Ne’er cast a clout til May be out
- Published in All Blog Posts, Edible plants, Flowers, Fruits, Gather, Nature and Conservation, Outdoor Skills, Plants, Skills, Trees and Shrubs
It’s good to be back!
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It’s good to be back!
Getting back into the swing of things as Lockdown eases
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]At the beginning of this year I pledged to stop moaning about the ‘C’ word and the associated restrictions on movement, business and, well, life generally. I have mostly been sticking to that resolution but I just wanted to quickly share a post about our experiences getting back up to speed as the Welsh Lockdown eases.
Late last month we were able to confidently open up our public course dates again (i.e. not the work-related training we run through Outdoor Professional), as this was permitted under the easing of the most recent round of COVID restrictions in Wales.
As was the case last year in between the first and second Lockdowns – we have had to make some changes to our courses. Smaller group sizes, considerations on how to handle shared areas (even campfire brews) and planning routes and venues to allow for social distancing.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”13127″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”13125″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”13129″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”13131″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s been good to welcome people back to the fields, forests and green spaces of North East Wales. Everyone we have worked with so far has expressed the same feeling – it’s just good to be outside and exploring new areas again.
We’ve got a busy summer ahead of us (my next full weekend off is in October…) but we’re raring to go, and looking forward to seeing you soon.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][product_categories orderby=”rand” order=”ASC” columns=”4″ ids=”94, 93, 95, 490″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Bushcraft General, Mountain General
Early Spring Foraging in the UK
- Published in All Blog Posts, Edible Fungi, Edible plants, Flowers, Gather, Herbs and Roots, Mushrooms, Plants, Trees and Shrubs, Videos
Axe Safety Basics – Simple rules for using an axe safely in the woods, at camp or at home
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The Basics of Axe Safety
Simple safety rules for all users of axes at camp, in the woods or at home
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Axes are great. I use them every week, and have been swinging them around for at least 20 years. They are versatile tools, and as important as a crafting item as an outdoor safety/survival tool. I couldn’t do my job without one.
They’re also (potentially) bloody dangerous, and one misplaced swing with an axe could leave you with a bit more room in your gloves for the rest of your life, or with an extra hole in your leg (and a lot less blood in your body than you would like).
Anybody who has attended one of our North Wales bushcraft courses knows that when the cutting tools come out for the first time we spend a bit of time refreshing those safety basics. For any of our ‘safety rules’ I try and create one simple message that is unchanged throughout the sessions, something that works for users of all experience levels.
In the video below I go through what that safety rule is, and discuss a few other techniques and considerations for using an axe safely, such as The Blood Circle and how changing your body position will greatly affect how ‘safe’ your cutting action is.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/DeQ9PwLvGAo” align=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The Three Safe Places an axe can come to a stop
The key message for that video, and the baseline standard I try and use for anytime I pick up and use an axe, is that when you are swining an axe of any size, in any way, it can only come to a complete rest at the end of that swing in one of Three Safe Places:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]
In The Workpiece
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In The Cutting Surface
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In The Air
[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10721″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]If your swing of the axe, and any mishap or problem that might occur during it, means that your axe blade could hit something else before coming to a complete stop in one of those Three Safe Places then you need to stop and reassess what you’re about to do.
A simple change in body position, in the way you are holding the workpiece or the axe, or just slightly changing the orientation of how the axe and the workpiece are interacting will normally fix most problems.
Don’t rely on leather boots to save you – an axe will happily cut right through them.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”10724″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”10719″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”10734″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]
Axes get put away after use
All cutting tools should have a designated place that you keep them when not actively in use, and should have a sheath/mask/cover to both protect the cutting edge of the blade, and to protect you FROM that cutting edge.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”10718″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]
Respect the Blood Circle
You need to create a safe working area around you, with enough room for you to safely work and do what you need to do with that axe. You also need to communicate that to those around you, and they need to respect your working space. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Ad:
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Why is there an ad here?
We place ads on blog posts and articles that reach a wide audience, especially visitors from overseas who probably won’t get a chance to come along to one of our skills courses or trips. By running ads alongside the more popular articles and blog posts we can help cover the costs of running the website and the blog.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Some Safe Axe-use Techniques
[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10732″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”10730″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”10733″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”10729″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”10728″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]This is the video where we make a mallet from a single piece of wood with green woodworker Doug Don.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”10725″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
It’s not rocket science
That rule should work for all axe users, in all use cases. There are many elaborate ways to use an axe for carving, shaping, splitting, snedding and felling. Different axe styles, different wood types and even different user sizes will dictate exactly which technique is best for that time and place, but all safe uses of an axe should mean that the axe only lands in one of those Three Safe Places:
1. The Workpiece
2. The Cutting Surface (or the ground)
3. The Air
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Related outdoor skills courses in North Wales
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, EST Framework, Original Outdoors Tutorials, Videos
New Foraging Course Dates for 2019!
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New Foraging Course Dates for 2019!
New dates for our Foraging and Wild Foods course plus brand new courses in North Wales!
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]We have known for some time now that by far our most popular course is our Foraging and Wild Foods course – a one-day introduction to foraging in the woods, fields and byways of this corner of North Wales. 2019 looks like it’s going to be our busiest foraging year yet, with two of the 2019 course dates already fully booked and enquiries coming in thick and fast for other dates and private courses.
To cope with the demand we have added some more dates to the calendar for the Foraging and Wild Foods course. The list of course dates for 2019 is now:
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- 13th April 2019 This date now full – Please get in touch
- 20th April 2019 NEW DATE!
- 21st April 2019 NEW DATE!
- 4th May 2019 This date now full – Please get in touch
- 26th May 2019 NEW DATE!
- 15th June 2019
- 13th July 2019
- 3rd August 2019
- 7th September 2019
- 12th October 2019
If you have received a gift voucher for 2019 then it will be redeemable against these new dates, and if you wish to move from a date that you have already booked onto one of the new dates then please get in touch and we will try our best to accommodate your request.
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New Foraging Courses from Original Outdoors
If you have been following our courses for the last 12 months or so you have probably seen us start to offer our training courses under the EST Framework – a structured training pathway designed to give those attending the courses a clear route for developing their personal and professional outdoor skills. We have been running these course for ‘professional’ users through our partner brand outdoorprofessional.co.uk and now we are offering them to a wider public audience.
For foragers we have the Level 1, 2 and 3 (assessed) courses for inland and coastal foraging. There are a few audiences for these courses:
- Outdoor instructors and other outdoor professionals
- Teachers and educators
- Chefs and food professionals wanting to work with wild food
- Group leaders and coaches who want to integrate wild food education into their sessions
- Parents who want to give their children an education in wild food themselves
- Individuals that want to develop a deep understanding of the wild food available in the UK, and how to use it
This is the closest we can get to offering a foraging instructor course without delving into the depths of group leadership, duties of care and emergency techniques that come with leading any group in the great outdoors. These courses focus on the skills of finding edible wild plants, fungi and other items of wild food in the UK landscape AND on how to share these skills with other people in a sustainable, ethical and structured way.
These courses are certificated under the EST Framework and can be used in conjunction with other NGB outdoor training schemes.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][product_category per_page=”12″ columns=”4″ orderby=”menu_order title” order=”ASC” category=”wild-food-foraging-courses-uk”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Bushcraft General, Company News
Examining a wild camp site – tracking and reading the ground
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Examining a Wild Camp – Tracking and reading the story the ground is telling you
A story of tracking, site interpretation and a lesson for investigators
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]So there I was, wandering through the woods with the dog. This is one of several woodland sites that we occasionally rent to run some of our bushcraft, survival and other wilderness skills courses in North Wales. I am far from any of the footpaths, both the public ones and the ones made by locals through the trees. It’s about 15 minutes after sunset and the light is poor – nearly time for the head torch.
After ducking past a couple of low branches I come to a more open area near the top of a small hill. There are a couple of mature oak trees, a dead-standing Rowan and a surrounding screen of Western Hemlock Spruce enclosing an area roughly 5m in diameter. Something seems ‘different’ about this site, and I pause to quickly look around. I’m fairly sure that I haven’t visited this particular glade before, but something is tickling my senses in a way I can’t vocalise…
Down at the foot of one of the mature spruce trees is a short, blackened and partially burned length of wood. This isn’t unusual near the areas where we run courses, but out here in this relatively untouched corner of the woodland it stands out – there is a reason for it being here, and I am suddenly compelled to investigate further.
A little bit of background information
As I have mentioned on this blog before – a good portion of the work that I do as an instructor and consultant in various outdoor fields doesn’t end up on the website as a public course or event – we even have a seperate website for that kind of thing: outdoorprofessional.co.uk.
Something that we do occasionally is to create bespoke training events for clients who want to be trained in a particular skill or activity. Following a series of connections and conversations we were asked to create training events especially for AFOs (Authorised Firearms Officers – armed response Police officers) and those they work closely with. They specifically wanted to have some training in tracking of subjects through woodland and mountainous areas – and particularly how to perform Site Exploitation (SE, other common terms are also used depending on the force or role) on areas where people had created camps or bivvy sites in conjunction with other criminal activity. Anybody familiar with the Raoul Moat incident in 2010 will have an understanding of why these particular skills were of interest to these particular clients. My own experience in SAR/Mountain Rescue and subsequently teaching tracking for search operations combined with experience teaching people how to camp in the woods without leaving a trace probably puts me in a good place for this kind of training.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Other Notes
This is, of course, just a bit of fun and in no way is an example of how to examine a site like this. The photos taken are quick shots on a phone camera, illumiated by an LED torch. There are no in-shot reference items or scale, and no other records taken.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10017″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
The Tell-Tale Log
So this was the item which first drew my attention – other than that weird, tingly spidey-sense that trackers and searchers get when they get close to something interesting. It’s a small lump of wood, partially burned on one side and cut to length with a saw of some kind. The marks on the end of the log suggest a chainsaw rather than bow-saw or similar, so it was probably lifted from a log stack elsewhere in the forest.
Partially burned firewood is a common piece of evidence in these kind of sites and disposing of these blackened, charred logs is a key problem for disguising a camp fire site. Best practice to burn them all away completely, gradually reducing the size of the fire until only ash and small lumps of charcoal are left behind.
This log was my IPP (Initial Planning Point) for the site analysis, but I knew that I would probably change that once further evidence was uncovered.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10018″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
The Circumference Sweep
I look over at the dog, who is now whining gently in the softly-falling rain. It’s pretty dark now, so I break out a small-but-powerful LED hand torch and start walking slowly around the edge of the small glade that the log is on the edge of. I want to see what there is to find in the transition zone where the ‘clearing’ stops and the dense woodland begins. This is the area where something may be thrown to, or placed ‘out of the way’ whilst activity occurs in the camp.
On the opposite side of the clearing I find a few more charred logs – longer, thinner pieces that have been burned through at some point.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10019″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Gridding it out
The rest of the circumference sweep revealed nothing obvious, at least not in the conditions and using this search method. Now it’s time to move into the clearing and methodically move across the area to identify any key features that may remain – specifically the site of the fire that charred those logs.
The easiest way to do this is to walk directly across the site along one edge, carefully stepping on the leaf litter rather than pushing it to the side and potentially covering something that is lying on the surface. Once you reach the other side you move across slightly and sweep across in the other direction, parallel to the first track.
I repeated this, moving slowly and sweeping with the torch, until I had covered the entire width of the clearing. One area interested me in particular – where some stones were clustered together at one edge – but I wanted to sweep the rest of the area before starting to mess around with the leaf litter and uncovering the stones.
