Roycroft Pack Frames, Sharpening & Oiling Bushcraft Knives | #AskPaulKirtley 71

Description

Welcome to Episode 71 of #AskPaulKirtley, where I answer questions about Roycroft packframes in bushcraft, how often should you sharpen your knife, oiling knives, bow drill woods moisture content.

TIMESTAMPS:

03:45 Roycroft packframes in bushcraft

10:30 How often should you sharpen your knife?

16:41 What jacket in ep 27? Helikon-Tex Patriot (and my thoughts)

20:27 Oiling knives

25:03 Bow drill woods moisture content

LINKS MENTIONED:

How To Sharpen A Bushcraft Knife - http://paulkirtley.co.uk/2013/how-to-sharpen-bushcraft-knife/

Ballistol Universal Oil - https://amzn.to/2HQkqqP

Bow Drill:The Keys To Success - http://paulkirtley.co.uk/2011/bowdrill/

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Tags: bushcraft,survival,wilderness,camping,hiking,outdoors,question and answer,advice,questions,answers,bushcrafting,nature,self reliance,self sufficiency,outdoor skills,outdoor knowledge,Paul Kirtley,askpaulkirtley

Video Transcription

in this episode of ask Paul curtly we are going to be talking about Rory across pack frames in bushcraft how often to sharpen a knife the jacket I'm wearing in episode 27 yes it's a kit question boggling knives and moisture content of wood for bow drilling welcome welcome to episode 71 of ask Paul curtly where I answer your questions on wilderness bushcraft survival skills and outdoor life in general and if you want to submit a question to a sport currently there are some very easy ways to do that you can just tweet me at p kurt p ki RT with the hashtag ask Paul curtly you can post an Instagram post post your own post don't reply to one of my posts post your own post with a photo and your question again using the hashtag ask Paul curtly and then when I search on that hashtag I'll find your question the other way of course is just using the contact form on my website at porker Toledo UK and then of course you can use to speak pipe facility as well where you can leave me a voice message on my website at Paul Kelly code at UK as well and I will then get an email with that voice message and I can include it in the show those are the full ways of asking me a question that are going to get my attention of course you can take a small piece of paper and write your question on it in pencil and attach it to a carrier pigeon but I might not see it so your choice as to how you do it the four ways that I'm going to see are the ones that I describe and remember to spell my name correctly in the hashtag ask Paul curtly if you don't spell my name correctly I'm not going to find it alright let's have a look at the questions for this episode by the way if you're wondering where I am

this is our little instructors camp that we've had for the last three days that we've been running a navigation course we

