It is probably no secret my friends that if you have followed me on my adventures long enough, you know that I choose to use a baton on my knife to split wood for fire prep and other projects. A lot of my fellow bushcrafters also use a baton and their knives to split wood.
In the world of bushcraft there occasionally arises the discussion as to whether to baton or not to baton. I say, to each his or her own.
For me there are many reasons I choose to baton my knives. First of all, it's just practical. I go prepared with at least a couple of knives that I know are designed to be "beat up" and abused. I also go out with more than one knife in my possession, and if one were to break, I have back ups.
In all my time on this earth so far, and for all of that time, meaning multiple decades of bushcrafting, I have yet to break a knife in use. Maybe perhaps I am not having enough fun, but I prefer to think that I am just working smart and not hard.
Anyway, I fall into the camp that prefers to use the tools that I have and use them wisely and with caution, but I will always baton my knives. Besides, they are much safer to use for splitting wood in the dark or in low light, than a hatchet or an axe. I learned that lesson a long time ago, when I thought that all I needed was an axe and nearly lost my thumb in the dark as the fire light died at the most unfortunate moment.
To contribute to a recent discussion on knife battoning on the BushcraftUSA website, I put together this short video composed of highlights taken during the 2012 Hardwoodsman Meet in Missouri last year. We did a lot of knife batonning at that meet, and it seemed and was accepted as the norm. We even created "knee high prep" not just knee high flames.
So here is the video and I hope you enjoy it.
Please consider learning to use your knives correctly and than after that, decide if you want to baton or not. I believe it to be a good skill to master and continue to practice, because one day it just may save your life. Until next time, Happy Exploring.
As it is the last day of the year, I thought it fitting to look back at a few of this years bushcraft adventures by sharing some of the highlights with some chosen videos.
It has been for me a phenomenal year with so many adventures in bushcraft. It has also been a great year for personal growth and learning and for making a lot of good friends, many of whom I can now call brother or sister and feel the camaraderie that comes with sharing our love and passion for bushcraft.
The start of 2012 saw me trying vigorously to finishing all of my lessons for BushclassUSA Basic certification and I finally finished that with the completion of my Outing #5 on February 18th. Here is the video of that outing, although it is a bit lengthy, it is one of my favorite adventures.
My goal was to have the Bushclass Basic course completed before attending the Second Annual Hardwoodsman's Meet 2012 in the state of Missouri in April. It turned out to be the experience of a lifetime and I made some great friends and look forward now to many more meetups and adventures with them. It was fun to finally put some faces to some of the user names I had come to know and respect. Here it is again, a musical highlight video of that great gathering of brothers.
With April, came my commitment to meeting up with some friends who were interested in learning bushcraft. On April 2nd, we would begin meeting every Saturday at 9AM in a local state park. Little did I know that even 9 months later, I would still be going to the park every Saturday, rain or shine and meeting someone or anyone who would care to come and share the adventure.
I have met many BushcraftUSA members now, all from Minnesota, who have found my little piece of wilderness and they have come and enjoyed meeting up and sharing the time and practicing and learning the ways of bushcraft. We just get together and have fun and share the dirt time. Here is a video of one of the larger gatherings we had on a Saturday morning.
I have also found a great companion and friend and fellow bushcrafter in my nine year-old bush buddy, my son Christian. He and I have actually spent the last two years together on various adventures and expeditions and he has grown with every turn. He will one day, make a very fine bushcrafter in his own right. He helps to remind me how to be a kid again and to keep the sense of wonder and imagination. Here is a video of one of his latest accomplisments, of which I am very proud of him. He made fire with his fire steel, using natural tinder, that was in itself a little moist, and he did it without my coaching. He figured it out on his own.
With the hot summer months of July and August, I was able to play with many more new things. I continued to polish my firecraft skills, including many bow drill fires and working on one stick and split wood fires. I have also come to appreciate and enjoy my flint and steel kit a whole lot more than I ever did in the past and choose to use it more often then any other method, and especially trying to always use natural tinders. Here is a short video of using the power of the sun to ignite some false tinder fungus. This method has now become an elective for BushclassUSA and I will have to do it again real soon to submit a fresh video entry for the elective credit.
I have found a good friend in a BushcraftUSA member who goes by the user name "Sticker" although I now know him as Terry. I met him and his wife, "CallmeKris", as a result of my commitment to the Saturday morning 9AM MeetUps. He and I are about the same age and share the same love for bushcraft. I think he gets out about as often as I do, and we have met now several times and most of those times, it is just the two of us, having fun with him working on completing a Bushclass lesson or two and with me just playing and practicing and having fun showing him stuff he can try. Here is a video of one of my favorite outings with Terry. I thought it was at first going to be just me, heading out for a solo trip, in the rain. But as I got out in the bush a little ways, I slowed to take some video and low and behold, Terry caught up to me and we had a great time, in the rain, just doing bushcraft.
Which, as you can see by the snow in the last video, brings me to the last couple months of the year 2012.
I know that I have grown, and I have found deeper meaning for myself in the art of bushcraft. I know that I have been able to improve on my story telling about my adventures both alone and with others and recently I have been refining my video style and adding music and getting more creative about the way I see things and the ways that I want to tell it.
So here finally is a video of a solo trip that I am very proud of, with a lot of effort given to trying to emulate my bushcraft story telling hero, Les Stroud. I like his style and will continue to study his videos and then work to refine my own brand of story telling.
Of course, there is the last and final bushcraft trip of the year and I went out with a new christmas toy I gifted myself, a 1" Scotch-eye Auger. It was fun to be able to use a tool to make another tool.