Next I repeated the series of parallel sweeping motions – but at 90° to the original tracks. This gave me a different perspective on the terrain and made it more likely that I would spot anything unusual – the ‘break in the pattern’.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10020″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Examining the Point of Interest
Nothing else was coming up in my cursory examination, so it was time to investigate that pile of stones. It was made up of shale, very common locally but not often seen in small piles like this. The pile is partially covered by fallen leaves, and easily missed.
Kneeling down to get a closer look I could see that some of the stones were fractured and had slightly blackened edges. Common advice is to “surround camp fires with rocks to prevent the flames from spreading”. This is terrible advice with rocks like shale – they have a tendency to explode like grenades when heated by fire. Whoever made this fire had probably never experienced it before – but evidently had some knowledge of how “things should be done”. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10021″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Digging deeper
Under the layer of stones I found the blackened soil and vegetation residue that is always found around fire scars like this – something well known to archaeologists looking for evidence of human activity in the layers of excavated soil. There was no residual heat, dryness or any other sign that this fire was recently burning. In fact there were insect larvae/egg cases under some of the stones and other evidence that these stones had been undisturbed for several months at least.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10023″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Spiraling Out
Satisfied that I have discovered the likely fire site I can create a new IPP (IPP2) in my mind and base my search from that. The most effective method here is to ‘spiral’ out from that focal point and uncover anything that may be left under the leaf litter – scraps from food packets, pieces of foil or discarded plastic or maybe something like a cigarette butt.
Or a knife…
Yes. A knife. A folding, locking-blade knife with wooden scales and brass trim. It was buried under the leaf litter, roughly 100cm from the centre of the fire scar. It was open, laid out as it is in the photo above.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10028″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Closer Examination
As this is not a forensic analysis (but a fun way of practicing skills for real) I can of course pick the knife up with my bare hand and take a closer look.
It’s an inexpensive, Chinese-made stainless steel knife with wooden scales and tarnished brass trim. It’s quite well made for the type, which suggests an older knife rather than one of the modern, flimsier types that you will find on the market today. Maybe mid-1990s vintage?
The blade itself has been modified by the looks of it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10029″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Modified Blade
It has been significantly shortened, and is now around 60mm in length. It looks like it has been re-shaped to make it into a slightly narrower profile, and a longer tip. There are scratch marks where it has been sharpened with something coarse, possibly a rough file or dry oilstone.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10032″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][vc_column_text]
Moving Out
Nothing else comes up after removing the leaf litter for the surrounding 3m or so, and the dog is still gently whining (in the way that only a German Shepherd can). It’s time to cast the net wider and look up rather than at my feet.
The spruces surround the clearing have been trimmed of their dry, dead lower branches – probably for kindling in the same way that I do it in this video. A little further out there are signs that larger branches have been snapped off, and marks where a few tentative swings with a hatchet or large knife have been made against a dead tree.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10025″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”10027″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center” onclick=”zoom”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Reading the rest
A wider sweep reveals more of the same – broken or sawn branches and evidence of firewood collection. There is no apparent sign of shelter-building from natural materials, so if somebody did sleep out alongside this fire then they probably used a bivvy bag, tarp, tent or hammock. There was no obvious evidence of rope marks on the trees, but I only gave them a very cursory examination – there were certainly quite a few that were substantial enough to support a tarp or hammock setup.
Just how much detail one would go into for a site like this depends very much on the reason for you searching it. If it is a possible crime scene then a forensic analysis must be made and records taken of all associative, trace and transient evidence found. The records of the movements and actions of the initial searchers will need to be accounted for too – Locard’s exchange principle still holds true, even in the middle of nowhere.
If however the site is discovered whilst in active pursuit of a subject where time is critical then a rapid analysis to discover if it is relevant to the current investigation can be made within a few minutes. This will at least help those officers decide if it is worth further investigation and exploitation, or if it is just an unrelated or historic site.
This particular camp was probably made sometime between late 2016 and autumn 2017, judging by the depth of leaf litter covering both the knife and fire scar. This is based on my experience in this particular woodland though, and of course is a very vague estimate. As sites like this age it is increasingly difficult to accurately age them as time passes, especially without other evidence that could be used to date it (expiration dates on discarded food packets maybe, or algae/moss growth on items moved or used during the camp activity).[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Anybody missing a knife?
It looks like somebody has gone to some significant effort to modify or repair this knife, and if you think you know who owned it then please get in touch directly.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Our Courses
If you work in a law enforcement, investigation or security field and think that we could do something to help you do your job then please get in touch directly.
Not all of our tracking courses are open to the general public – but the courses and events with public dates should be listed below:[/vc_column_text][product_category per_page=”12″ columns=”4″ orderby=”rand” order=”ASC” category=”tracking-courses”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, EST Framework, Mountain General, Tracking
17 Different ways of making fire
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17 Different Ways of Making Fire
A selection of natural and artificial ignition sources, tinders and accelerants to help with your next fire
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Anybody who has attended one of our bushcraft, survival or campcraft courses will know that when we teach the skills of firecraft and firelighting we break it down into two distinct halves – ignition and architecture.
There are many ways of making that first flame – the ‘ignition’ phase – and the video clips below show 17 of those methods.
Each video segment is set to begin at the relevant segment in the video, but the entire video can be found here on our YouTube channel.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Butane Lighters
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More Information
Butane lighters (the type with liquid fuel and a spark-wheel) are one of my favourite ways of achieving the ‘first stage’ of a fire. They are reliable, have few moving parts and even if you break the casing and lose all of the fuel – you can still use the miniature ferro rod and the spark-wheel mechanism to ignite a suitable tinder that way.
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Windproof Lighters
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More Information
These gas-fuelled lighters are effectively mini blowtorches. They are very powerful, and not susceptible to wind. They are however a little more delicate or finicky than their simpler butane cousins – and are very heavy on fuel. For short trips they work well but don’t rely solely on them.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Safety Matches
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More Information
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get hold of the traditional style of matches (the ones that rely on friction), and instead safety matches (that rely on a chemical reaction with the striker strip) are becoming the default option when you look for them in shops. This is fine, but you need to make sure you protect the striker strip when storing them in your kit.
Matches are a good low-tech backup to keep in your firecraft kit, but it’s worth making sure you have developed a good match-striking technique so you don’t waste them when out in the field.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Lifeboat Matches
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More Information
A Lifeboat Match (AKA Flare Matches or Storm Matches) differ from ‘normal’ matches in that two thirds of the length of the match is made up of the ‘head’, i.e. the part that initially combust when struck. These matches are almost always ‘safety’ types, and need to be used with the supplied striker strip to work. They are issued in some military ration packs and survival kits and can also be purchased in waterproof boxes.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Cotton Wool Pads and Petroleum Jelly
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More Information
This is two methods, because the addition of petroleum jelly does significantly affect how useful this is as a technique.
Cotton wool (either in balls, or pads) can be easily lit with matches, lighters or ferro rods. As long as they are kept dry and grease-free they will light easily – but also burn away very quickly without producing much usable heat.
The addition of petroleum jelly (a very small amount, less than a teaspoonful) will significantly change the amount of potential energy in the tinder and allow it to be released steadily – producing a steady, hot flame that will burn for several minutes.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Tampons
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Tampons are essentially compressed cotton wool surrounded by vaguely flammable material. They come in waterproof pouches and can be easily opened, spread out and ignited. They don’t burn as well as other improvised tinders, but do work. This is probably something to keep in your emergency kit, but is a useful technique.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Bicycle Inner Tube
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Butyl rubber bicycle inner tubes (the cheaper, more common type) are handy for several things. They can be made into improvised lashings and add extra grip and storage options as Ranger Bands – but also make very good components for lighting fires in wet, humid conditions. I have used thin strips of inner tube to light fires in the pouring rain, or after travelling through wet and humid places where everything in my kit was possibly going to be saturated – they are fully waterproof and don’t absorb moisture.
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Go Prepared Survival Tinder Strips
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This is a commercial product marketed as a ‘survival’ tinder, but could be used as a regular firecraft resource if it suits your needs (and your budget!). It is included in some NATO military survival kits, and has the benefits of being easily stored and tucked away with no weight or packed-size penalty. It does however need a flame to light directly, to use a ferro rod you will need to combine it with cotton wool (supplied in the purchased/issued kits).[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Hammaro/BCB Tindercard
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Another commercial product, but a little cheaper. Rather than being a woven fabric this is a paper-based product and a little bulkier. It will light with a flame or a ferro rod, but for the latter I find it helps to warm it in my hands for a minute or so, then to create some fibres/particles by scraping with the striker of my ferro rod (as you would with birch bark).
This is one of my favourite ways of quickly and reliably starting a fire – even if it’s just embedded in a larger bundle of natural tinder.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
BCB FireDragon Fuel
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We have used BCB FireDragon fuel blocks for several years now and they are very useful – it’s easy to see why they have replaced the famous ‘hexy blocks’ as the solid fuel source issued to UK military personnel.
These solid blocks of ethanol are easily divided into smaller segments and will light with a flame or a ferro rod. They can also be blown out easily, but do melt and turn to liquid whilst burning so be careful with your placement.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Sisal String
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Sisal string, made from the fibres of Agave, is pretty terrible for any serious lashing or other cordage uses – but if you have some to hand it can be unwoven and separated into fibres that will ignite from a flame or a ferro rod.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Daldinia concentrica (Fungus)
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Daldinia concentrica, AKA King Alfred’s Cakes, Cramp Balls etc, is inedible but quite useful as a way of creating then preserving an ember. It is flammable, but won’t burst into flame – even with strong encouragement. It will however glow brightly like a piece of charcoal, and can be embedded into a ‘nest’ of natural tinder which will ignite from the heat created by the glowing fungus.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Fatwood
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Fatwood – wood from resinous pine trees that has been infused with that flammable resin – can have shavings taken from the surface which will ignite either with a flame or several strikes from a ferro rod (if the shavings are thin enough).[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Birch Bark
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There are several varieties of Birch with flammable outer barks (the type in the video is Betula papyrifera – Paper Birch), but a similar technique is used for all of them. Scrape away several small shavings of the outer side of the bark and then strike firmly with a ferro rod to produce a good shower of sparks. I will always try to have a small handful of thin strips of bark ready to add to the flames once they have begun.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Honeysuckle Bark
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The type used in this video is Common Honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum) and was collected shortly before filming the video so isn’t the best example – it is slightly easier to work with when completely dry. If torn into thin strips it will light easily with a flame, and can be coaxed into combustion with a ferro rod if dry and thin enough.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Potassium Permanganate and Glycerol
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Potassium Permanganate is a chemical with strong oxidizing properties, and is often purchased as a fine powder. When combined with glycerol (or other substances) it will oxidize and combust, producing a short-lived but bright and smokey flame. This can be used to ignite other tinders, but is pretty useless on its own.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][product_category per_page=”12″ columns=”4″ orderby=”rand” order=”ASC” category=”bushcraft-courses”][product_category per_page=”12″ columns=”4″ orderby=”rand” order=”ASC” category=”survival-courses”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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UK Wild Camping Laws Explained
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UK Wild Camping Laws Explained
The laws and rules about where you ‘can’ and where you ‘cannot’ camp in the hills, mountains, forests and countryside of the United Kingdom always provokes a little debate when discussed. It’s something we talk about on our wild camping course and other campcraft courses, and if you have been following our blog for the last few years you might remember this post where I argued AGAINST the signing of a petition that wanted to legalise wild camping in England and Wales. In that post I wanted to point out that although wild camping is legally difficult, it is possible.
This post explains the laws and rules around wild camping in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as to the best of my understanding as an outdoor professional. I’ve also tried to include some other legal issues that may be worth considering when heading out to camp in the mountains and forests.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
Can I Wild Camp in the U.K?