came here before the weekend we set up we ran a a two night two day program with students on the navigation 101 course which was very successful and then I'm here today just enjoying being in the woods but I thought while I'll while I'm here I will answer some of your questions for episode 71 so yes I'm back in the UK and still down in the South of England not anywhere it particularly exotic today although I guess it's exotic for some of you depending on where you are in the world but yes let's get on with the questions this is a question by Instagram so this is a good example of how to ask a question on Instagram and this is from Sean page and he has a nice photo there of a home-made pack and of the Roycroft design and he asks hi Paul what are your thoughts on the use of the Roycroft pack frame is it viable for everyday bushcraft use or should it be considered for emergency conditions only thank you for all the high-quality bushcraft content you produce thanks Sean well you're very welcome Sean and I just do my best to help people out and share what I know so that that can benefit other people and glad you appreciate it thank you I appreciate you being interested in my material and I appreciate you asking a good question so it's a it's a classic improvised pack frame that you're asking about and yeah it's definitely part of bushcraft it is definitely a relatively straightforward bushcraft project to make that frame and good way of practicing some lashings and it is a good way particularly if you put a tarp or a blanket of gathering all of your belongings that you might have with you under those circumstances whatever those circumstances are and we can talk for that in a minute and putting them in there wrapping them up attaching them to the back of that frame and carrying them on your back in with some form of structure and it works very well is it the most comfortable way of care a load in the world not always it's not so bad if the loads not particularly heavy if it's a very heavy load of course then like a rucksack with no waist belt all the weight is going to be on your shoulders which is then putting a lot of weight through your musculature rather than into your skeletal structure whereas if you're using a modern rucksack or even a relatively old rucksack with a waist belt that hip belt is going to transfer a lot of the weight onto your hips and relieve all of that going through the musculature of your shoulders and and your back so way it is somewhat weight dependent in terms of whether or not you want you know whether you not you want to use that out of choice also there isn't a lot of padding on the back of it and there again that comes down a lot of that comes down to weight and depending on what strapping you use you've used some rope there by the looks of it but you know I've seen some people use webbing tape and lamp-wick and all sorts of things and depending on how narrow that is it might cut into your shoulders a bit more and again that is going to affect the comfort of course you can do things like put socks on your shoulders inside your jacket to try and pad but that all starts becoming a little bit of a faff but again you know in some situations that might be all you've got so I I think if you've got limited kit you know you might have a blanket you might have a pot and a few of the bits and pieces that you want to roll up into a blanket and put on your back and carry like a have a socket I think it's a very practical minimalist way of taking your gear would I want to use it for a full-on backpacking trip and when I've got the option of a modern backpack no I don't think I would because it would be it would be uncomfortable but then going back to that the more you would use it the more you'd get used to it so you know it's like anything conditioning you can you can bear a lot of things if you get used to them so to answer your question about does it have place in bushcraft yes absolutely you know taking those materials and making the frame is very much what I consider to be bushcraft you know you're taking materials from the bush and you're crafting them into something that's useful to you would I be using it for everyday backpacking if I was doing a multi-day journey probably not unless I made the choice of going very minimalist and if I wanted to go in a particular style taking a woolen blanket a billi pot and a few of the bits and pieces where I was sleeping in front of a fire and I was going in a very old time minimalistic and a frontiersman sort of way if I wanted to choose to do that then yes it fits very nicely into that ethos so it's about what you want to achieve and then of course if you do have a situation where you need to move gear you know think of a scenario you're washed up on a beach somewhere and you have a few belongings left and this is a survival scenario that I remember reading in a Royal Marines training book years ago they were given this scenario officer selection and you know what would you do in this situation and if you had a few bits and pieces with you and you needed to carry them and you had a an old fertilizer bag or a bit of a tarp or a bit of a blanket or something that you could wrap things up in then it's a good thing to know how to do it's a good thing to have in your repertoire for eventualities where you may need to carry gear and you don't have a day pack or a rucksack and you don't want to just try and stuff things in pockets or carry over your shoulder is somehow in a makeshift way it's a more structured way and it's definitely better than a lot of the improvised methods that you might otherwise come up with if you didn't know it so yeah I think it has its place I definitely think it's worth having a play with and practicing and knowing how to do it go out for a hike with it see how comfortable you find it for different weights and then you get an understanding of where your comfort zone is so that's that's my thinking on it be interested to know what other people's thoughts are you can leave a comment under the video either on my youtube channel where you'll find this if you're watching it on youtube or on my poor calico don't you care you can leave a comment in the comment section below episode 71 and you can find that just by going poor Cody Cody at UK forward slash us poor curtly 71 and you'll find that page and you can leave a comment there so if you're listening on an audio file audio only podcast somewhere and you want to leave a comment you can go to either my youtube channel which is youtube.com forward slash Paul curtly or my blog and leave a comment there be interested to know your thoughts but thank you for the question Sean Cheers what's the next one I can get to it let's see how often to sharpen a knife here's a good example of how to ask a question on Twitter from Shane Davis and he asks how often should you sharpen your knife and what's the best way to tell if it's sharp first question so there's two questions really they're art and the first question is how often how often do you use it how much are you using it on a day-to-day basis and I know that's sounds like I'm being a bit facetious but that's really the answer to the question it varies sometimes I'll be sharpening my knife twice a day other day other times I'll be sharpening it once a day other times I'll be sharpening it once a week it depends on how much I'm using it how heavily it's getting used am i doing lots of carving am i battling and therefore maybe flattening the edge a bit and what am i what what hardness of wood am i working is it a particularly soft wood that I'm carving and working with always a particularly tough species of wood that I've been working with and so it really is dependent upon use and and the weight of use so that brings us on to the second question which is how do you tell if it's sharp because that's really the indication as to whether or not you need to sharpen it is whether or not it's it's becoming blunt so there are a couple of ways you can check visually you can look down the edge if the light is good and you can angle it towards a light source normally the brightest part of the sky even if the Sun isn't apparent like today it's very gray and Misty but you've still got quite a lot of brightness there get out from under a tarp get out from under the trees have a look and get the light reflecting and if it's a really really sharp edge it's got very very little surface because it's it's fine whereas if it if it's flattened it's going to have a surface that is a you know a fraction of a millimeter wide but if you angle it towards the light that flattened surface will still reflect light so you can look down your edge and you can see that it's either reflecting light along it or more likely because you've had it sharp in the first place and then you've used it you'll have a maybe a flat spot here or there where you've been using it heavily or you've baton through something and it's flat in the edge a little bit and you can see the light reflecting off there more than anywhere else so that will give you a visual indication as to whether or not it's going to need some work the other thing you can do is gently run your thumb across the edge not along the edge across the edge and with the the print in your thumb you can feel it catching and the more dull and rounded the edge the less it's going to catch your your thumb print so that's a way of doing it some people don't like doing that or some people don't like people like me telling other people that they get a bit nanny ish about it yeah treat people like adults most people are not going to push their thumb so hard onto a knife edge that they cut themselves people are not stupid okay so it's perfectly fine to run your thumb gently across the edge to see how sharp it feels now if you think about it if you're running you know if I the tripod that this camera is on is not sharp and if I run my finger across it it's very rounded it's not going to catch my thumb at all whereas a sharp edge is going to it's going to catch so you can you can you can test it that way and then the other thing that some people like to do not if you like polishing your nails of course but you know if you don't is that it's not an issue for you then you can run the edge the sharp edge across your thumbnail for example and the sharper it is you're gonna get very fine shavings off the top of your thumb where thumbnail whereas if it's blunt you won't easily get a very fine shaving off the top of your thumbnail and I don't like doing that personally because I used my knife quite a lot and if I'm constantly testing my thinking they run out of thumbnail so but yes you can you can do that as a demonstration and then some people like that when they've sharpen the knife they kind of like to demonstrate how sharp it is by shaving there they are that their hairs off their arms but again you know that's that's kind of more showmanship than a practical day-to-day thing me personally what I use is I'll get it out in the light I look down the edge I will see whether or not it's got any flat spots and then I will also feel with my thumb and if that if that if that feels blunt as well as looks like it's shining a bit of light I will give it the appropriate amount of work I have some articles on knife basic knife sharpening on a bench stone you can use an oil stone or you can use a water stone with a technique that is on in those articles and I will link to that article below this video and wherever this video is embedded YouTube on my blog you can find a link to that to that article and I'll also link to a knife safety article as well that's always good particularly if there are beginners watching this it's good to have people are getting a knife nice and sharp they should also be using it safely

