The Man with the Axe: Archery, Cast Iron Cooking, Splitting Axe Review and Respect for Women

Description

It gets warm in the cabin from my first 24+ hour fire in the woodstove while I chink the walls of the log cabin, cook a few meals, sharpen my knife by the fire, track animals through the forest and practice my archery skills on a target behind the cabin. I flush ruffed grouse while walking through the forest in the snow. Drone footage of the cabin in the snow adds perspective and shows the remoteness of the cabin and how vast the Canadian wilderness beyond the cabin is, especially since the forest and the ground is more visible with no leaves on the trees and a fresh dusting of snow. I finish the stone floor at the entranceway and under the fireplace as well and I need the long burning fire to keep it from freezing while it cures.

To answer many questions last week about the wood splitter I used to process firewood, I talk about it in more detail and explain where to buy it (The man with the axe). I have many axes, each with its own purpose, and this chopper1 axe is probably my most unique and singular in purpose.

In my weekly rant, I talk about respecting woman, why I like having strong women in my life and how Survival Lilly deals with the negativity and abuse she receives on her YouTube channel.

At the end of the video in my self reflections, I answer the question, “how did I get out of $750,000 of debt?”, and why it will never happen again.

Survival Lilly: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS4LBgyn1WLSojiQI4aPjtg

www.Chopper1axe.com

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My Self reliance, shawn james, winter camping, Bushcraft, Woodcraft, Survival, Primitive skills, Nature, EDC, Preparedness, Homesteading, Homestead, Camping, Fire, Self Reliance, Self Sufficiency, Living Off The Land, Off The Grid, Survival Kit, Bushcraft Kit, Campfire, Campfire Cooking, Bushcraft Breakfast, Fjallraven, Wild Edibles, Foraging, Life Hacks, Camping Hacks, Hunting, outdoors

Tags: Cabin,log cabin,off-grid,self-reliance,self reliance,tiny home,small home,shelter,bushcraft,survival,living off the land,homestead,woodcraft,woodworking,gransfors bruk,axe,pathfinder school,dick proenneke,cabin living,alone in the wilderness,joe Robinet,hygge,shawn james,tiny house

Video Transcription

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so seven o'clock in the evening it's been dark for put two hours now got pretty warm today and a lot of that snow start melting with but the temperatures start to drop big-time now cold front moving in it was nice to see the bit of sunset over the meadow as the clouds got pushed out but that brought in the cold air so it's going to get down to about minus 12 or minus 15 maybe today Celsius so this is the test of course I don't know about the chinking done so there's some air coming in to the cabin of course and I've been around the doors I haven't earned that yet but it's going to be pretty warm up stairs out imagine the loft when I go to bed because this stoves can be cranked part of the reason and to keep this thing going pretty strongly overnight is because that stone floor I want that to dry before the cabin cools down again and maybe freezes the the end mortar under the stone so I want to keep that going all night but because heat rises of course lofts gonna be quite warm I think but with the giraffe's especially away from the fire may be a big perfect temperature we'll see so tonight I'm having lots of vegetables got mushrooms onion and pepper and then I have a strip loin from grass-fed Dextre beef so this is strip loin from a grass-fed steer weight with 600 pounds and netted oh maybe a hundred and fifty hundred sixty pounds of lean meat and cost us about five bucks a pound so around 750 dollars we paid for it which included all the extras as well all the towel and the bones and stuff so I'm going to eat here a levian VTO upstairs in the law my way to bed after 8:00 so this is going to be an interesting night that um the wood stove is fired right up

it's full of oak not sure how long it's gonna last this would be the first time I've kept a fire going tried to kept keep a fire going all night so that's it for today at least good night I'll see you in the morning [Music]

