Bushcraft Knife and Axe Safety, Working Safely Alone in the Forest, Log Cabin Life

Description

Processing firewood or bushcrafting with a knife and axe can be dangerous, especially when working alone in the forest here at the log cabin, so I need to make sure I'm doing it as safely as possible at all times, remembering basic safety procedures.

Using a knife to split wood is potentially dangerous and the risk of sustaining a severe cut to the fingers or palm of the hand is very real, particularly using the method I see too many bushcrafters use. Slamming a knife point down into a piece of wood is risky - one slip and the hand slides down the blade of the knife. A better method would be to baton the back of the knife, keeping it horizontal and the hand well away from the blade. However, it is effective to hammer the point of a full tang bushcraft knife into the wood on a chopping block and then prying the wood sideways to split it. To do this safely, a makeshift mallet should be used to hammer the butt of the knife, the steel pommel ideally so as not to damage the softer handle, into the wood from above.

Regardless of what method is used, I highly recommend wearing leather gloves with a good grip as well as safety glasses. For the past decade or two, I wear glasses all of the time when in the bush or on the water, especially if I'm doing bushcraft. Eventually everyone who works in the forest will get branches, debris or wood chips in their eyes, which is easily prevented by using a good pair of high impact glasses. I wear Oakley Flak Jacket glasses because they are sturdy and the lenses are easily switched out. I wear dark polarized glasses on sunny days or any day out on the lake or river, and I wear yellow shooting lenses when hunting, shooting targets of walking in the forest on a dull day.

When using an axe, especially when splitting firewood, it's essential to pay close attention to the path of the axe, the arc as you swing it into the wood. Inevitably, an axe will glance off the firewood and/or chopping block, or will pass through the piece of wood, continuing on the path. Especially with a short handled axe, that path will be back towards your legs or feet. It's critical to swing with mostly downward momentum, vertically with the arms and axe horizontal. This way, when the axe passes through the wood or glances off, it will bury itself in the chopping block or ground rather than a body part.

Products I recommend;

Mora Garberg Bushcraft Knife https://amzn.to/2H3va88

Oakley Flak Jacket sunglasses https://amzn.to/2IXSDnH

Axes http://www.torontoblacksmith.com/

Leather gloves https://amzn.to/2IXwc22

Tilley Hat https://amzn.to/2EN5uXs

Fjallraven Vidda Pro pants https://amzn.to/2HByAvJ

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My Mailing Address:

P.O. Box 20042

Barrie, Ontario

L4M 6E9

Canada

Tags: Self Reliance,off grid,log cabin,axe,wilderness,survival,primitive,bushcraft,forest,wood,cabin,tiny home,woodworking,woods,My Self Reliance,knife,safety,working safely,working safely alone,alone in the forest,axe safety,bushcraft knife,cabin life,knife safety,bushcrafting

Video Transcription

getting a fire going here to melt the fire pit down going to be boiling maple syrup as soon as the SAP starts running again starting to right now I wanted to talk about something that I keep seeing a lot of bushcrafter just do in particular that's so dangerous and you know a lotta older guys or guys have been doing it for a while I guess I've been doing it for years I've knit without injury

kind of encouraging other people to do it but it's so dangerous if you're not careful and you do a lot of things solo lot of things outdoors alone like I do especially lately up here at the cabin using a lot of cutting tools all the time you know one cut one simple injury or basic injury can cause you a lot of grief if you're alone so you need to start paying attention to all those little things that you just take for granted are things that you do out of habit that you don't put much thought into because you know haven't been injured doing that before but one of the things I've seen people do and I know quite a number of bush crafters even experienced guys have cut themselves very badly doing that and that's the process split the little of kindling firewood like that with a knife feeder turn that way or this way and some well-known guys on YouTube I know have sustained pretty bad injuries because put a lot of force into that especially if you hit a knot or something a little bit harder than but this is cedar so let's say I've been doing this and easily brick going through that theater and then I hit a knot or I miss and put it into the chopping block that dumb work force now is not getting transferred directly the wood or it is but it's stopping dead and the florist is continuing so your hand slides down across that blade you can cut your fingers almost off for all the way through and cut tendons and everything doing that I mean if you are going to do it make sure you have your thumb on the back on the butt of the knife pommel because it's going to least stop your hand from going down you could still do it if you had enough force it could still slide on you but try to get a really good grip get your fingers in there and get your thumb up on top and do that but better than that is not to do anything at all if you're really insist on splitting with your knife like that then get it from above like that just hit it so their force is just directly on the pommel so it's not not there's no no downward force on the gripping hand so see it happened too often I just want to tell you how not to cut your fingers off dally every way you start off going the other way [Applause]

[Applause]

see people recommend that you get down on your knees to split and the principle behind that is that you're down like this you have a more horizontal well straight vertical but your arms and the axe are more horizontal in plane as they're coming down so if you miss it's going to continue going to the ground and set it back towards you in the same principle basically is if you do that just so it's more being aware not of your body position necessarily not necessarily that you're crouching down low but that you are very aware of the momentum or the arc of the axe so like I said you can stand up but make sure you're still going straight down with that so that when it glances off or splits and goes through your legs and your feet aren't in the path of that axe because inevitably you are gonna get glancing you are going to get pieces that split easier or it's the axe continues through or some form of of the axe not continuing just bearing itself in the chopping block so again just awareness and the more time you spend alone the more important it is to be aware of anything that can cause even the smallest minor injury especially if you're far from help or you know you just don't have access to long-term care or even short-term care emergency care something small confessor can get infected and become a bigger issue if you're not able to get treatment or to treat yourself over you know a week or two or or a matter of days so just be aware of every single thing that can injure you big or small and try to avoid those things so you're looking for 100% safety instead of you know a factor of safety or assessing the risk reward time you want to be measuring or giving more attention to the risk all the way down to that level where you're looking for injuries chronic Wawro or short-term traumas it's one of the obvious things is to wear gloves when you're doing with it talking about with the with the knife and make sure it's got a good grip on it these ones are actually getting slippery from use a solid full-grain leather glove would be better cuz I can feel that slippy but at least it's one more layer of protection if that knife starts going in you might be able to stop a little bit quicker because it has to cut through that glove first and the other thing is safety glass especially when you're splitting wood you know again small injuries like even just making some shavings to get the fire going one of those shavings could pop up in your eye if you're not wearing glasses and that might get infected or irritated do some more damage over time it's really not worth not having glasses and if it's a dull day these are Oakley Flak Jacket they're called I've been wearing these for I don't know ten years maybe more what I liked about them is that I can get so many different lenses for them so have clear clear lenses and yellow lenses which I really like because it increases the contrast so that's why people use them for shooting glasses that it creates contrast you can see that bird or that clay pigeon in the air what general I use them more on cloudy days and we're the tinted lens is on regular day

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