Good question. I suppose it depends on what you mean by ‘can’.
If you mean ‘is it physically possible to find somewhere to camp?‘ then of course the answer is ‘yes’. I wild camp somewhere in the UK about once per month and have a decent success rate. I have been camping in the mountains and forests and on the coastline of the UK since I was about 18 – a time that seems to be getting further away at an alarming rate!
If however you mean ‘am I legally entitled to wild camp where I want to in the U.K?‘ then the answer is probably going to involve a sucking of teeth and a ‘well, it depends…’
The problem is that for most of the U.K. we do not have a ‘wild camping law’. The legal rules pertaining to camping on somebody else’s land aren’t clear and are bound up in historic assertions of property and personal rights dating back centuries. Current legislation for most of the U.K. focuses more on the actions of travellers, gypsies and other migratory groups that may park on land with vehicles and caravans – as you can see in this PDF.
The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 (CJPOA, particularly sections 61-80) conveyed powers onto the Police and created offences relating to various forms of trespass – but again the focus is away from the hiking and camping community and more towards other groups – the examples often cited are ‘hunt saboteurs’ or those participating in a free parties or raves. Quoting the CJPOA in the case of ‘true’ wild camping in the mountains doesn’t really help though, as in the vast majority of cases the trespass on the land would be a civil matter rather than a criminal one.
But that’s about as clear as a mud smoothie, so let’s look at the individual cases for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9958″ img_size=”medium”][vc_single_image image=”9031″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Wild Camping Laws for England and Wales
Almost all of the land you can walk across in England and Wales is owned by somebody. It may be an individual, a company/commercial organisation (including The Crown Estate), a charity (National Trust etc) or even the government or similar authority. These are almost always referred to as the ‘landowner’ and I will do the same throughout this post.
In England and Wales you do not have the right to pitch a tent, tarp, hammock or bivvy bag on the land belonging to somebody else without the permission of that landowner. To do so without the permission of that landowner means that you are committing trespass – which is a civil offence (i.e. non-arrestable). However, if you do not immediately leave when directed to do so by the landowner or somebody acting on their behalf (such as a gamekeeper or land agent, or security guard) then you may be committing a criminal offence (Aggravated Trespass) – something that a Police officer can arrest you for. There are also a few places where you will be immediately committing criminal trespass as soon as you cross onto that land – such as railway lines, some education establishments and of course sites vital for national defence and security.
This all still applies if you are in the middle of nowhere, stood on top of a mountain in Snowdonia or the Lake District, and cannot see another human or even a road. In the vast majority of cases it still belongs to a landowner, and legally speaking you would still need the permission of the landowner.
The Countryside Rights of Way Act (CROW Act 2000)
This was a landmark piece of legislation that opened up huge swathes of the English and Welsh countryside to the general public, creating what is often referred to as the Right to Roam. This means that within certain, designated areas (often upland and large areas of forest or heathland) the general public can walk over the land, away from Public Rights of Way. This opens up most of the mountainous and remote areas of England and Wales for recreation and exploration on foot and effectively ended disputed access over certain areas, such as Chrome Hill in the Peak District.
One thing that wasn’t included in the Right to Roam was the ‘Right to Camp’ – it did not change the fact that camping on land without permission of the landowner is civil trespass, and in fact says quite clearly that camping is not permitted under the CROW Act:
1. Section 2(1) does not entitle a person to be on any land if, in or on that
land, he:
…
(s) engages in any organised games, or in camping, hang-gliding or paragliding,
That’s pretty clear – the CROW Act changed a lot about where we could walk, but not about where we were legally allowed to camp.
Hang on, what about Dartmoor?
Right Dartmoor. That is a different case.
16th Century English poet John Leland said that “Dartmore is muche a wilde Morish and forest Ground“. He wasn’t wrong, although there is a bit less forest now than there was in his day.
This fairly wild and expanse tract of moor in the South West of England abounds with myths and literary associations (watch out for The Hound of the Baskervilles), and is also home to various Ministry of Defence (MOD) training sites and a few other places of interest. It’s also pretty much the only place where you can legally wild camp in England without first checking with the landowner.
There are local byelaws that permit camping within certain areas of the Dartmoor National Park (see interactive map below) as long as you do so within the following rules:
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No person shall knowingly use any vehicle, including a caravan or any structure other than a tent for the purpose of camping on the access land or land set out for the use or parking of vehicles except on any area which may be set apart and indicated by notice as a place where such camping is permitted.
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No person shall knowingly erect a tent on the access land for the purpose of camping:(a) in any area listed in Schedule 2 to these byelaws;(b)within 100 metres of any public road or in any enclosure.
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No person shall camp in a tent on the same site on the access land for more than two consecutive nights, except on any area which may be set apart and indicated by notice as a place where such camping is permitted.
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Wild Camping Laws for Scotland
In Scotland the situation is a lot simpler. The Land Reform Act (Scotland) was enacted by the Scottish Parliament in 2003 and took the idea of the CROW Act and developed it even further. It created, amongst other things, a legal framework for land access in Scotland and included the development of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code.
One of the guiding principles of the Land Reform Act was that everyone has the right of access to the land and inland water of Scotland for recreation so long as they do so responsibly and without impinging on the the rights and freedoms of others. The ways in which responsible access can be exercised is laid out in the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, and quite clearly says that wild camping is permitted under the Scottish Outdoor Access Code and that as long as you:
- are not camping in enclosed areas (i.e. fields with crops or animals) or close to buildings and historic monuments
- are camping away from roads
- leave no trace (including good guidance on campfires)
There are some byelaw restrictions on camping in certain areas, most notably and controversially the restrictions on camping around parts of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.
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Wild Camping Laws for Northern Ireland
In some cases you find that the laws for Northern Ireland are slightly different from those of England, Scotland and Wales for one reason or another. However, in the case of Northern Ireland wild camping rules it is pretty much the same situation that existed in England and Wales prior to the introduction of the CROW Act in England and Wales:
- There are Public Rights of Way but no ‘Right to Roam’ as such
- There is no right to ‘wild camp’, and to do so without the permission of the landowner would be considered trespass, as it is in England and Wales (mostly)
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Wild Camping and Campfires
The association between a roaring (or even quietly burning) campfire is about as strong as you can get, but the issue of lighting fires on somebody else’s land is as complex as that of trespass and wild camping.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Here you would need the permission of the landowner to light a fire and you do not have the right to do so. This also includes Dartmoor, where wild camping is legal in certain areas (see map and description above).
Anybody lighting a fire on somebody else’s property without their permission needs to consider how it can be construed in a legal sense – trespass is a civil offence and you simply being there without permission and leaving immediately once asked to do so is a civil, not criminal matter. However – would lighting a fire (and presumably, gathering firewood from the immediate area and burning it) be considered criminal damage? There are so many variables to consider that it is impossible to give a clear answer – but it is wrong to assume that you ‘have the right’ to light a fire, just because you saw somebody on YouTube do it… For further reading take a look at the Criminal Damage Act 1971.
Scotland
As outlined above, camp fires are technically permitted under the Land Reform Act, but all (legal) access to land under the Land Reform Act needs to be done whilst adhering to the Scottish Outdoor Access Code. There is a strong recommendation that you use a stove, not an open fire, to cook over – and with good reason. See the tweet below from Ben Dolphin, AKA Countryside Ben:[/vc_column_text][vc_raw_html]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[/vc_raw_html][vc_column_text]
Wild Camping with a Knife or an Axe
This is an often overlooked problem, but in the bushcraft, survival and forest wild camping world you will find an endless range of photos and videos of people using axes and other cutting tools to fell trees, make shelters, process firewood and so on. It’s natural for somebody to assume that if they are wild camping then they can bring along a camping tool such as a knife, or a hatchet – right?
Welllllllll……
Consider this – in England, Wales and Northern Ireland you will need the permission of landowner to camp on their land. If you camp and do not have that permission then you are trespassing – a civil offence in most cases. But what if you have a very sharp, well-maintained and lovingly sharpened Gransfors Bruks hatchet or axe strapped to the side of your pack? Or a fixed-blade knife (or locking blade, or folding blade of longer than 3″ etc etc)? Is it still JUST trespass, or is it now armed trespass? Or possession of a bladed article without lawful reason to do so? In UK law the onus is generally on the person carrying the axe/fixed-blade/locking blade knife to justify WHY they are carrying in that place, at that time. If you do not have a lawful excuse for being in that forest (i.e. you are illegally wild camping without landowner permission), then does your reason for carrying a ‘camping tool’ no longer stand?
Again, there are many variables to consider here and I have no clear answers. The Police officers I work with as clients, the ones I have as friends and others working in the legal professions in the UK I have asked about it all have slightly different interpretations of what “they would do in that situation”.
It’s down to the individual to make their own decisions about how they carry a knife or axe when wild camping in the U.K.- and if they actually NEED to do so.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Wild Camping in the U.K. – my own experiences
I have wild camped in countless locations around the British Isles. I have yet (fingers crossed) come across a landowner or been asked to leave. There is a generally-accepted tolerance to wild camping in the more mountainous areas of England and Wales – if you arrive late, leave early and camp above the highest fenceline or wall then you are unlikely to come into conflict with a landowner or their representatives.
I try to be careful with where I select a spot to pitch a tent or lay my bivvy bag if wild camping in England and Wales – I go for spots that are set back from the edge of a slope where possible, and far away from roads and houses. I also try and move away from busy footpaths or popular areas – the middle of Cwm Idwal or next to Glaslyn on Snowdon might seem like a perfect place for an ‘epic’ mountain camp but you’re going to cause visual pollution for the tens, if not hundreds, of people who are going to spot you if you are a little bit late in striking camp.
There is also the issue of your ‘impact’ – what trace are you leaving by camping there? Ideally it will be a small patch of temporarily flattened grass and some easily-missed tent peg holes. But what about your toilet arrangements? The excess noodles that welded themselves to the bottom of the pan? The scrap of plastic that escaped from the tent when you unzipped the flap in the morning?
Worrying about being ‘caught’ by a landowner is just a small part of wild camping in the mountains of England, Wales and Northern Ireland – your environmental and ecological impact needs to be considered just as much – if not more.
Did you really need to fell that dead-standing birch and have a fire for 6 hours? Would a gas or meths stove have boiled your water just as well?
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A Wild Camping Code of Practice
The below is a code of practice I try to adhere to when wild camping ANYWHERE in the U.K.:
- Arrive late and leave early, and move on every day
- Avoid visual disturbance where possible – don’t be the big, orange shining beacon visible for miles around
- Be considerate of others – be them landowners, fellow campers or other people who seek solace in the wild places of the UK
- Leave No Trace other than footprints wherever possible, and go to great lengths to hide any trace you might have to leave
- You are going to need to poo at some point – do it at least 50m away from paths, water sources and other common features. Further if possible (other rules apply for other countries)
- If you carried it in, you carry it out. Banana skins, orange peel, tissues. The lot.
- Use a stove where possible. Campfires use resources and leave a lot of residual evidence if not managed correctly.
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A Wild Camping Video
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UK Wild Camping and Campcraft Courses
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The Six-Bundle Fire Lay
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The Six-Bundle Fire Lay
A stick-bundle method of lighting a fire
This fire lay requires six bundles of dry, straight dead wood and a good ignition source. It relies on good airflow at the beginning, and the fire lay ‘collapsing’ in on itself in the later stages to ensure a good bed of coals and ash to cook over.
It is also a good option for making a ‘One Match Fire’.
The thickness of the wood in each bundle increases as the fire develops, staring with match stick-sized twigs, moving through pencil-sized ones and finally finger-sized branches.