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let's go look for some gross or white-tailed deer they're both open right now

deer season just closed for rifles on Sunday last week but both seasons open til December 15th this is what I really like to hunt them it's a lot easier to track them in the snow and I'd prefer to hunt on the ground with traditional equipment by stalking and still hunting other people don't like hunting in these noisier conditions like this when the snow is crispy but I actually prefer it I've shot maybe two dozen deer with a bowl over my lifetime and probably 15 of those have come from the ground while still hunting on days like this or when it's even noisier frosty snow reason for that is it slows me down I don't want to walking like a human just steady pace through the bush so I take a couple of steps and stop and listen so the two things happen the deer here that may think it's another deer so they often come to investigate I've had them as close as touching the arrow in fact with this bow had an arrow on leaning up against a tree like this on a well-worn trail and I had a doe walked by maybe 15 yards less than that probably 10 yards and then one of her fawns came walking up right along this trail right here and I'm literally against the tree like this and she came and brushed by the end of the arrow and I just want like this and touched her rump really really gently she still didn't know what I was there that I had done that she thought it was just a branch they walked continued on and then they turned around and came right back the fawn maybe I ended up five yards coming this way and looked at me a couple of times and never did figure out what it was the reason for that is that I always make sure I have the wind in my favor so that wind was coming this way and blowing my scent behind me so that was a pretty cool experience to have them not figure out what I was so the second reason is that I can hear the deer so they can hear me and they come and investigate but I can always also hear where they are I have really good hearing for whatever reason I think maybe it's not a physical thing I think it's just more that I'm in tune with the surroundings that I'm in and I can hear very very well when I'm out here I can distinguish between different animals like the sound of a squirrel walking through the snow compared to our leaves compared to a deer or a bear or moose or something and you would think that would be obvious but in fact the game is typically quieter than the smaller game the more gentle and more careful with their steps where squirrel just go scurrying through so I know that there's a couple of grouse that hang out in this area right here it's all hardwoods throughout the property and then all along these water bodies we get these spruce and balsam fir and hemlock thickets the deer and the grouse tend to stick to these areas in these conditions especially and when the leaves are all down they have no cover up in the hardwood so they tend to get into these hemlocks and and fur thickets so I'm gonna weave my way through here see if we can find it gross if I hear any deer in the in the background I'll pull out one of my broad heads and see if we can get close this is that flew flew feather I talked about when I sitting around the campfire when that grouse came and landed by me this slows the the arrow down in the air so if I was to shoot up in a tree or shoot at one flying it won't go very far this will land and hopefully not go under the snow because with these other kind of arrows they go under the snow now you saw these small game heads or target heads that I was shooting the hay bale with it's called a Judo point has those little little wire clips on it as well as a blunt head that has a little bit of shock absorption when that hits the target or hits the ground it doesn't dig in those wire prongs grab the ground and kind of flip the arrow up so you don't get deep penetration they're also really good for small game because they can

transfer the shock of the arrow to that animal and it doesn't pass through it so let's see what we can find is go for a walk before the snow gets too too heavy so as often happens with rough grouse hunting especially when they've been spooked a few times which I have spooked these in the past two sitting in the tree up above me I'm walking along the ground watching the ground and I didn't notice I'm sitting up the trees they just flew off they separated one went down there one went up here so probably worth following up on them see if I can get one pretty cold that winds starting to pick up - 9 Celsius right now she's probably not quite dressed warm enough especially with my hands to stalk slowly and silently I'll get to cold probably just concentrate on the grouse so we - up in the trees it could have been another one [Applause]

