On Craftin' Some Spoons

   Well here it is, September already, and actually the bushcraft adventures have continued, I have just not slowed down long enough to blog about them.
   My good friend and brother in bushcraft, Shonuffisthemaster, continues to have some success in getting a regular attendance at his Saturday morning meet-ups at the Hyland Lake Park Reserve in Bloomington, MN.
   A few Saturdays ago, I decided to leave my usual Saturday 9AM meet up at the Minneopa State Park, and head up to the twin cities to see just what kind of activity my friend had going on up there.
   I met four very nice people on that day. Well, actually closer to 3.5. Let me explain.
   In the morning, I met Appleshoe and her husband and their baby, Edric. (I think I got that right.) Anyway, we had a great time, with Shonuff' and I showing them the wonders of friction firecraft. After which, we all went out for a hike, looking for wild edibles and medicinal plants, before the afternoon session would get started at 1pm.
   I really look forward to meeting them again. We all shared a great enthusiasm for the outdoors and learning and practicing primitive ways. As a family, they were very much involved in self reliance and sustainability and will bring much to our little group.
   You can read a comment from Appleshoe posted in my previous blog article about "Backyard Bushcrafting."
   Then in the afternoon, I met Donnie. Donnie demonstrated some very good skill with friction fire and cooking and other things. I hope he is able to meet more of the others, including some of the BushcraftUSA members, who have said they plan on coming out on some Saturday.
   As Donnie and Sho' prepared for lunch, I decided to see just how long it would take to craft a wooden spoon out of some basswood that I had harvested while we were out on our hike. My goal was to finish it in the time it took to prep the fire, start the fire, prep the food and cook the food and then serve it up. I hoped it would be done by then.
   I got to work on it and after a bit, with only my SAK Farmer and my Mora spoon knives to work with, I had this rough image of a spoon...

      Within a few minutes after finishing the spoon, lunch was served and the spoon performed perfectly...

   I was really glad to have my Mora spoon knife in my kit and I have decided that it will become part of my essential gear, for with it I can forge containers and those are hard to come by in the wilderness.
   Flash forward a couple more weekends, and it is now Labor day. I had the privilege of getting out on a Saturday morning as usual and meeting with my friend and fellow bushcrafter, Sticker from BushcraftUSA. He and his family were spending a weekend in the same state park where we hold our meet-ups. So naturally I had to visit.
   While I was there, I stumbled on a great piece of basswood that was just begging to be made into a spoon. I decided that I would try for something a little larger, maybe a soup spoon or a ladle and really try to sand and finish it up nice. Here is what the roughed out version looks for now.

   This is still a work in progress and as of right now, I am slowly finishing the outside and am beginning to shape the bowl for just he thickness to allow good soup eating or ladeling.
   I have to say, making a spoon is a great bushcraft project and it sharpens your knifecraft skills to allow you even more control when it comes to making other things.
   I guess next I need to tackle the chicken stick. More on that later of course. Until next time, Happy Exploring.

An Outing In Hyland Park Reserve... Bloomington, MN

   On Sunday, June 9th I made my way north to the city of Bloomington, MN and to the Hyland Park Reserve for a "meet and greet" with fellow BushcraftUSA member "Shonuffisthemaster."
   Sho' and I had never met before this, except for exchanging some brief info on the BushcraftUSA forum site. Here is a link to that growing conversation thread, started by Sho' and a carried on by a few others who wanted to get this going. A Regular Meeting In The Twin Cities
   He has been interested for some time in getting a regular meeting going for local bushcraft enthusiasts, just like I've been trying to do here in southern Minnesota for the past year or more.
   I decided to meet with him, and offer my encouragement and to spend some time getting to know my fellow bushcrafter and together maybe practice some skills and pass on some ideas for up coming meetups. 
   Here is my trip report as I posted it on the BushcraftUSA forum "Minnesota Section" site.

  "First off, I would like to give a big thank you to Sho' for putting out the invitation and for taking the time and coming out to meet me and show me around his great park reserve. Hyland is a big place with lots of good resources and places to explore. I know we will all have a lot of fun out there in the future.
    For those of you who could not make it, you missed a great time. As it was just Sho' and myself, we pretty much followed our whimsy when it came to exploring and followed a lot of the trails looking for things of interest.
    Here is a list of the things we did, or practiced, or studied or just plain shared for show and tell and the learning and the joy of bushcraft...

• We worked on Tree ID which included the basswood, cottonwood, aspen, willow, green ash and elm and assorted oaks.
• Practiced natural cordage with harvested basswood inner bark.
• Searched for local wild edibles and ate some basswood leaves. Found basswood, burdock, dandelions, some cattails, out of season raspberry bushes, some wood sorrel and violets.
• Practiced some animal tracking with found deer tracks.
• Observed animals in habitat- wood ducks.
• Observed local fisherman catching pan fish. (food source)
• Harvested dead standing basswood for bow drill spindles and hearth board.
• Calculated pace for 100 meters for use with pace beads and map making practice.
• Practiced with compass and map making, pace count and pace beads, and estimated distances and use of triangulation.
• Made basswood spindles and hearth board and succeeded with making bow drill fire for each of us.
• Discussed kit components, (show and tell)
• I showed him my Ottomani Sun Compass constructed on a previous outing, as an idea for another Saturday meetup.
• I showed him an improvised steel and a flint and he tried his hand at getting an ember in some charred cloth.
• And finally there was a great demonstration by Sho' of field expedient sharpening of knives to hair popping sharpness. It was funny to see all that arm hair piling up on the edge of his knife. (It was amazing and I learned a lot and want to learn more. He has some excellent ideas and some mad knife sharpening skills.)