This is one of the first ways we teach new clients to arrange kindling and fire wood for a simple, reliable camp fire. It works particularly well in the areas we use to run training courses (mature Western Hemlock Spruce woodland) where there is an abundance of dry and easily-accessed materials that works particularly well with a stick-bundle fire lay. It would also work with dry/dead-standing Birch branches and some other straight, small branches.
This video is part of the training materials given to clients participating in training courses under the EST Framework
Learn more at:
OutdoorProfessional.co.uk
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Some of our North Wales and UK Bushcraft Courses
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Survival Tips for Travellers
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Survival Tips For Travellers
Quick tips that SHOULD work for anybody travelling to anywhere
Earlier this week I was asked by a writer for an upcoming Lonely Planet book called Travel Goals. The request was for some simple tips on ‘wilderness survival’ and…, well I’ll let you read for yourself:[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
I am getting in touch as I am currently looking to include an ‘expert voice’ in a feature I am writing for a new Lonely Planet book called Travel Goals.
The feature is on survival in the wilderness, including around five/six expert tips. I’m afraid, though, that there is a fairly tight turnaround and I would need your input by tomorrow, if possible – so sorry for the short notice!
These are the points I’d love to cover and have your opinion on:
– What would be your top tips for surviving in the wilderness? Please feel free to go into step-by step detail on everything from foraging (and what to watch out for) to lighting a fire without matches, building a shelter, using medicinal plants, using a map and compass, mountain navigation, river crossings, etc. Our aim is to present you as the expert here and hopefully give you (and Wales!) some great exposure.
I look forward to hearing from you.
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]As you have probably guessed – what Lonely Planet wanted was somebody to write some unique content for them (for free) and then for them to make money from selling that content as one of the ‘expert voices’ in the book. Apparently they “never pay interviewees (they benefit in terms of exposure)“. Well, quite. Exposure can be a dangerous thing – too much of it and it can kill you. That’s why our survival courses always include some training in awareness and prevention of hypothermia.
However, it prompted me to write this post – are there any generic survival tips I can give for people travelling the globe? Something quick and easy to read and as applicable to someone travelling to Mongolia as it would be to Mali? Tips that would work in Belgium or Belize?
It turns out I can. So here are some of those top travelling survival tips – given away to you for free – but I like you, so it’s OK.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”7761″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Knowledge weighs nothing
It’s easy to get distracted by shiny equipment and expensive outdoor toys, but the really important survival skills rely on good decision making and improvisation. Basic first aid training is easy to access and the lifesaving basics of being able to clear an airway, stop a major bleed and perform CPR requires only a few hours of training and either very basic or improvised equipment. When I teach people about survival in different environments there is always a lot more time spent on learning how to make good decisions and plan well rather than relying on gear and equipment.
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Pay attention to maps
Unless you’re going out do something like climb a mountain or travel along a certain route it’s unlikely that you will be carrying a detailed map of the area with you. Smartphones and online map sources are great but rely on access to the internet, or at the very least a functioning device with a charged battery. You can at least retain a good idea of what is around you by paying attention to any tourist or information maps you pass – probably found at ‘hub’ sites like fuel stops, railway and bus stations and some tourist sites. You don’t have to memorise each one, but it’s worth checking where important places are relative to your current position – which direction is the nearest town where you are likely to find medical care? Is that waterfall more than, or less than, halfway along the next section of trail? Does this road head more to the north, or more to the east? It may seem trivial at the time but being able to quickly orientate yourself in the direction of the nearest help will remove a lot of confusion and uncertainty from an emergency situation.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”7157″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
Carry the fire with you
If you are travelling to somewhere where there is an outside chance that if you are stranded you may need to light a fire to save your life then carry some form of firelighting with you. This could just be a box of matches, but it would be better to carry something that’s easy to use, is reliable and doesn’t weigh very much. It’s also worth taking something to help get that fire going – dry firewood can always be gathered without cutting tools, but finding dry tinder can be very hard in some environments. When I travel to places like that I take several cigarette lighters (the type with a spark wheel) and scatter them throughout my kit along with some strips of bicycle innertube. They’re cheap, light and small and you can put one in your first aid kit, one in your rucksack lid and one in something you ALWAYS have with you – like the bag you carry your camera in perhaps?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”9043″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
File a ‘flight plan’
When travelling in remote places away from other humans and access to reliable communications the best chance of someone getting help to you when you need is from somebody reporting you missing or overdue. If you are planning on returning to a hostel or other accommodation after completing a hike or other excursion see if there is a facility for you to leave notes of your intended route, your details and when you expect to be home. That way if you don’t return then there is at least SOMEBODY who will send help to the right area. You MUST make sure that you check in with that person when you get back from your trip – plenty of SAR missions have been sent out in search of somebody who had just forgotten to tell their accommodation that they were back safely![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_single_image image=”8976″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
You don’t have to go far to get into trouble
When most people start to think about ‘survival situations’ they tend to picture themselves as a castaway on some strangely uninhabited island or shivering atop a remote mountain. The reality is more likely to come from doing something fairly ‘safe’, like hiking along a trail not too far from a busy tourist area or exploring an area away from where you left your kit. A broken ankle or just misplaced footwear can incapacitate you very quickly in a place where you thought was ‘just a short walk’. Don’t assume the survival situation will be a big, dramatic moment – it’s going to arrive dressed up as something fairly boring and ordinary. Consider the ‘penalty of failure’ for what you’re about to do – although considering and working within that risk are an important part of any adventure.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Make Good Decisions at the Right Times
Survival training is fun. It often involves knives and fire and learning weird and fun skills in the woods or halfway up a mountain. But that’s not the lesson that we hope our course participants take away with them – what we want is for them to take away one VERY important lesson:
MAKE
GOOD
DECISIONS
Good decisions before you go out. Good decisions whilst you are there. Good decisions when you are back at home and planning the next trip. That’s all it is really – and the single best survival tip I can give any traveller is to learn how to make good decisions. That might mean learning about the potential environmental risks of the country you are travelling to – or how to do some basic first aid so you can make good decisions about whcih way round D,R,A,B, and C go.
I can outline every potential survival situation here, but you can take a good look at where you’re going to, what you’re planning to do when you get there and then decide if you are equipped to make those decisions yet.
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Some of our public survival courses
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, EST Framework, Mountain General, Personal, Skills, Survival
Sharpening Bushcraft Knives and Axes – a 2018 update
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A guide to sharpening axes and knives for bushcraft and the outdoors
The equipment and techniques we use to sharpen our equipment at home and at camp
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]This isn’t the first article on the blog about the equipment we use for sharpening knives and axes. The last one was quite short and was mostly just a list of the equipment – but I have been meaning to write out a more in-depth guide. We cover knife and axe sharpening at different levels on our bushcraft and campcraft courses, and it’s one of those subjects where the course participants ‘lean in’ to the topic – most of those who attend the course have tried to sharpen their own equipment and had, shall we say, a variety of results? Sometimes at the end of that lecture or presentation I have been handed a knife or axe that could be a lot sharper than it currently is and have been asked for advice on how to improve it, and if we have time I will show that person how to regain the shape and edge they want. As one of the instructor team said during our most recent Woodcrafter course – “what the hell did you do that guy’s axe? Last time I saw it you could have used it as a spoon and now it’s shaving the hairs off a nettle!“
I need to state a few things from the outset – first, I’m not a ‘knife guy’. I don’t collect knives, and I don’t buy knives to put in a display case. That is not to denigrate or to criticise those who do – it’s just that I have enough hobbies and collections to fill my time (and home) and knives, axes and similar items have been, quite literally, the tools of my trade. I use my cutting tools weekly, both on courses and for tasks at home – my morning exercise today was snedding, crosscutting and splitting several dozen kgs of firewood for the logburner in the office, using a chainsaw, forest axe and maul that have all been sharpened or fettled by myself recently. I use knives and axes, and teach others how to use them within an ‘outdoors’ context – but I know many other people who care much more about the subject than I do and will have strong opinions on everything that follows.
I also need to acknowledge that there are many different ways to achieve the same thing when it comes to tool sharpening, and a quick Google search would bring up dozens of techniques and variations – each written by somebody who swears that their way is the ‘true’ method.
This is, as with many things on the internet, complete cobblers.
When it comes to teaching a complex skill like sharpening any good instructor should acknowledge that there are often multiple ways of achieving the same thing. Generally speaking, if someone says that “THIS is the only way to do this…” then it’s likely that:
- They don’t know another way of doing it, because they have a limited range of experience
- They have an external pressure on them teaching ‘that way’ of doing things – i.e. they need to keep to a strict syllabus or lesson plan, often seen in military training
- They are selling you ‘that way’ of doing things, usually to go along with the equipment they are selling
In short – there are several techniques and methods that can achieve the same thing. Some are certainly easier for novice users, or work more efficiently with certain blade shapes – but if you find one method works best for you and your tools, you can repeat that process time and again and recognise when you have achieved what you wanted then that’s absolutely fine.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9255″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”9261″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”9260″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”9262″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Stage 1 – Shaping the Blade
In most cases you will only need to perform this stage if the knife or axe is VERY blunt, needs to be reshaped or has a dent/ding in the edge of the blade that needs to be removed (well, the material either side needs to be removed to match it). It is often performed with a file, either one dedicated for use with outdoor cutting tools or a general machinist/metalworking file.
This is the most aggressive stage in the sharpening process and care needs to be taken. All sharpening processes involve removing material from the blade, but when you are using a file or very coarse stone you can quickly grind away more material than you wanted to. Each stroke needs to be deliberate and assessed and done to a plan.
Remember also to only use hand tools unless you have access to dedicated grinding and honing machines for this stage – power tools like grinders will unevenly heat the blade, changing the chemistry of the steel and ruining the ‘temper’ of the steel. Cutting tools like knives or axes are made from steel or alloys that have been carefully heated and shaped to maintain a balance between hardness and shapeability – something that can be sharpened to a fine edge but is resilient enough to not chip or dent the moment it is used to cut something.
Knives
It’s rare that you will need to reshape or repair a knife blade with a file but it can be useful if you need to change a knife ‘grind’ from a convex to a bevel shape – it’s still unlikely that a general user will reprofile a knife in this way. I have repaired knife blades with a file though, removing material from across the length of the blade until it has dropped to the same level of the ding. It can also be useful for reinstating a point on the knife, and area that can be tricky to sharpen and easily dulled by repeated ‘stabbing’ of material or game/fish preparation.
A file can also be useful for ensuring the ‘spine’ of a knife has a 90° edge, vital for use with a ferro rod.
Axes
This is where you are more likely to use a file, as the force used to swing an axe can easily put a significant dent into an edge if it comes across a hard spot in the wood, or misses and hits a stone in the ground. I once managed to ding an axe when I hit a bolt that was buried in a small tree – at some point someone had bolted/screwed a sign to the tree and the tree had regrown around it.
Using a File on an Axe or Knife
I favour longer, flat files, such as those used for sharpening chainsaws (for dropping the height of the cutter guides, not the round ones used on the cutters themselves). I hold the knife or axe on a stump or other flat surface where I can hold it steady and push the file over the edge from behind – i.e. my hand stays behind the cutting edge and I DO NOT file towards the edge. It can be done that way but it does have a significant risk of slipping with the file and plunging your fingers into the blade.
Work carefully and steadily and be wary of removing too much material or making a gouge in the blade. Maintain the original angle of the cutting edge and replicate the effort on the other side of the blade – it is very easy to end up with an asymmetric blade when using a file.
I wear leather gloves when possible, and work in good light. A head torch can help, but there is no substitute for moving out from under the trees to a clearing where you can carefully examine what you are doing.