last week a lot of you guys had questions about this axe this splitter splitting maul whatever you want to call it that I was using to cut all that fire went up last week so this is what it is it's called a chopper one it's made in the US it was manufactured from don't quote me exactly I'll put the description below but and I had it on my Instagram account this week if you saw that no I think it was made in New Jersey from 1977 to 1989 I believe it was basically what it is it's a mechanical splitter so these little wedges here when you strike the wood these pop out and there's a spring in their spring both sides that pull these wedges back in place after they engage when they hit the wood and you've got then you've got this pin system here for the wedges to rotate on you know I'm not want to add complication to life in general and my tools in particular which is one of the reasons I use hand tools as much as possible but this thing from all accounts from what I've heard my experience so far is that they tend to last I'm surprised the Springs last as long as they do I've heard of people using these for many years without those things ever failing now the good news is you can actually get these online chopper one based on and demand I guess a lot of people ask me but it started manufacturing again I'm not sure when but if you go to their website chopper 1 axe I believe it's called or chopper 1 axes dot-com you can order these parts but you can also order new axes now as well so I'm going to reason I know that I was looking for parts and I thought I'll go in and find them and then have some in stock so I don't want to be stuck in the middle of or whatever I'm doing it need need two parts or although I have another splitting mole as well that's basically what happens when that bit of the ax bites in once it gets to this point that starts popping out of course with the wood on either side of it so what happens is this little tiny piece of the wedge forces that log wide open it's very very effective like you need far less downward pressure downward swing momentum to get that log to split so it's quite hefty it's a nice big handle on the thing so what I found is that you know the danger of splitting just swinging hard and if it glances at all it's coming back towards your chin I find that not quite the case with this because you can come down straight down on it now when you come straight down even a glance is usually gonna be sideways the danger with a typical splitting motion is that you're coming like this when you carry through and myths or glances off or even splits the wood and passes through it's coming back towards your shin the more you can come straight down and even if that means bending your knee bending your back and coming down with it then the momentum is straight down instead of back towards you that's the benefit of the long handle to shorter they handle on an axe or a splitting maul or splitter the more likely it is when it's misses to come back you can strike your shin or your foot a long handle when you miss it'll bury itself in the ground before it gets back to your feet so I do like that for this reason now this one I doubt that's the original handle I bought this from a guy online I didn't even mean to buy this I'd never seen one before I went to buy a a hewing axe off the guy when I show it up he had a whole assortment of axes laid out on his garage floor and I saw this one sitting there and I wasn't and gave me a pretty good price on it so I thought I'd give it a try so I'm very happy with it you saw me splitting last week I'll split up a couple small pieces just to show the action see if I can do it I'll close up just show you how that works I don't have my safety glasses with me actually I don't know where I put them but you should wear safety glasses when you're doing this as well I didn't come straight down on it really should come straight down this wedge is just starting to engage and already started splitting up now if you could see that see how the kind of bounce back out again that was that wedge Boateng him out bottoming out it was a very weak swing and it's still pretty well split it try that again with a very weak swing again see how pop creak back yet again so all the energy got transferred to that instead of into a bite got transferred into the splitting action so that's letting you a bunch of pieces hit it once from the other side and it'll split open because I was choked up on that ax it couldn't follow through too so chopper one acts like I said calm I think it is I think they're only like 80 bucks us or something like that I don't get anything for I just discovered it myself and people are asking about it so there you go alright I think that's it for this video it's uh getting very very cold actually starting to clear up finally

what's cold enough but now with no cloud cover and the Sun going down it's gonna get cold really fast so I'm gonna have to split up much more wood and get that fire roaring get to working on the floor inside so thanks for watching this one guys really appreciate it looking forward to seeing up through the cabin next week take care a great week you get out of the heat a little warm in there not that warm but it's warmer than out here that's for sure it's still about minus nine Celsius and like you've got a thermometer and there I'll check that I'm not sure what it is inside it depends where you are in the cabin it's nice and warm near the stove and up in the loft but for North Side especially where the gaps are it's kind of cool wanted to talk about something this week that is actually more of a rant than a than a reflection and it's a result of an interview I saw earlier this week by Canadian prepper who interviewed survival lily

yeah lily has a big YouTube channel based on survival of course she has almost 600,000 subscribers and I'm not sure how many videos she has a lot of videos and they're mostly skill related rather than trip related tutorials showing you how to do things and you know building a camp and so on and very very good tutorials she does a great job of explaining how to do things the concise videos don't drag on too long but one of the questions yes or ester of some very good questions one of them and have to thank her for this so he asked who she would choose to be on her team the shtf situation and she mentioned myself