you know while they're using a knife of course so I put those two things there and you can refer to those but yeah it's really a how long is a piece of string question it's how long how much are you using it and how heavily are you using it of course there's steel quality issues and how how well you sharpened it in the first place but as a general rule look down it and feel and if it feels like it needs some work do something do the appropriate amount work and then it will be good to go the jacket I'm wearing in episode 27 here's another good example of how to ask a quick question on Twitter I could have answered this question just by replying to that tweet because I actually had to look up I can't remember what jacket I wore on what date and what episode I had to look at the episode to see what jacket I was wearing but it reminded me that other people had asked me about that jacket as well so I thought I might as well include this in a sport curtly and it wasn't a sport correctly question with a hashtag as well with my name spelled correctly which is great it was the hella context patriot jacket that I was wearing now it's a heavy fleece jacket it is quite heavy and I literally mean that I have a number of fleeces of from different manufacturers I have some that I use more for sort of Mountain walking that are really quite lightweight for the warmth that one is really quite heavy it has a lot of pockets it has reinforcements it's got quite a lot of zips it's got hood I like it for working in the woods I like it on cold days it's too warm today and even though I'm in early April and it's not super warm it's too warm for that jacket today and I think I was wearing it the other week when I the last a sport currently that I recorded if I remember rightly and it was starting to get a bit warm for it then but it's good for cold mornings and it's it is kind of a jacket it will go underneath mine or in a recon jacket it fits very well with that but equally I can wear it over a lighter fleece while I'm working around in the woods and they're not that expensive in the grand scheme of things and so and they're robust as I say there's a lot of reinforcement patches on there and the fleece itself seems to be pretty hard wearing and so I'm quite happy to be wearing it in the woods and being wearing it around fires and carrying logs and gathering you know firewood and carving materials etc etc etc it's not a delicate garment and therefore I like it quite a lot and if you're sitting around you know and it's chilly overnight you know it's quite thick fleece you don't feel cold on your back and you've got a hood and I like it quite a lot for that for that purposes do I use it for backpacking when weight is absolutely critical