Cleaning a blade
If your knife or axe has seen some heavy use, particularly with woods or materials that can ‘stain’ the blade or leave deposits on the surface, then it’s probably a good idea to clean them from the blade before beginning to sharpen it. Depending on what it is you’re trying to remove it could prevent the blade from properly contacting with the sharpening stone, it could prevent the blade from cutting through material effectively or just carry on corroding into the steel.
There are several ways you can clean the blade, but my favourite is to use either an abrasive block (the Garryflex blocks are great) or an abrasive paper. Just be careful to not be too enthusiastic with your actions as you could end up dulling the edge of the blade or cutting yourself through a bit of careless finger placement. [/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”9291″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”9286″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Stage 2 – Sharpening Stones
This is the stage in the sharpening process where most people begin, and with good reason – if you knife/axe is the right ‘shape’ but just blunt then you do not need to go through the heavy work with a file to regrind the blade.
As mentioned above – any sharpening of a blade involves removing material until you achieved the desired angle. The way you remove that material matters when it comes to cutting effectiveness, and there are a number of ways to achieve the desired level of sharpness.
All ‘sharpening stones’ (including stones plucked from a riverbed or shore) are an abrasive, and harder than the steel/metal of the knife or axe. By moving the blade across the stone you grind away material from the blade – although you may also remove material from the stone as well. Some stones require the use of a fluid or lubricant, normally water or some kind of oil, to aid the process. Some stones (increasingly difficult/expensive to obtain) are made from naturally-occurring material, others from a composite of materials, some artificial and some naturally-sourced.
Most stones are graded by ‘grit’, with a number denoting the grit. The smaller the number the more coarse the stone (and the more aggressively it will remove the material from the blade) – usually starting at about 250 for knife sharpening and moving on up to around 3-5000 or even higher.
The aim is to move from a coarse grit (small number) to a fine grit (large number) with several steps between. As you progress through the steps you remove some of the scratches/scoring made by the step before and create a uniform cutting edge.
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Sharpening Stone Types
There are several commonly available sharpening stones, and hundreds of commercial products making use of these types of stone within their designs.
Whetstones (Oil Stones) – can be made from natural stone (usually Novaculite, AKA Arkansasa Oilstone) or synthetically using an abrasive such as silicon carbide or aluminium oxide. The synthetic variety are often sold as double sided, with a finer grit on one side and a coarser grit on the other. They are relatively cheap and robust, although heavy. They do not necessarily NEED the use of a lubricant (I use 3-in-1 oil) but this does help with the movement of the blade across the stone and remove swarf (material removed from the blade that may prevent the blade touching the stone evenly or even blocking the ‘pores’ of the stone that have the abrasive effect).
Japanese Water Stones – these are mostly made as synthetic product using naturally-occurring stone and are seen by many as being the ‘ultimate’ way of sharpening a blade – but I’ve personally had as good a result with an oilstone. There is certainly a strong cultural association with these Japanese stones, and there is a whole world of nagura, Shapton, Debado and Ao Toishithat you could dive into if you so wished. The grit sizes range from around 400 up to 12000 which takes you well into ‘polishing’ territory. These stones tend to be quite heavy but robust, and most require immersion in water prior to use (using water as a lubricant – never use oil on a water stone).
Diamond Stones – diamond has been used industrially for sharpening and cutting applications for a long time now, making use of the hardness of diamond and the relatively low cost of it in granule form. It is usually a coating on top of a steel plate, often with a plastic or resin surround – they often look a little like a cheese grater. These ‘stones’ can be used to sharpen a blade directly or even used to ‘true’ a sharpening stone – i.e. make it back into a flat surface, removing the depression often formed by repeated grinding and sharpening. They do not require the use of lubricant and have a long service life.
Abrasive Paper – high-quality abrasive and polishing papers, often bonded onto glass or flat wood. This is the method associated with the term ‘scary sharp‘ and is inexpensive and simple to master. It works best with blades that have a ‘flat’ bevel and where the whole blade can be run across the surface. It works very well with woodworking tools (chisels etc) but can be modified for use with an axe or knife.
Sharpening Tools – these sharpening kits and items are often one of the above types of stone set into a jig or pre-defined shape. The best types are ones that can accommodate various angles and knife shapes and use good materials – but there are several terrible sharpening kits on the market – beware and read several independent reviews before purchasing if you can.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9284″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9296″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9297″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]
Sharpening Stone Technique (Knife)
Fortunately, despite the slightly confusing array of sharpening stones available on the market, the technique for actually sharpening a knife on a stone is fairly simple and common to most types of stone. The key points are:
- Ensure that whatever you do to one side you do to the other – ideally in alternating strokes
- Be consistent with your angles, pressure and movements to avoid imbalanced blade shapes
- Be conscious of where the cutting edge of the blade is relative to your hands and body etc
Sharpening Strokes
- Position yourself so you can stay comfortably in that position for a while, and place the stone on a flat, stable surface. When in the woods/field it can be tricky to find such a surface – tree stumps, logs, rocks, equipment cases and even the bonnet of a Land Rover have all been used by me in the past. The key is stability, flatness and a comfortable working height.
- Start with the ‘coarse’ grit of whatever stone system you are using and place the blade edge on the surface of the stone so that the very edge is touching the stone. You will need to know what kind of blade ‘grind’ you knife has in order to decide where that final flat surface you need to lay on the stone actually is. A simple test is to see if there is a shadow or ‘gap’ between the metal of the blade and the surface of the stone – if there’s a gap you need to tile the blade a little further. The angle is key, as too shallow an angle will remove material in the wrong place, and too steep an angle will actually make the knife blunter.
- Move the blade across the stone as if you are trying to take a slice off the top of the stone itself. Start at one end of the stone, aiming to finish at the other end of the stone having moved the entire length of the blade over the stone in a single pass. This will require care and practice to ensure you maintain the angle of the blade throughout the stroke length – most outdoor-oriented knives have a curve at one end of the blade, requiring the user to lift the handle of the knife to maintain the angle.
- After completing the stroke you can repeat, or turn the knife and perform the same action on the other side of the blade. When sharpening a knife on a stone all actions have to be repeated for the opposing side. Most people end up with a sharpening ‘pattern’ – mine is outlined below.
Push or Pull?
There are several schools of thought about whether a knife should be pushed across a stone with the cutting edge as the ‘leading’ edge of the blade, or whether it should be dragged, i.e. the cutting edge ‘trails’ over the stone. There is also a debate about whether you should ‘push’ the knife in the same direction (normally away from you, swapping the knife from hand to hand to maintain direction and angle) or if you should ‘push’ it away from you on one stroke, then turn the knife and ‘push’ it back towards you to sharpen the other side. The consensus seems to be for ‘push’ over ‘pull/drag’, but with a split over which way to perform that ‘push’ action.
Knife grind/shape certainly comes into it, with scandi and convex grinds easier maybe to sharpen with a ‘push’ and other grinds with a drag. Personal preference and a host of other factors come into play – so if you find a technique that you replicate time and again, it works for your equipment and you understand WHY it works then I wouldn’t worry too much about it.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9281″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9282″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9283″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]
Sharpening Stone Technique (Axe)
Most axes you are going to come across in a bushcraft, campcraft and outdoor context will have a convex grind, and also be a bit too cumbersome to bring to a bench sharpening stone. There are several versions of the ‘hockey puck’ axe sharpening stones on the market – I use the Gransfors Bruks Yxsten/Axestone but others are available.
The technique with these stones is to sharpen the length of the blade in a circular motion, being careful to keep fingers out of the way. Again – all actions performed on one side of the blade should be repeated on the other, and a progression from coarse to fine grit sizes will ensure a sharp edge free from scratches and abrasion marks can be achieved.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Stage 3 – Polishing and Stropping
Once you have progressed through the sharpening stones you have you SHOULD already have a sharp blade – but it could be sharper, especially for fine work with wood or for skinning animals and game preparation.
The point where sharpening stops and polishing begins with regards to cutting tools is a little… fuzzy. As you progress through to around 3000 and higher you should start to see a ‘shiny’ surface on the area you have been sharpening. Scratches left behind by the earlier sharpening steps have begun to disappear and the surface will be a lot smoother.
There may also be a burr that develops at the very edge of the blade – a strip of metal that is the result of the grinding process of sharpening. Stropping removes this without further grinding of the edge.
The next stage normally involves the use of a ‘strop’ – usually a piece of leather, often in conjunction with a polishing compound like Autosol or similar.
A strop can be free-hanging (i.e. not attached to any surface, or just anchored at the ends) or bonded to a surface, usually a wooden board. The leather needs to be thick enough to ‘hold’ the polishing compound and some people look for a thicker leather as it can ‘wrap’ around the edge of the blade. An additional layer of foam between the leather and a the board can help with this effect –
Technique for stropping knives and axes
As with using a sharpening stone, the technique for stropping involves putting equal work into both sides. It’s best to ‘drag’ the blade as this helps remove the burr. It’s also very difficult to do it any other way as the blade would cut into the leather.
You’ll get better results with more strokes, and 50-100 strokes across the strop is what I aim for. If your strop is mounted to a wooden board you can keep the blade still and move the strop across it – but be careful to maintain the angle and not ‘roll’ over the edge of the blade. It’s very easy to undo all of the hard work you’ve put in already!
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Aftercare and Oiling
If you have performed the above steps correctly you SHOULD have a sharp blade with a smooth and consistent edge. It’s good practice to finish the day with a sharp cutting tool, and often my work days end with a sharpening session. Starting a long day with a set of sharp and well-maintained tools is always a morale boost, and doubly so if you weren’t the last person to use that tool.
Corrosion Prevention
If you have a carbon steel axe or knife (i.e. something that can rust) then you will need to perform some kind of post-sharpening oiling or corrosion prevention before putting it away. There are a number of things you can use to prevent corrosion on a knife or axe blade:
- Oil – something that can be applied safely to the blade that won’t evaporate or solidify (or turn rancid). I use either 3-in-1 oil or a silicone gun oil on my blades, but you may want to consider using a food-grade mineral oil for blades that will be used for food.
- Wax – either ordinary candle wax, beeswax or a dedicated corrosion-prevention product like Renaissance Wax (used in museums etc).
The key thing is to ensure that you treat the whole blade, but not excessively. A small amount of oil on a rag or piece of kitchen towel is normally sufficient. If your knife has a leather sheath (or leather mask on an axe) then the leather will probably begin to be impregnated by the oil and help prevent corrosion when stored for a longer period.
I tend to use mineral oil on my knives that live in leather sheaths, gun oil (that creates a thicker, corrosion-resistant layer on an uncovered steel surface) on knives and axes that are uncovered or in plastic sheaths (like Moras, Hultafors etc) and wax on other carbon steel surface (saws etc).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9293″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9275″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9276″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9277″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1533897160026{padding: 5px !important;background-color: #eaeaea !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text]
My Sharpening Methods
The above is intended as a general guide to the separate stages of the sharpening process for most user types, and (hopefully) answers to some of the frequently asked sharpening questions. Below are my current methods for sharpening axes and knives for bushcraft and other outdoor activities at home and in the field.
Knife (at home/workshop)
The below steps are performed at a workbench with good lighting:
- Visually inspect edge for damage (looking for reflective spots along the edge, possibly with a loupe/jeweller’s lens if one is available). If no damage then proceed to Step 3.
- If damaged then begin to file back the blade to a level where the ding/dent is no longer visible
- 800 grit water stone – 10 strokes in one direction then 10 in other, then 10 alternating strokes. Repeat at least once.