Jill Robinette Doug outside and Cedric and no appreciate that it was pretty cool to be mentioned by her of course I would put her on my team - I think she's got a lot of skills but that's what I wanted to talk about because she is very proficient very skilled she has a nice personality and like I said she's very concise and gets the message across very quickly but the amount of hate she gets is unbelievable and it's actually despicable I see the comments that guys have written on her page and paste basically on every video I think she's had to disable comments because just so much negativity and it just makes zero sense if this guy was doing that same content putting it at that same content filming those same skills and presenting them on a YouTube channel they would get nothing but praise and the fact that she's a woman around I hate she gets for that it's just like I said it's actually a despicable I just can't believe guys in this day and age are still intimidated by strong women you know and I see the comments and I think you know is that the way you treat all women or is that the way you talk to your mother because I doubt it but you're but you're you seem to think it's okay to do it on somebody's YouTube channel and it's not just directed at Lily of course it happens to a lot of women that are in genres or your even trades and in the real world I've seen that on job sites you know a carpenter a woman carpenter or a woman a sheetmetal worker or electrician or something I'm not a disrespect that yeah it's just despicable I just can't believe guys are so insecure still that they are intimidated by a strong woman I'm married to a strong woman I'm proud of that and you know there's a joke about to go make my you know let me do that you go make a sandwich in the kitchen and Lily had a good response for that but just to think that women have certain roles that they in certain tasks that they have to do and men get to go off and do their own thing of course men being the stronger gender and in the past where that had more importance made sense that man went and did the more physical tasks like the hunting or the cabin building or whatever and the women did this stuff back at camp that made sense and and it still does make sense to a certain degree but if there's exceptions to that and they're strong women who want to do the things that we do then I don't understand why we have a problem with that as men so like I said I'm proud to be married to a strong woman who's not overly domestic and she was she here I'm not sure how she's gonna react to seeing this on camera but she more inclined to want to do things like

business rather than hose cleaning not that she doesn't do both but what I found is that by sharing the duties it doesn't reduce me as a man it just makes me to me more of a man that I can actually make a better life for my woman for my wife and for my daughter's marriage is work not because the woman's in the kitchen and doing the cleaning and the Manzo doing the physical labor or going to work to me marriages work because both partners are willing to put in equal effort no matter what the task is so if my wife is busy doing something like this a lot of you know she does a lot of the photo processing so if I take photos of the cabin or out on my trips or if she goes out with me and takes photographs she does the editing of those photographs and I do all the editing of all the film and I take all the film so when she's doing that that's great she's helping me do something that that's taking some of my time away so as a result I'm in the kitchen sometimes cooking or cleaning or doing other things that some people think are just traditional tasks for women if she was lazy if she wasn't carrying her weight and I was doing her job there's that I just repeated stereotypes so if my wife was doing other things like whether she was helping me out with a cabin or another project or like I said the photo processing or something else or the website management then and I'm helping out in the kitchen I'm not sitting back saying resentful because she's sitting on the couch while I'm doing these things and then going off to work or doing whatever else I'm doing building the cabin in this case so I'm proud of the fact that we share the duties that neither one of us is lazy and that comes from respect for one another as well I couldn't sit on the couch watching her work and she couldn't sit on the couch watching me work and feel okay about that that's not how successful relationships work and successful marriages so I wanted to just put that message out there I wanted hopefully for people to think before they make

negative comments nasty comments in somebody's YouTube channel who's out there doing something for I think for the good of people and I think the good as society I I see Lily passing on her skills of things that she's learned or that she's gone out and learned specifically so that she can present it on her YouTube channel to me it's very helpful that I can go to one place and I can learn how to do different things like a heated floor and a shelter that she did last week in fact that she was able to make a career of it I think is a great thing as well so many people dislike or give people a hard time for making money on YouTube which just I just cannot even understand I don't understand that mentality what makes somebody else's job more important than that job that Lily or other youtubers do for a living they're earning money by inspiring by teaching you skills by entertaining you much like an actor or an athlete or someone else in the entertainment industry or in the educational industry why should those people get paid and not somebody who does the same thing on YouTube to me that's fantastic that she's able to earn a living and dedicate all of her time to doing that so she can create great content for the audience so I commend her for that and I would like to see more of that I hope YouTube doesn't mess this up and they continue to pay the content creators so they can make a career of it and continue to bring that great content to us so that's my message for the week I know it it's not typical it actually is a rant and and it's something I feel strongly about I've been watching the comments on Lily's channel for a probably a year and a half and and I see the pain in her eyes when she's answering the questions and she's posting on her facebook the nasty remarks that she's had from people nasty comments and you know like everyone else he's got feelings too and why would you hurt somebody for what what do you get out of that I don't understand so that's it that's a little bit the Irish temper may be coming out this is a the way I feel I hate seeing people that are picked on I'm not the type to go to start a fight but I'm certainly not the type to back down from one either