no because it's quite heavy for the warmth and it's also quite bulky for what it is so I should probably do a more detailed review of it because I've been using it for a couple of years now I saw somebody else using one I asked him about it they quite liked it and I got one and I've been using it for a few years now and I you know it's it's there's nothing wrong with it I haven't broken it I haven't torn it I haven't put a hole in it there's a couple of little burn marks on it from being around fires but you know it's absolutely fine it's a good garment and I think it's very good value for money so I should probably do a little bit more of an explanation about what I like about it on a video at some point if I ever get around to doing that sort of video which people keep asking me to do and the other one that I really should do quite soon as the guard Berg review that I have been threatening to do for a little while now that I've come to some good conclusions about that knife having used it for a good amount of time and I'll explain more of my thoughts on that video so look out for a Mora gar Berg that the original one I know they're just bringing out the carbon one now but the stainless one that I've been using for the best part of two years definitely eighteen months I've been using that knife and I'll talk about that on a separate video so so keep an eye on my blog and keep an eye on my youtube channel for that oiling knives so it kind of goes with the other question this is from Nevin xxx assball curtly hash tag via Twitter and he asks I was listening to the answer you gave about dropping Russ stopping rust on knives you said you make sure to oil especially after you sharpen you've talked in the past about using an oil stone wouldn't the oil you use in that process coat the newly exposed metal so short answer is yes it does to a good extent if you've used an oil starting to sharpen a knife you'll know that it gets covered in quite a dirty slurry of metal and grit from the stone mixed in with the oil and that's useful for if you want to give the sides of the knife a little bit of a polish but if you're going to check the edge you wiping that off with a bit of rag or kitchen towel or something and then you're looking to see whether or not you're doing a good job of sharpening it so you are actually removing a lot of the oil from the knife before you assess whether or not you've finished with it and then of course you're removing a little the most oil possible before you strop it if you're strapping the knife because you don't want to be introducing oil into your strop and therefore you will end up with a sharpened knife even if you've used an oil stone without a lot of oil on it so I always like to put a little bit of something on the edge a lot of the time personally though I am NOT using an oil stone either I use a water stone either a Japanese water stone if it's home I used bench Japanese water stones bench stone size I do have a combination Japanese water stone that's cut in half so it's got a 1000 on one side 6000 grit on the other side that goes in a little and plastic tub that I sometimes take on trips with me particularly if I've got a number of cutting tools that I want to sharpen and but I don't want to be taking bench stones with me but equally I don't want to be using a tiny little pocket stone and so that's an intermediate option and again that's a water stone not on oil stone I do sometimes use a grands fours axe stone to sharpen my knife as well as my axe that might be a compact solution for taking on a journey you don't be carrying loads of weight you want to think about okay what what can I use to sharpen all my tools particularly my pk-1 knife which has got a bit of a sort of saber grind on it it's got this slightly convex grind on it I can sharpen that on the axe stone quite nicely again I use water with my ax stone I don't use oil and there for I'm going to want particularly with a carbon steel blade I want to put some oil on that after I've exposed all that raw metal to the elements as it were I definitely want to just have a quick wipe of camellia oil or at home or if I'm out in the field I'll use whatever I've got frankly some sort you know you could even put a little bit of olive oil on there or whatever if you've got you know a camp kitchen you don't have any other oil with you and for that purpose the other thing that I do tend to use are those ballista wipes they go a long way and to you know you can coat your axe heads you can put your knife etc etc or a little I'll just decant a little bit of ballast all into a little dropper bottle and carry that with your sharpening kit that's also an option that you can use so the other thing that I've always got with me if I've got a knife on me is the the Falcon even be c4 and little diamond ceramic stone and again there's no oil involved in that there's no mess there's not even any water involved in that so again if I've been sharpening with that I like to just put a little bit of oil on the edge so for all of those reasons that's that's why I make that comment and I hope it's clear that under most circumstances personally I'm going to need to if I'm using a carbon steel edge I'm going to want to put some oil on there on the blade just to protect it and doesn't have to be slathers of the stuff it's just a very thin film just to keep the thing free from condensation as much as anything and yeah hopefully that helps bow-drill would selection and moisture content so this is from Johan and nice email address fire hey Johan Johan sent me a message via the contact form on my blog at porchetta doctor at UK you can find contact there there's a forum you put your question in there put a sport correctly in the subject line that will come through to me and that will get filtered through to the a sport curtly questions so this question says hi I attended you a workshop on fire at a bushcraft festival in in Sweden I wonder if there is a difference between using wood from the stem or a branch when making the parts of a bow drill set and also if it is hard to find the right dry wood would it work as well to bring somewhat damp wood home to dry it indoors for later practice if measured with electronics

