to baton this because it's so long but trying to break it again is going to force us to probably put it up against something like a stump and then snap it with our foot again we really don't have to go to that much trouble because what we can do is just find another piece of hard wood in the wood that's some deadfall piece of wood you can do ever you want in the beginning because you can use that baton to cut a proper but time we'll talk about that in the next segment of this video but once you get this down to where you need it to a manageable size you can't put it out here where you can work with it a little bit and use this as a splitting tool and you can come in here and put the belly of that knife in the material give it a couple taps until you drive it into the material and turn the material sideways and that will split that material out you can then make a smaller piece of wood and you can do that same thing over and over again until you get what you want

again this knife is being controlled the entire time and now when I get these things to a shorter length they're easier for me to snap with my hand to get them to fire material length material I don't have to stand it up on in I'm just putting the belly of the knife right into the wood and smashing it down if I don't get an even split or I've got a knot right there I'll go right behind the knot and do it again and split it off and now I've got myself manageable pieces and I can do that for every piece of wood that I broke down now I can continue that process making more finite pieces of material to get the components that I need of kindling and fuel once I get to that point I'm going to want to process some of this material to use for actual tender now there's two ways I can go about this tender making I can again use my knife the way I did before outside the triangle of death and make feather sticks by doing fine carving work pulling the knife pulling to work toward me and holding the knife still but the advantage to this bushcraft black in this 90 degree spine or so that I can use it like a spokeshave approximate irreal and conserve the resource of the sharpness of that blade and you notice when I split that wood I use the belly and the most-used portion of this blade is going to be this one-third area right here so that's the area that I really want to conserve the sharpness of on this knife so what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to come up here and put this on a solid handling surface and push down like this and create shavings like this by rotating the wood and pushing the knife straight down and I'm just going up and down up and down up and down I don't have to get in a big hurry with it I can just keep rotating the wood and collecting that material now the next step in this process is the bark itself and I can do this a couple of ways I can't put this bark on a flat surface and use the back of my knife to scrape this material up I can use the blade of my knife but using the blade of my knife is going to again compromise that resource if I've got a good material bark here that's got a lot of fine fibers in it when you tear it apart you'll be able to see those fine fibers I'm better off just doing this with my hand and I can just wring it like I'm wringing out a rag just like this and that will knock all the outer bark off and expose all of those inner fine fibers those inner fine fibers are what I'm going to want to use for my tinder bundle or my bird's nest depending on my combustion method but as far as my knife goes I don't have to use my knife too much to process this unless I got something that's really stubborn then I might take it to scrape off the back like this and scrape the back of the bark off to expose nothing but the fibers I may also do something like that if I were trying to make cordage out of this material to expose those fibers to be able to make cordage with because then I can pull those fibers out at chunks or Hanks and I can use that for me

Cordish so I may use my knife in that manner but generally speaking for tender sources you really don't need to compromise anything on your knife or take a chance on even using your knife it's better off in the sheath for this process all right so once we've got our material process that we've made our tinder bundle or a bird nest again depending on how we're going to ignite the material in this case we're going to use a ferrocerium rod because I want to talk to you about the proper way to use a knife safely for Ferro rod ignition and that's the advantage that you have with knives like the bushcraft block having that 90 degree spine on the back of them allows them to remove material easily from a ferrocerium rod and when ferrocerium rods you want the biggest rod you can get in diameter and the longest length you can get because the pretense of how this works is removal of material that combust so the more time you have or the more contact time you have with the material and the larger surface area you have of that material the more you can remove an emergency resource like a ferrocerium rod which is not something you use every day which is a misnomer I guess in the bushcraft community today everybody thinks this is the way you start a fire you know cigarette lighters no way you start fire this is an emergency resource so I want this thing as soft as it can be and as big as it can be because I want to remove the most material off this thing with one strike as I can to give myself the best chance of combusting a marginal tender bundle in an emergency but they're safe ways to do this and there's unsafe ways to do it the worst way to do this again is flailing the knife around trying to throw sparks off of it pushing the knife in front of you because what's going to happen is if you are directing your sparks into a tender bundle and you're pushing away from the rod you're inevitably going to hit your tinder bundle with your hand and spread it everywhere so there's two ways that you can do this you can't bury this pair of rod on a solid object and scrape down into the material or you can't pull the rod away from the knife blade holding the knife blade still which is what I prefer to do because that keeps everything safe I'm pulling this hand away from the blade so there's no chance of me getting in contact with the blade edge of my knife and I'm not moving this hand so there's no chance of this knife going anywhere else the knife in control is a safe knife so let's take a tender bundle and we'll demonstrate that ignition method for you and how to use a Ferro rod safely so again I like to get as close to my material as I can get with the rod you want to find a good clean striking surface on the rod that you've got any oxidization off of before you start otherwise you're just messing around you're not going to get a lot of good sparks off this thing until you remove the oxidization and that's normal if this thing sits over time once you get that you want to come up here and I usually put my knife right here backing off on this side so I'm outside the triangle of death with this knife and I come in here and put the knife up against and I hold this a little bit of an angle you're using the edge not the flat to strike this Ferro rod you're using this angled edge that's at a 90 degree angle that gives you a little bit of a burr on there and you're going to pull the rod up and away to remove material