    I arrived at 4pm and left around 8:30pm and it was a great 4.5 hours of bushcraft fun and skills practice and I am sure we could have continued sharing more time and experience.
    I hope you are all jealous and now wondering why you did not make it.
    I will definitely try to make the next meetup and it will be even better if more will show up. There is so much we can do.
    Through the whole time, I gained a new brother in bushcraft and made a new friend and all of that thru the kindredness that is found in the joy and practice of bushcraft."

   I have to say, it was a very fun trip and well worth my time traveling the hour or so to get there. I will definitely go again and hopefully meet a few more members of BushcraftUSA from the Twin Cities area.
   I hope Sho' and his friends are able to get something regular going. I hope that it grows and flourishes and that many more like minded people will join in the fun. I hope that I can be a part of it on many occasions and look forward to getting a grand Minnesota meetup together with a few overnights to share with so many who call themselves "Bushcrafters." Until next time, Happy Exploring. 

On Making Char Cloth

   Another good element or tool to put in your firecraft kit is the combination of flint and steel. This is one of the most primitive means of starting fire, and dates back to the beginnings of the iron age, around 1200 BC. Although  the flint is not the important part, any hard and non-porous rock with a sharp edge will do. It is used to chip off very small pieces of carbon steel off the striker and as the fine particles break off, they oxidize and ignite immediately in the air with a yellow to white spark. The trick is to catch these sparks on a medium that is almost on the verge of igniting itself. This is where the char cloth comes in.
   Char cloth is made, usually from cotton cloth, by heating it in an enclosed container to limit the amount of oxygen that is around the material. The cloth "bakes" without air around it and gets toasted to black "char" and is ready to take a spark that will grow to an ember that can be used to ignite a dry tinder.
   This past weekend, I completed the BushclassUSA elective, "Student Practice for Flint and Steel with Charred Cloth." It was a great lesson in first making charred cloth, then cooling it down and using the freshly made char cloth to start a tinder bundle on fire. Here is the video submission I made for this lesson and it was a great adventure and fun to do. I hope you enjoy watching.

    Please check into learning this great fire starting skill and consider putting together a fire tinder kit that includes a steel and a good piece of flint or chert. Even a piece of quartz can work. This will really add to your adventures in the wild and that my friends is what it is all about. Happy Exploring.

Bushclass Basic Completed

  It is hard to believe that March is upon us and it has been a strange winter for all of us here in southern Minnesota. The strangest of all of course is the small amount of snowfall we have had so far. I guess I can not complain to much, as it has made for some great outings and has allowed me to finish my BushclassUSA Basic certification. As I have shared with you all in a previous post back in February, it was a great success and a good finish with my final Outing #5. So with that, I celebrated with something that has been a tradition with me since my days in the Boy Scouts. I was able to finally put together my BushclassUSA patches on my day pack, and I must say they look pretty smart to me.

It took a little effort to get the velcro sewn onto the pocket, but now it will allow me to move my patches from one pack to another, depending on just what kind of an outing the day will bring.
   I have found patches to always be a good way to mark a particular event, expedition, adventure or training. I have collected several patches from many of Minnesota's State Parks, and a few from some National Parks and Monuments and also a few showing completion of certain skill sets.
   Although not so bushcrafty, patches are somewhat akin to the very earliest means of recording the passing of events and that was with cave paintings and petroglyphs. The symbols and drawings and carvings found in paleo-lithic times were markers of events and observations by the people of those times. They were important enough to record and remember and pass on, as part of the sharing of experience and to show growth and to add to the collective wealth of knowledge and wisdom that formed their communities.
   I like that my patches show a shared experience and when I meet other members of the bushcraft community at large, if I see the same patch, I will know we have traveled down similar paths to bring us to this place. I hope this will encourage you to find new adventures, and maybe even begin to collect some patches for yourself. Show others how you are getting out there and doing things, getting in some "dirt time" and learning the ways of bushcraft. I can think of no better way of sharing the experience with kids, then rewarding them with a patch for their experience. I think I need to get a few patches for my bush buddy and his day pack. Until then, Happy Exploring.

On Completing My BushclassUSA Outing #4

   This last Sunday I had a chance to get out and complete my Outing #4 for BushclassUSA. It was a great outing and I got a lot accomplished. It started around 11am and the temperature was about perfect for a day in February, about 23 degrees F. I gathered some materials for making natural chard tinder, collected some birch bark, setup my tarp shelter using a braided ridge line and a few basic knots. Then I improvised a pot hanger, heated some water for cocoa, made some bread on a stick, cooked some chicken on the Canteenshop Grill Top Stove and finally chard some punky paper birch wood and some mullen leaves. For fire starting I used an improvised steel and flint and chard cloth which I got an ember started in and then transfered the chard cloth to some dry cedar bark that was made into a tinder "nest". All in all a chance to practice a lot of skills and to enjoy the weather and the peace and the quiet. So without further ado, here is the video. I hope you enjoy the adventure.

   Thanks for watching and I really want to encourage you to checkout the BushclassUSA online course found at BushcraftUSA.com. It is really family friendly and will give you hours of enjoyment, getting out into the wilderness. Next up for me is to complete my Outing #5 and finally graduate the Basic Bush Class Certification. It will be an over-night outing, in the state of Minnesota, in February. It will be fun. Until then, Happy Exploring...

Sharpen Your Knife

   So I decided to get one more Bushclass USA basic requirement out of the way. This one was for "Student Practice to Sharpen Your Knife". But first before I get you to the video link, I would like to take the opportunity to invite you to check out BushcraftUSA and consider joining this great online community. There is so much information to be found within the threads and posts of this forum site. Also, the online Bushclass will guide you thru many lessons that will help you to improve your skills and give you a better understanding of bushcraft.
   So here is my "How I Did It" video on sharpening your knife.

More after the jump.