what percentage should it be at least hope to see you again next year at bushcraft festival and and well I think that questions when is that question from so I don't have the data on that question

sounds like you asked it at the end of last year yo hands or apologies for the delay in answering your question as I say I did have a backlog and I've pretty much cleared the backlog now so that's that will be why that is from a few months ago still a very relevant question though isn't it yes I will be at bushcraft festival and again in 2018 I will be doing some tree and plant walks there and Mattias norburg will be doing the fire workshops and Mattias and I have swapped if you like and he did the plant walks last year I did the fire workshop he's doing the fire workshop this year and I'm doing the plant and plant walk so that'd be fun and be good to be there again it'd be good to see all of you that were there in the past and be good to meet some new people there as well it's a great event so are there any different between the upright stem of a other particular species of wood and the branch for bow drill use yes there are and it's first off it's the orientation one is vertical and one is more horizontal and the more horizontal it is the more water precipitation rain sleet snow is going to be incident on that piece of wood and therefore the more likely it is to be damp or and water to have penetrated into that wood so that's one thing there will be a difference that doesn't mean to say that you can't always use branches for bow drill but I would always be looking for vertical pieces initially if I can whether that's the main stem of a tree that has died off or whether it is a side shoot some species that are good for bow drill tend to shoot lower down or if they've been damaged or cut or number of reasons there will be multiple shoots and not all of those always survive and you'll end up with dead pieces that are quite vertical I would always be preferring vertical pieces over horizontal pieces that's just that's just a good rule doesn't mean to say that horizontal pieces won't work but then the other thing about horizontal pieces as well is that they tend not to be his straight yet they tend to be a little bit more curved they tend to you know what well you know I'm being very general here and I'm picturing a few different species but you know some species like Scott spine for example you're going to have a hard time finding nice straight pieces in the branches for four spindles for example you can have to do quite a lot of curve a carving to remove curvature from branches just because of the way that it grows other species you will get longer straighter branches or sections of branches that might be more suitable but even so like I say if I can find a vertical piece I will I will go for it in terms of moisture content yes you can take things home to practice although it is somewhat academic in the sense of you know the skill really with bow drill that is to be able to go into the woods find the materials that you want there and then and make a fire there and then or at least be able to make an ember there and then the other limiting factor of course is finding some dry tinder material so that you can put your ember into it and blow it to flame and that can often be the limiting factor in terms of time you can normally in a woodland find the bow-drill materials but what might take you the time both in terms of finding it and then making sure it's dry enough is the fibrous plant material or whatever it is you're using to make that that bird's nest style bundle of fibers bundle of material that you're going to put the Ember into and blow that to flame so you may have to wait for that to be dried however you know body drying or what have you but that's starting to get beyond the scope of the question but ultimately that's that that's the purpose of that technique is that you can go into the forest and you can make fire but yes of course there's validity in practicing the technique closer to home there is definitely it's not so much about muscle conditioning it's more about coordination and practicing the coordination is definitely worthwhile ahead of you ever needing to use it for real or just wanting to use it you know there were two scenarios you can choose to go and use it or you might have to use it under certain circumstances and either way you don't want that to be a painful horrible experience where it's left to chance and you don't know whether or not the fire is going to light and it's going to take you hours if you need a fire you want to light a fire and so yes practicing your practice in your own time and if you want to take materials home