just like that now you may get to a point where you want to put a notch in a stick

whether that be a log-cabin notch a v-notch a seven notch whatever the case may be and much of the time but awning is the easiest way to make that shearing cut to start that notch so instead of trying to push down on the material and rock back and forth to make that shearing cut I can come in here with my baton and make that initial shearing cut again keeping the baton and the blade centered on the material drive it down into the material pull the knife out and then use that scissor type cutting motion to come in here and remove the waste let's start that notch very controlled very easy if I need it deeper I can go back in there with the baton again to make it a little deeper but that is probably the most controlled way of making a notch that's very simple and then you can just clean things up by rocking in the notch like that to clean up your seven first tool that you want to create we talked about in our fire segment which was a baton and a baton is something that you need to understand how to make a proper baton ax handle length is what I tell people make that thing ax handle length and make that thing as big as your wrist something that you can get your hand all the way around so it's comfortable and you can close your hand on it I got pretty big hands but something you close your hand around if you had to you could carve some of that off to make a comfortable grip but you want it made out of hard green wood if possible so you may have to pick up a marginal baton to create a good baton but creating a good baton should be the first wooden tool going back to my wooden tool series my five wooden tools

the baton should be the first tool that you create in any camp environment or any emergency for that matter if you get stuck with nothing but your knife if you have an accent of saw you don't need a baton obviously if you only have a knife the first tool you should create should be a baton and a baton comes in handy and camp even if you have an accent of saw for lots and lots of things from pounding and steaks to hitting the back of your axe use it for a splitting wedge there's lots and lots of things that we can talk about on that but that's another video altogether so let's go out and harvest a baton by cutting down a piece of green wood with our knife alright again you may have to pick up a marginal baton to create your first baton so just find yourself something dead and down that's a hard wood like a cherry or something like that that's sitting out here dead that you could push over break off or maybe it's even laying on the ground and find yourself a sapling like this chicory right here that's going to fit the bill of being about wrist size and you can cut it down to the length you need by batani and we'll talk about that right now alright so we've selected our tree here let's kind of get anything out of the way in the way come up here and knock off any branches that are away now we've got that done we can start to baton this tree and well I would suggest to you is that you come in depending on which hand you are and you keep the tree between you and the blade of the knife and you want to keep that knife about in the middle of the blade when you're doing this that way you're never smacking on the handle you're always smacking center of the blade especially if you have a non full tang knife like this bushcraft block again proper batani will keep you from breaking the knife if you start to smack that knife down here at the area where there's reduction in material to create the tang that's when you take a chance on breaking the knife or breaking the grip of the knife which is a hard plastic to begin with so you want to keep any pressure and shock on the blade of that knife so if you come in here and you keep again keep the tree between you and

knife put the knife at an angle and give yourself a couple good looks down into the tree move around and do the same thing again move all the way around the tree in beaver chief fashion until you've done it 360 again I'm keeping the tree always between me and the knife once you've done that you should be able to push it over and you'll have a flower shaped pattern there if you didn't quite get deep enough you may have to put another cut on it but probably if you didn't pick too big of a tree you'll be able to get it off there if you have to you can always come in at that point with your knife put that last cut in there get it off of there now you can take this and you can lay it up on here if you want to repeat the process here to make that baton to length right folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance out--there's in the pathfinder school and I appreciate Joey for these couple videos on basic and knife safety for beginners in the craft I appreciate your views and I appreciate your support I thank you for the thing you do for school for family for business although our sponsors instructors affiliates and friends and I'll be back with another video as soon as I can thanks guys