The year 2012 has been a great one for Bushcraft and looking forward to 2013 it looks like it will be even better, with even more adventures in store. I look forward to sharing it all with you and look forward to hearing from many of you as you follow along or maybe perhaps even join us here in south central Minnesota. So until next year, Happy Exploring.
On Friday, October 12th, I had the privilege to meet up with a good friend and fellow bushcrafter, BCUSA member "XMP" from the Twin Cities. Steve and I had met at the second annual Hardwoodsman Meet 2012 back in April. We had kept in touch thru BushcraftUSA with friend messaging and PM's and finally worked out a time to meet up once again. He had arrived on the previous day at the Minneopa State Park and had already explored most of the seven miles of trails that park has to offer. I had told him that I would come out Friday after work, and we could share a good camp fire and talk bushcraft and tell tall tales.
We had a great time and it was good catching up and having a bit of a show and tell and just enjoying the warmth of the fire. It was totally overcast and there was a threat of rain in the forecast, so I was hoping it would not last long if it did. The plan was to get together again on Saturday morning for what I would like to call a regular Saturday morning meetup of bushcrafters at 9am in the Group Camping parking lot. I had invited some other members to come and meet Steve and I the following morning and as we parted company, we both figured that either way, we would make a good day of it, just exploring the park and taking time to practice some skills and the like.
Saturday morning came and I arrived at 9am and Steve showed up a short time after in his black Jeep Wrangler. I remember thinking how much I like that Wrangler. I need to get me one of those some day. Nice bushcraft vehicle for sure. We wandered over to fill our canteens and in short order member "Steene" and his son "Camper Tater" arrived and it was game on.
We got acquainted by getting our respective alcohol stoves going and making up some tea and hot chocolate for everyone. Then as we coped with a little drizzle, we headed out on a hike. Wade and his son Chris would not have a whole lot of time, but as we prepared to go out for a hike we worked on some natural cordage using fibers from some "Button Weed" that Wade had brought. Wade also showed Steve and I a hammock and a net he had made. He is very good at making nets. I hope he can teach me about this skill one day.
We soon headed out and worked on plant and tree ID and I quizzed Chris on identifying some plants we found and what their uses were; cattail for natural tinder, thistle down for the same and mullein leaves for "toilet paper". We also stopped for a short time as I demonstrated using the scrappings of the inner bark of the paper birch to get a flame with a ferro rod. The guys liked that idea.
Wade and Chris soon had to part our company and Steve and I continued the journey to explore more of the park. I was determined to bring him to some of the sites I frequent. Along the way, as often as I could think of it, I would take some video to record some of our adventure. We were having so much fun, it was hard to stop and think of making a video record of our adventure.
We visited a debris shelter I had made in haste. (The one featured in the previous blog post) We examined various samples of animal scat, most likely coyote. We found an animal den, possibly fox. We explored some stream beds, saw birds of prey, and came upon a small garter snake trying to get warm.
Here is the short video of our day trip adventure and I hope you enjoy it.
We sure had a good time. I am so hoping for more expeditions and more time with my bushcraft friends. It is always fun to get together to explore, practice skills and to show and tell and tell tale tales. This is how you truly find the heart of bushcraft, by sharing it with others. Happy Exploring.
Well, as it was Friction Fire Tuesday at BushcraftUSA, I decided to join in the fun and try my hand at it. More specifically, I wanted to try a wood combination that has been giving me trouble for quite awhile. So today it was Norway Maple on Norway Maple.
To preface this, I would like to go back to the Hardwoodsman Meet 2012 that I had the privilege to attend back in April. Before the meet, I looked upon friction fire methods as something to know and to try occasionally, and I did have successes over the years, but it was nothing that I would "practice" on a regular basis. It was just "back pocket" kind of knowledge and more like an occasional party trick to pull out on a camping trip with friends.
But at the HWM, I learned that it was something to be practiced, and studied and favored as one of the best and most advanced of skills you could learn as a bushcrafter. My eyes were open. I was hooked.
On Thursday night, just before the Meet started on Friday, two guys came by my tent as I attempted to try a hand drill fire with a piece of mullein I had harvested and a piece of box elder for a hearth board.
One of the guys, if I remember correctly was "Scooter" who I later would learn, would be the winner of the skills competitions for the Meet. The other guy was Ross or aka "Redmech", who I would later learn, was a friction fire wizard in his own right and had been studying friction fire methods almost exclusively since the last Hardwoodsman Meet in 2011. These two brothers, stopped long enough to help me get some finger loops fashioned and attached to my hand drill spindle. In the end, they helped me to succeed in getting an ember. Whoo Hoo!!
I later discovered Ross had a great collection of wood types for spindles and hearth boards, all organized in what I think was a couple of large cases that made moving it all around, easy to setup, and to practice a great number of combinations. He showed me that organization was key to building a good practice set. So from this, I started to label all my wood types. I am still looking for a case like his. I think it was something for storing a compound bow perhaps? Maybe a large gun or rifle case? I am not sure. Long, flat, wide. Something.
Anyway, back to Friction Fire Tuesday. I just had to have some fun and got this video in the process.
Before I wrap this up I would just like to say, "Where has the month of July gone?" Here it is, July 13th or rather Friday the 13th, my lucky day! and this is my first posting for the blog this month. I have been really busy with lots of bushcraft adventures, I just need to stop long enough to just share it all with you, my friends.
Hopefully I can get some more video taken about some upcoming adventures. I will be meeting with some bushcraft friends soon to help them with bushclass lessons and I know that will be fun. Also, there will be more fun with friction fire. Until then, Happy Exploring and remember to get out and get dirty.