- 1200 grit water stone – 10 strokes in one direction, one stroke in other, then another 10. Repeat for other side, then 20 alternating strokes.
- 5000 grit water stone – 10 strokes in one direction, one stroke in other, then another 10. Repeat for other side, then 20 alternating strokes.
- Strop the knife over a leather strop using Tormek paste. The strop is bonded to a thin layer of foam on a flat oak board.
Knife (in camp)
The below steps are performed on a tree stump or equipment case if possible, but the flattest, most stable surface I can find. If no flat surface is available then I will try and do it carefully by hand, but accept that it will be harder to get the same quality of sharpness. If I know that I will be performing a lot of carving and woodworking tasks at the camp then I will carry a more comprehensive sharpening kit, but I usually carry as a bare minimum a ‘pocket’ diamond or oil stone. there is always a balance to be struck between the amount of equipment you are willing to carry vs what you can realistically achieve with minimal equipment:
- Visually inspect edge for damage (looking for reflective spots along the edge, possibly with a loupe/jeweller’s lens if one is available). If no damage then proceed to Step 3.
- If damaged then begin to file back the blade to a level where the ding/dent is no longer visible
- 300 grit diamond stone (DMT folding type) – 10 strokes in one direction then 10 in other, then 10 alternating strokes. Repeat at least once.
- 650 grit diamond stone – 10 strokes in one direction, one stroke in other, then another 10. Repeat for other side, then 20 alternating strokes.
- 1200 grit abrasive paper on a board (if carried) – 10 strokes in one direction, 10 in other then 10 alternating. Must be ‘dragged’ or paper will catch and tear.
- Strop the knife over a leather strop (using Tormek paste if carried). The strop is either a dedicated strip of leather or even a leather belt.
Axe (at home or in camp)
The process for sharpening my axes is very similar in camp or at home – either way I normally take the sharpening stone to the axe rather than laying the stone down and moving the axe across it. The only difference may be that I use a (soft) vise or clamp to hold the axe securely if filing the edge at home:
- Visually inspect edge for damage (looking for reflective spots along the edge, possibly with a loupe/jeweller’s lens if one is available). If no damage then proceed to Step 3.
- If damaged then begin to file back the blade to a level where the ding/dent is no longer visible
- 180 grit axestone – careful rotational strokes along one edge, trying to replicate on both sides and maintain a balance in the shape.
- 600 grit axestone – as above, with extra care due to increasingly sharp edge
- 1200 grit abrasive paper on a board – use eye to estimate how much work you have done on one side, but use colour change in metal/reflection to estimate how much has been done in order to match on other side.
- 2500 grit abrasive paper on a board – as above
- Strop the knife using a leather bonded to an oak board using Tormek paste.
Essentially the stage are the same – progressive movement through from a coarse abrasive to a finer one and finishing with a ‘polishing’ stage using a leather strop. Consideration is given to how much equipment can be carried and, realistically how sharp you can get your tools when working from a camp. I can usually achieve a ‘shaving sharp’ edge using a diamond stone or axestone on a well-maintained blade with access to leather for stropping, but I am realistic about my expectations when it comes to working far from the trappings of civilisation (and my workshop…)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
How sharp does it need to be?
Depends on what you’re doing with it…
The point to where a blade is ‘sharp enough’ is subjective and varies from tool to tool, and is often dependent on the task you are going to perform with it. My wood carving knives are orders of magnitude sharper than my splitting maul, but my felling and woodworking axes are usually sharp enough to shave with (although I don’t recommend it). If my splitting maul was much sharper then I would likely dent the edge whenever I hit a knot in the wood (or miss and hit the ground), but my carving knives need to be that sharp so that I can remove fine layers of wood without much force and do so delicately and carefully.
As a very general rule I go and sharpen the blade of a cutting tool as soon as I find that I have to put in more effort than I expected to perform that task. A good number of the minor cuts and scars on my hands have come from using more force than was necessary with a slightly blunt tool. It’s a hard-won lesson, but it makes you appreciate the importance of a sharp tool.
For some tools that need a lot of force to use effectively (splitting mauls and larger axes normally, plus some machetes/parangs) there can be a point where the tool is too sharp. By this I mean that the edge could be slightly blunter and still perform the required task, but the consequences of a mistimed strike or swing could be at best a damaged tool – and at worse a damaged limb. I will leave it to the reader to decide how sharp their cutting tool should be, but does EVERY item in your kit need to be sharp enough to shave a gooseberry, or are you creating a potential safety issue by making everything that narrow/sharp?
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Testing the sharpness of a cutting edge
There are a couple of tests I use, although I will steer the novice user towards some rather than others. Any time you bring a sharp cutting tool into close proximity with your skin and flesh you are increasing the risk of an injury. Unless you are 100% confident in your abilities then stick with one of the methods that doesn’t involve testing the edge by shaving your arm or your fingernail!
We don’t have many disclaimers or warnings on this blog – but if you are swinging cutting tools around you need to be aware of the potential risks of things going wrong, and position yourself, your knife/axe and anybody watching accordingly.
- The Paper Test – take a piece of A4 printer paper (I use 80gsm stuff, straight from the printer in the office) and hold one corner, with the paper in landscape orientation. Holding the knife in your dominant hand (i.e. the had you write with normally) try and take a swipe at the corner of the paper. If you can take the tip of the corner off in one swipe without the paper bunching up or tearing then your knife or axe is sharp enough for most tasks, including carving. If you can take several (careful) swipes and remove stripe after stripe of the paper then you can be confident that your blade is sharp – although you may need to quickly perform the stropping stage again as paper is great for blunting a knife!
- The Onion Test – this one takes a little practice but is a good test if you are sharpening a knife for food prep, and it also works on ripe tomatoes and starchy potatoes. If the knife can ‘fall’ through the onion with little effort, cutting through the individual layers without crushing them together and no ‘notchy’ resistance then it’s pretty sharp. A slightly mad variation on this test is to put the knife blade-upwards on a chopping board and drop a cherry tomato onto it from about 30cm above. If the cherry tomato lands on the blade and cuts through, partially or wholly, then the knife is at the ‘scary’ end of the sharpness spectrum.
- The Wood Test – AKA the Featherstick Test. This is a good one when in the field and a quick test of a blade edge is required. Take a quartered log (i.e. something that has been split in two, then that half has been split again) and try to make a fine, curling shaving from the corner. If you can do this two or three times then it is sharp enough for most tasks.
- The Shaving Test – this works best on hairy forearms, and stay away from anywhere else on the body! If you can shave the fine hairs from the outside of a forearm with minimal effort then that blade is, of course, shaving-sharp. The potential risks with this method include cutting into the flesh (with possible infection as a result) and even the risk of hitting something VERY important, like a major blood vessel or a tendon.
- The Fingerprint Test – once again, a risky strategy. Turn the blade upwards and LIGHTLY place a fingertip on the blade. If you can feel the individual ridges of your fingertip ACROSS the blade edge then you are certainly holding a sharp tool – but DO NOT run your finger along the edge. I heard a story from a client about them watching an experienced ‘woodsman’ and outdoor gear reviewer at a trade show take a new knife from a vendor and go to perform this test – but instead absent-mindedly ran their finger ALONG the blade instead. The bloodstains apparently remained on that patch of carpet for the rest of the trade show.
- The Fingernail Test – as with the above, one of the outcomes of getting this wrong involves blood and missing/damaged flesh. Stick out your index finger and lay the knife on it perpendicular to the surface. If the blade leaves a mark without any effort required from the user then it is, again, at the ‘scary’ end of the sharpness spectrum. DO NOT slide the knife blade around or put any pressure on it – fingernails aren’t that thick and they are easily cut through.
With any of the tests above there is the potential risk of injury – but that risk is much lower when the material you are testing is not part of your body. The Paper Test and the Wood Test are probably the safest and most easily performed in a camp/outdoor environment.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Another Method
This is a video we shot with green woodworker Doug Don of Heartwood Treen a couple of years ago. In it he takes a factory-fresh Hultafors axe and brings the edge up to a razor-sharpness with a mirrored edge – all using cheap materials.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/39zvVKnFFao” align=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Some of our related courses
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft, Bushcraft General, Mountain General, Personal, Skills, Tools and Equipment
Can you eat mussels straight from the beach?
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Can you eat mussels straight from the beach?
Richard Prideaux looks at the dangers from eating wild and foraged mussels
When you teach people about foraging and ‘wild food’ you often run the risk of sounding negative or over-cautious about the potential hazards that come from eating shellfish, or fungi,or whatever else it is that you are solemnly warning people about. I do this with good reason – people are paying to attend on of our North Wales foraging courses to learn more about the subject, and I have a duty of care towards them as an instructor, and just as a (mostly?) decent human being. That said – there IS a difference between laying out the potential risks and telling somebody that they shouldn’t/can’t do something.
One of the areas where this is most apparent is in the realm of coastal foraging, and particularly the business of finding, gathering and eating edible mussels (usually Mytilus edulis). It’s one of the most anticipated section of the entry-level coastal foraging courses – the moment where I start talking about the culinary wonders of this grey bivalve. It starts off well, discussing byssal threads and the ethical issues of harvesting mussels (minimum landing sizes and so on) but as soon as I start to discuss the potential dangers the mood changes and the once-confident mussel foragers look increasingly alarmed.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]
So, what are the dangers of eating wild mussels?
The first thing we need to get out of the way here is that there is an element of risk involved in eating EVERYTHING. That’s food from supermarkets, served to you in restaurants, grown in your own back garden or picked from the soil or plucked from a rock somewhere on the Snowdonia coastline. Improper handling, preparation and sometimes just bad luck all have a role to play and we can never guarantee that our food is ‘safe’. There are a few very good reasons why wild shellfish, and particularly bivalves, have a reputation for potentially being ‘dodgy’.
There are several interesting and diverting ways in which they can nobble you:
- Paralytic (PSP), Amnesiac (ASP), Neurotoxic (NSP) and Diarrhoetic (DSP) Shellfish Poisoning
- Viruses (particularly Norovirus, aka the Winter Vomiting Virus)
- Bacteria (such as E Coli)
- Parasites (lovely things like Cryptosporidium parvum)
- Heavy metal and chemical contamination
- Allergies and other physiological disagreements
Blimey. Why would you even bother eating foraged mussels?
The really scary ones above are the various Shellfish Poisonings. They are caused by algal blooms, which can develop in both salt and freshwater. As mussels feed by filtering nutrients from seawater they can also accumulate the toxins from any algal blooms that have developed in the water around them. Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) is the one that tends to get most of the attention when discussing the hazards of eating mussels, and it’s not just human foragers that need to be careful – there have been several cases of dogs dying or becoming ill from eating dead crustaceans or shellfish contaminated in this way.
The two methods relied upon in commercial supply (see below for more detailed explanations) – depuration and cooking – remove some of these contaminants and organisams, but not all. Depuration does not work well with viruses and some algal toxins, and cooking only kills bacteria, viruses and parasites.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”9187″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
So what about the ones in shops and restaurants?
An excellent question, and one that does need some explanation.
There are plenty of areas along the British coast that are famed for their mussels, and you can find these locally-sourced delicacies on the menus of most of the restaurants nearby (and often further afield too). They are indeed ‘grown’ in the sea, in the same waters where you might be foraging for them yourself. They are often farmed on ropes, being carefully selected for size and health and harvested in a sustainable way – in waters that are regularly checked for cleanliness and contamination.
Water that is graded as being suitable for ‘immediate human consumption’ is designated “A” status. Anything from water with “B” grading needs to be depurated for no less than 42 hours, “C” grade shellfish must be relaid in cleaner waters in the hope of removing impurities and “D” grade water is pretty hopeless (and indeed may actually be on fire…).