and I see somebody in a weaker position or somebody who can't defend themselves in this case online then I feel strongly about stepping in and and trying to help out that situation so anyway that that's just who I am you

want to answer a question that a lot of you guys have had about how I got out of $750,000 in debt and then turned it around and it's able to rebuild my wealth to a reasonable level so basically businesses business regardless of what size the contracts are how many zeros are behind the numbers so in other words when I first started out in business I was doing residential work and the average contract was about $5,000 what Trump said in art of the deal I think it was correct me if I'm wrong for anybody knows is that it's just as time-consuming it takes just as much of your energy to do a $5,000 deer deal as it does to do a $50,000 deal or a five hundred thousand or five million dollar deal and I found that to be very true so when I started my business I was doing residential work at five thousand dollars of contract I got into commercial contracting instead where the average contract was fifty thousand dollars and there was many that were I think the biggest project we did might have been seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that principle allowed me to grow my first real company from zero to twelve million dollars of sales in about a year and a half problem is because those numbers are so big when it fell when I got hit by the financial crisis in 2008 and finally went out of business in 2010 the numbers were huge so at any time I was owing creditors vendors suppliers material suppliers and and contractors herds of well over a million dollars so when I got into that trouble and the debts kept accumulating and the payments were coming in to pay that off it got over a million dollars in in debt difference that was never going to get paid off so so what happened is that I got the business debt down to about a million dollars and I had guaranteed $750,000 of that when we went completely out of business so the creditors coming after me for that 750 that I needed to either resign myself to never owning anything again never having a business again never really being more than just a slave to the creditors going to work paying my basic bills and every other bit of money going to them so what I did is I used the same principle I thought well if the average contract was $50,000 and average Pig contract would say $300,000 why not go after a business that averages about 3 million dollars per contract something to keep in mind is when you are going up and when you're growing everybody wants to be your friend when you're on your way back down again nobody wants to be your friend it's very easy to take that very personally and write those people off whoever wasn't standing by your side on the way down and burning those bridges what I found is that if I didn't do that which I didn't do I was able to go back to the some of those people that I could have resented and found a way to get back into business took on some partners and went after those 3 million dollar contracts and as it turned out we got about a hundred of them so basically 300 million dollars were the business were able to sign in a matter of a couple of years and then turn around and sold that business and my cutter that was substantial enough to pay off not only the debts that had acquired from the business but also you know the house was able to pay that off get that back in my possession

my wife nice possession pay off any vehicles and and basically turn around to become completely dead free and never needing credit again hopefully the fact I plan to never use credit again yeah so I mean now that's a very very high level I know that and I'll get maybe into more detail in the future but it's just the thought that takes way more effort - what I found out Zach you takes more effort not equivalent even takes more effort to do little contracts and make little amounts of money and it does to do big contracts and make all kinds of money so that's what I found that and that's how I got at a out of debt and from here forward I'm on my own and just doing what I love to do and that's what I'm doing right here in front of you so that's it I know this was a bit of a short video maybe not quite as interesting a lot less building but it was a good week for me to just catch up on things and get the chinking done get the floor stone floor done at the front entrance in the under the wood stove and get some more firewood cut and things like that so not a lot of stuff that was interesting enough to put on film but it was felt good to get that done and out of the way so thanks for watching this video guys I really appreciate it have a great week and I'll see you up here at the cabin next week take care [Music]