yes you can do that but bear in mind that once you've dried materials to a low moisture content it's probably going to be easier than it is using them out in the forest what you don't want to be doing is collecting green materials and taking them home and seasoning them because that's going to give you a very false sense of what those materials are like and they can also end up seasoning way too hard remember that fingernail test and if you don't understand the fingernail test I will link to my bow drill keys to a success article which I wrote many years ago but is still as relevant now

as it always was I will link to that below the video here and wherever you're watching it and if you're listening just go to Porco Toledo got UK forward slash a spork early 71 and you will find that link and go through those bow drill keys to success because that's almost like a fault finding checklist and one of the things as if the material is too hard and if you can't make an impression with your fingernail then you should discard it and find something that is more suitable because you won't get the wood to grind together into the half board and it will just polish and so sometimes you can take materials that are good for bow drill and green season them at home in the shed or in the garage or wherever in the wood store but then they're too hard for bow drill you need them to have dyed and seasoned and be in the natural state that that you find them after that process in the woods in terms of moisture content firewood you know things that are going to combust generally if you measuring them with an electronic moisture meter below 20% is typically what you want for your firewood and I would say it's the same for your bow-drill materials if you want to use them at home and be excluding moisture as a reason why it's not working so if you're being scientific about it and saying right this materials dry enough for me to use I've excluded moisture I'm working on my technique and working on my coordination and working on understanding how this all works then yet I would aim for less than 20% or less in terms of moisture content but bear in mind is going to be different in the woods so always go for that vertical material if you can and that brings us to the end of a sport currently 71 I hope you found that useful and I hope you're enjoying the spring if you are in the northern hemisphere and if you're in the southern hemisphere I hope you're having a pleasant fall or autumn whichever you call it and I always like these times of year where you're getting change it's it's fascinating to be out in the woods it's fascinating to be out in the bush and seeing those changes on a daily basis seeing how nature at seeing how the animals are reacting seeing how the trees and the plants are reacting to the changing length of the day and what else is going on around them so for me it's always a vibrant exciting time of year to be out here in you know March April May in the northern temperate zone lots going on lots changing from one week to the next and it's fascinating so hopefully you get out soon you apply what you know if you've got questions about what you're up to you know where to ask send me a tweet post on instagram using the hashtag a sport curtly contact form on my blog or speakpipe voice mail on my blog as well you can find that under a sport curtly and as a list of the ways of asking there as well of course so I look forward to your questions thank you for your attention thank you for listening and I look forward to speaking to you on the next episode of a sport curtly before too long

take care

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