So the mussels you will find in restaurants or shops in the U.K. will have either been grown in A or B-grade waters, and probably have been through a process of depuration in either case.
Depuration
Depuration, the process of removing impurities, for mussels is usually done by placing them in a tank of clean seawater that is then itself circulated through a filtration and purification system. As the mussels sit in the continually-cleaned water they gradually lose any impurities that they may have acquired.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
IS it safe to eat mussels I have foraged from the shore then?
Well… maybe. It depends on what you mean by ‘safe’. If you want a firm guarantee that the mussels that you have just plucked from the rock are free from toxins, viruses, bacteria, parasites, unwanted chemicals and everything else then you won’t get one. But if you want to be able to reduce the risks of eating foraged mussels (and indeed, lots of other coastally-harvested wild foods) then there are fairly simple precautions you can take (see below).
Just remember – a LOT of effort has gone into making sure that the ‘wild’ mussels served to you on a plate on the Menai Straits or from the Fowey estuary are ‘clean’ and safe for human consumption. Just because they are the same species and growing on roughly the same section of British coastline doesn’t mean that the ones you can (legally and ethically) harvest from the beach are “just the same”.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Reducing the risks in foraged mussels (and other things too)
There are a couple of oft-repeated ‘rules’ attached to mussels with regards to cooking and eating them:
- Avoid gathering them in months without an ‘R’ in them (May-August)
- Throw away any that do not open after cooking
The first rule is sometimes dismissed as being a piece of general guidance dating from a time when refrigeration was non-existent, and transporting mussels from shore to city was unwise in the hot summer months. This is, like many overly-simple explanations, complete cobblers. A much more sensible reason for avoiding shellfish during the height of the summer months (in the northern hemisphere anyway) is that this is the peak season for algal blooms, and also the time that many species are most active in their feeding – so if you avoid the summer there is a lower chance of eating something that is contaminated with a toxin.
The second rule I will come to later, but scientific research suggests that the generally-accepted belief that a mussel that does not open after being cooked is not necessarily a sign of it being unhealthy/contaminated/dead, nor that a mussel that opens up fully after being cooked is indeed healthy.
There are several simple steps that you can take to reduce (but not completely remove) the risks of eating foraged mussels:
- Avoid the summer months (see above)
- Pay attention to local news, particularly with regards to algal blooms, water contamination, and stories of unexpected illness from eating seafoods of all types
- Check the noticeboards that are displayed at harbours and access points for notifications of contamination – particularly algal blooms or chemical spills
- Avoid harbours and marinas, areas with heavy marine traffic and places where sewage (even treated) flows into the water
- Avoid picking mussels after periods of heavy rain where contaminants from the land may have been washed onto the shore
- Avoid the outflows of old mines and industrial sites (particularly Cornish tin mines etc)
- Scrub mussels under running clean water to remove barnacles etc
- Cook mussels as soon after picking as possible (and cook them well – but this still does not remove the toxins from algal blooms)
- Do not eat any mussels that do not open fully after cooking (but read this article too)
All of the above are fairly simple and aren’t that restrictive for the forager. There are also ethical and legal issues to consider – a minimum landing size (MLS) for mussels is something you will need to abide to in most cases (usually 51mm but check for your area).The Welsh Government has several useful links on this page – most apply to commercial fishing but it does show that there is a world of legislature that is attached to what may be seen as a very simple and innocent act. There is, at the time of writing, a ban on collecting mussels from the Conwy Estuary and other temporary restrictions may be in place for your area.
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Final words of advice
This post does sounds a little bit pessimistic, but the facts cannot be argued with – shellfish can harbour some fairly nasty organisms, toxins and chemicals. Some of these are probably present in every wild mussel (E.Coli for example) but can be easily removed by cooking. Others are much less common (such as algal blooms) but their impact can be much more severe and are almost impossible to get rid of in the cooking process.
If you are sensible about where you collect mussels from, when and how you cook them then you will probably be safe – in fact the most hazardous part of your foraging trip will be the drive there and back. Like every foraging activity though you need to be aware that it is potentially hazardous, and that recognising and reducing those risks is as important as identifying the edible species in the first place. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][product_category per_page=”12″ columns=”3″ orderby=”menu_order title” order=”ASC” category=”foraging-courses-uk”][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Foraging, Gather, Shellfish
Why tracking doesn’t work for misper SAR in the UK
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Why tracking doesn’t work for Misper SAR in the UK
(And why every SAR team member needs to learn basic tracking skills)
Here we go… this post will attract a minimum of two types of response:
1. “you don’t know what you’re talking about, if your skills were as good as mine you could follow a flea across a glacier”
2. “tracking is too slow/doesn’t work/is overrated”
Well, quite.
Both views have some validity, and that’s the point of this post.
Tracking, within the context of SAR/non-combat scenarios, is often represented by evangelists who want to present tracking as a panacea to locating any human OR by those who have sworn off it having tried the techniques (sold to them on a course) on a live operation and found that it just slows everything down and eats up resources. Each side will defend their own hilltop to the last man – neither attitude being actually that helpful to achieving the end goal.
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Looking for Jim
Let’s consider Jim. Jim wasn’t actually called Jim, wasn’t necessarily a him and didn’t necessarily have this motivation – but Jim is roughly based on a real person and a real job.
******
Jim knows this forest well and runs here regularly. He likes to drive into the forest, park at one of the secluded public car parks and head off into the woods for a 5-10km run along the paths and forest roads.
It’s 06:44 and he has just locked the car and has set off on the trail leading to the lake. It’s a last-minute decision but it’s a trail he knows well.
At 08:44 Jim’s wife is wondering what time he will be back. At 11:30 she is really starting to get worried and at 12:37 she tentatively rings 999 and asks for the Police.
By 14:00 a police officer has contacted her to see if Jim has made contact yet. By 15:00 a PolSA (Police Search Advisor) has started to co-ordinate the early response to this incident, and by 17:00 a police officer in a vehicle has discovered Jim’s car in the secluded car park. It’s sat safely amongst the slamming of car doors and shouts of dog walkers, families with kids on bikes and mountain bikers returning or leaving their vehicles at the beginning or end of their forest adventures.
At 17:32 a message is sent through SARCALL to the local volunteer search and rescue team and the incident moves to the next level of response.
******
It’s a fairly standard missing person callout – someone without any previous indications of despondency, medical distress or other factor goes out into a relatively remote area for a short activity and just doesn’t return to their vehicle, and a steady but measured response unfurls from the emergency services – allowing for various scenarios but also not assuming immediately that Jim is dying in a ditch, and it’s most likely to be a miscommunication between Jim and his wife, and Jim is happily doing something blissfully unaware of the multi-agency search developing in the forest.
The volunteer Search and Rescue (volSAR) team will follow their own protocol for calling the team members together, establishing a search control/staging area and gathering other assets – dogs, helicopters, even drones. A Search Manager will speak with the PolSA, Jim‘s wife and possibly anyone else involved in the response thus far. This will lead the Search Manager to come up with a variety of scenarios in the following categories:
- Jim is in the area, but stationary and possibly in medical distress (or worse)
- Jim is in the area but mobile (either in a good cognitive state or otherwise)
- Jim is somewhere completely different (Rest of World)
Search Managers may be good but they are not omniscient so they must focus on the first two categories – Jim is somewhere out there in an area they can search with the resources they have now, and the resources they are likely to have in the future.
So they work out a search area, based on a combination of barriers to travel, previous search incident data for profiles similar to Jim, his own patterns of behaviour and fitness and what can be accomplished in the next few hours and days. They have a Last Known Point (LKP) – Jim‘s car, as he HAD to be there in order to park it and run off somewhere. He did this unseen by anyone else (as far as the Search Manager can know) but it gives them an Initial Planning Point (IPP) to set a radius around and begin the process of planning search areas, calculating probability and the other wizardry and dark arts of Search Theory.
The next steps are a combination of good personal skills exercised by both SAR team members on the ground and their party leaders and data gathering/handling. Search parties are deployed to an area or areas with a brief of what Search Control expects them to do – it might be a ‘hasty’ (fast search along trails and tracks to ensure that the misper isn’t lying in plain sight) or an area search of a section of woodland or open ground marked out on the map. They perform their search brief, return to control and pass on the information they gathered. This feeds back into the search plan and a new tasking might be generated.
Rinse, and repeat. Until either Jim is found or a decision is made to stop searching for Jim.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8781″ img_size=”300×300″ alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8973″ img_size=”300×300″ add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”8972″ img_size=”300×300″ add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Deploying the trackers
The above is probably familiar to anyone involved in misper SAR around the world. A person leaves their car in a busy parking area, heads off into increasingly ‘wild’ terrain and doesn’t return. They had to leave SOME sign of their passage surely, so couldn’t trained trackers be deployed to go out, find those signs of passage and link them together into SOME kind of narrative?
When it comes to looking for humans and the physical signs they leave behind on the ground (training humans to search by scent has been largely unsuccessful and unpleasant for all involved) there are two things a tracker will hope to find:
- Prints (foot or occasionally hand, often referred to as a subject-print) – including partial prints, vague smears on muddy banks and impressions left in soft surfaces
- Physical sign – everything from vegetation bent at unnatural angles and broken off in unusual ways, foliage turned over the wrong way by a trailing foot or hand and even broken cobwebs and a thousand other clues
Finding signs of some human passage through an area isn’t that hard – in a few hours you can train somebody to look for the obvious signs of a track in most terrain. It’s the noise-to-signal ratio that matters – which of these dozen prints or physical signs belong to your misper and which are just the dogwalkers and hikers?
In the above scenario any SAR tracker deployed as part of the search would either hope to find a print or series of prints that they could, with good certainty, assign to Jim and use for tracking further down the trail.
In an ideal world they would be able to find out exactly what brand, model and size of running shoe Jim wore that day, if they had any unique wear patterns and even what clothing he was wearing, which snacks/gels he carried and anything else he might discard by the trailside. They might even be able to get a calibrated photograph of a print from somewhere at Jim‘s home.
It isn’t an ideal world though – and Jim‘s wife doesn’t know what shoes he wore other than “the blue ones”. He’s a size 11, but sometimes 10. He probably took a water bottle but maybe not. She can’t find his expensive GPS watch she bought for him last Christmas though… And so it goes. Information dribbles in over time and analysis is made as to how accurate or useful it is.
On the ground
The gravel area around the car has been heavily trod since Jim was declared missing. Several members of the public parked close by and walked either side of the car, the police poked around the vehicle when they first found it and again when they forced entry to see if there was any clue inside to Jim‘s whereabouts. The volSAR team members had a good poke around too. Any hope of discovering a sterile print is probably lost – but what about further out?
As the laid surface of the car park ends it turns back to mud and soil and there is a chance of finding a print at the start of the various trails that radius out from the parking area. There are plenty of partial prints – from the public, police and volSAR. They are layered down into the damp soil and the most recent start to obscure the previous ones. There is a bottleneck at the start of most trails and the prints cluster together. It takes time and careful examination to find a few candidates that match the vague criteria for a Jim-print: running shoe, roughly UK size 10-11 and laid roughly twelve hours previously. With several possible trails and a limited number of trackers they must make a decision about where to move to next.
Meanwhile the search parties move along the trails, sweep through open areas at a regular spacing and gradually reduce the Probability of Area (POA, the likelihood that Jim is in that bit of woodland or open ground) for their tasked areas. They trample and crush, make new trails through vegetation and turn untouched wilderness into a footpath – but move far ahead and faster than the tracker teams.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”8974″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Limited Resources
The enemy for Search Managers is not nature herself or the elements – it’s depletion of limited resources:
Time and Daylight
Jim could be lying somewhere in a poor medical condition and getting worse by the second. Eventually he will reach a point where his recovery is unlikely and then expire. All searches run the possibility of becoming a recovery rather than a rescue if too much time passes before the search subject is located. A slow and methodical search would probably find that misper EVENTUALLY, but the whole point of SAR is to try and locate that person and help them.
The sun is also setting over in the west and it’s not unusual for volSAR to not be called on until the end of the day – to allow enough time for the misper to be located by the initial response, or just wander home under their own steam. As soon as darkness falls the whole job has become harder – reducing the effectiveness of the searchers and potentially compromising their safety.
Personnel Availability
Voluntary SAR teams all suffer the issue of availability of their team members. You don’t join unless you are able to help and attend callouts, but the 24/7 nature of volSAR means that not everybody will be able to attend every callout. Work, family, health and even finances can keep a team member away for part or all of a search and a volSAR team that boasts 50 members might be only able to field 15-25 at one time. Those team members on the ground also have a limited time they can search for – whether due to fatigue/operational effectiveness or just the demands of their ‘real’ lives. Eventually every volSAR team member will need to return home and a Search Manager cannot guarantee how long they will have that team member for. A good Search Manager will start to stack up potential reinforcement and replacements from neighbouring teams as soon as it looks like a search will run for that long.
Skills
Specialist search teams are a boon for any Search Manager, but use of them can pull resources away from other parts of the operation. The moment the search moves to near-water (T6 or T7 terrain) then a decision needs to be made about whether that area is left unsearched or to redploy part of the search teams for water search – something that cannot be done without several team members plus specialist equipment and PPE.
Dogs are another exhaustable resource – they can only work for so long, and although they can cover a large acreage quickly they can still only ‘search’ part of the area at once.
So with the above resources dwindling, does a dedicated tracking cell within a volSAR team actually work? Where and when would they deploy – prior to the hasty teams and when the minimal amount of damage had been done to what trail remains? Are trackers a specialist search asset to be deployed from the SAR toolkit like Swiftwater Rescue Technicians and dogs?
You’re burning daylight and with a limited number of searchers available for the next few hours is it appropriate to separate out a few tracking-trained team members to faff around on the fringes with elastic bands and sticks?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”8975″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”8976″ img_size=”medium” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The cohesive approach
Although we teach tracking as a distinct skill from search techniques as part of the EST Framework courses I do not think the two can be completely separated. By the very nature of the skills required a good searcher can be a good tracker, and vice versa. The skills of Land-SAR search (searching the cube, staying in formation, personal safety) are all essential skills for a SAR-tracker, but an understanding of the importance of certain patterns (or indeed, breaks in those patterns) can highlight certain things to a tracking-trained searcher.
When a tracker is either looking for a specific print or any relevant sign of passage then she or he can pick them out from the background scenery and analyse them – if they are also searching then they can do that in-context and feedback information to their Party Leader of Search Control.
Basic tracking skills and an understanding of both the benefits and limitations of those skills within a SAR context should be seen as an essential skill for any volSAR ground team member (and indeed, understood by Search Managers and Search Coordinators).
Any sign of Jim?
What if every team member on the ground in this search had been given some basic training in tracking (e.g. how to extrapolate an entire print from several partial prints, or to spot the signs of passage by an adult human through dense vegetation etc) and had been deployed by a Search Manager who also understood this?
What if those initial hasty parties had been on the lookout not only for an adult male runner somewhere within their search radius, but also slowing down to check likely track-traps such as the edges of puddles or choke points between trees? Or if they had performed their first search around the edges of the car park, looking for candidates for a Jim-print?
This is how it SHOULD be done, but rarely is. Tracking is often seen as a separate skill or occasionally an afterthought when previous efforts are proving fruitless – but it should be part of the mindset of any volSAR deployment where the misper could possibly leave sign of their passage. Too much emphasis is often put on looking for the body of the misper, not a 20% partial print that could become the next LKP and shift the whole search in a positive direction.
How to deploy tracking in a SAR operation
This is part of the guidance that we give to candidates on the Level 3 Search Operations Management Course but is relevant for anyone involved in planning search operations and deployment of SAR assets for missing person search:
- Tracking awareness should be seen as a vital skill for all trained searchers deployed on the ground and training should reflect this, challenging team members and preventing skill-fade whilst promoting personal skill development.
- Search teams should be equipped and prepared for tracking re-deployment in the field.
- Acquiring information for tracking-trained search teams should be a vital part of witness and family interview techniques and efforts made to isolate footwear type and shape – social media photos, prints at home and so on.
- Tasking of search parties should reflect the potential usefulness of tracking, and time allowed for an initial search around the IPP for potential print candidates.
- Be ready to re-deploy search teams to another area/track if they discover a potential trail on the ground – this highlights the need for Search Managers to have a good awareness of the limitations of tracking and the relative importance of the information being fed back in to Search Control.
For most applications tracking should be seen as a vital SAR skill, not a specialism and subset of strange folk with feathers sticking out of their gear and castration rings on a trekking pole. Of course training contact time is limited for volSAR teams, but once those skills have been gained they can be maintained fairly easily.
SAR Tracking isn’t THAT hard
Unlike some of my clients, nobody is going to be shooting at you whilst you are tracking within a SAR context. Your search subject is unlikely to be actively trying obscure their tracks or slow pursuers down with traps and IEDs, and they aren’t a small and fast mammal scurrying across a forest floor without even turning over a dead leaf.
Humans (well, ones not trying to avoid capture) are pretty lazy and bumbling. We step into soft mud, scrape our feet across mossy logs and boulders and trample over leaves and twigs crushing them into the floor under our bulk. We wade through long grass and vegetation turning the leaves and blades of grass over to flag our passage and even discard plastic and paper objects from our pockets as we walk.
It’s why our Level 1 Tracking Technician course is run over only 3 days, and that also includes crossover with navigation skills and interoperability with other organisations and a final exercise – tracking shouldn’t be seen as a mysterious and ethereal skill, but nor should it be dismissed out of hand because your deployment plan doesn’t allow for it.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
TL;DR
Tracking is good and useful within a misper SAR context in the UK, but is often misrepresented by poor deployment and inflexibility of existing deployment procedures. There is also a lack of understanding by Search Managers who see it as an ineffective delay in the search operation and don’t ask pertinent questions when speaking to informants and witnesses. Tracking-awareness should be a vital part of any SAR search party members and be an intrinsic part of the training programme.
Tracking also has many limitations, and more so in the densely-populated UK where volSAR teams have to try and identify a potential subject-print early on in the search rather than hoping to the find the ‘sign of passage’ in the wilderness and following the resultant trail.
It’s also not that hard, and with a bit of training most competent SAR party members can become effective trackers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, EST Framework, Mountain, SAR, Skills, Tracking
2018 UK Knife Law Changes
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2018 UK Knife Law Changes
Changes to UK Knife Law and what it means for the outdoor enthusiast
In the past weeks the news has featured several stories on UK knife crimes, knife law and the perception of knives as weapons as well as tools. This was followed by the announcement of a new Offensive Weapons Bill which will begin the process of changing of what is considered a legal knife, where they can be used/carried by the general public and how they can be acquired.
Last year a consultation on offensive and dangerous weapons was published, which caused a lot of discussion online from knife makers, owners and collectors from all sectors.
Whilst this is currently a bill (not yet an Act of Parliament, see the differences here) it is likely that some significant changes are coming for those who collect knives or purchase them for outdoor use.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]
Knives Purchased Online
The big changes are mostly about the types of knives and ‘weapons’ that can be owned in private and where they can be carried, but one change that is likely to have an impact on an outdoor user is a ban on knives being bought online being shipped to a residential address. Exactly how this will work and what workarounds can be created (shipping to a work address, pickup from a nominated place and so on) remains to be seen, but it will add a layer of complexity for those buying knives online.
Flick Knives and One-Handed Opening
Something mentioned in the original consultation document was an update to the definition of what constitutes an (already banned in the U.K.) flick knife:
England, Wales and Scotland
The current definition of flick knives in the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959 is
outdated and refers to the mechanism that activates the blade being in the handle. We will
delete the reference to the switch blade mechanism being in the handle, as manufacturers
now place the mechanism in a part of the knife that can be argued is part of the blade.
This means the prohibition on the sale, manufacture and importing of flick knives cannot
be circumvented through changes in their design.
Will this include knives with a thumbstud that can be opened with one hand? If so this will include knives that are very useful as rescue tools for climbing, mountaineering and canoeing/kayaking where one-handed operation could be crucial for a lifesaving cutaway from a rope entrapment.
UK Knife Law and EDC
This isn’t the first post we’ve put together on UK knife laws for the outdoor user, but it’s important in a country with strict knife-carry laws to be aware of any changes made and, potentially, how your useful outdoor tool is perceived by someone else.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
UK Knife Law video on the Original Outdoors Youtube Channel
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft, Bushcraft General, Foraging, Law and Ethics, Mountain General, Personal, Skills, Tools and Equipment, Videos
Outdoor Fashion Shoots in Snowdonia
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Outdoor Fashion Shoot in Snowdonia
Location Scouting and Location Safety in the mountains of North Wales
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It seems like 2017 was the summer of location work for Original Outdoors. We have been putting our experience of working in the world of outdoor adventure in North Wales to use as consultants and location scouts for several years, but this was a busy summer for us.
We were contacted by Claudia from German production company Natural Born Explorers for a project they were working on for a European outdoor clothing and equipment retailer. They had already chosen Snowdonia as a general area for their shoot but wanted some help finding locations, gaining permissions and just the logistics of shooting in a different country. After several Skype conversations and emails we narrowed it down to some key areas in the mountains and forests of Northern Snowdonia.
Then it was down to the usual pre-shoot planning – working with landowners to gain permissions for commercial photography on their land, timelines to make sure we had enough time on location to get what the client needed and be in the right place for the ‘golden hour’ at sunset. We also needed to keep an eye on the weather and make sure that the entire crew were equipped for several days in the mountains.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7885″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7900″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7890″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Any plan that relies on the weather behaving itself or natural light falling in a certain way cannot be too rigid, especially in the mountains. In a few hours we can go from 5 metre visibility, to blue skies then back to heavy cloud and rain. If you only have a few days to get the shots required then you need to be flexible and respond to the challenges thrown up. So that’s what we did – we bounced back and forth between locations, chasing the best of the light and hiding from the weather when it came in and making the most of the sun when it showed itself.
The photographer, Lars Schneider, and the rest of the Natural Born Explorers team all showed that they were not only comfortable in the mountains but they were competent outdoorspeople. The locations chosen were not just footpaths and flat ground easily accessible from the roadside, they included rocky scrambles and ridges requiring a walk-in of 2hrs or more.
The Original Outdoors team was also there as a safety backup in case anything went wrong (or to spot the calamity before it occurred) but the only medical or rescue assistance we had to give was to a member of the public who had suffered a lower-leg injury after a rockfall nearby. They literally hobbled down to the middle of our group, where I offered and delivered some first aid and called in mountain rescue to meet them. Other than that the safety kit stayed in the bags and we spent the days eating biscuits and occasionally looking out for incoming clouds![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7908″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7911″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7902″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Snowdonia and North Wales as a whole is a smart choice for outdoor adventure brands looking for locations to promote their clothing and equipment. 30 minutes drive from a central point like Betws y Coed could take you to a raging river, rocky mountain top or deep and mossy forest. The diversity of locations, good access and landscapes that look a lot wilder than they might actually be works well for international brands too. If you frame a shot just right, or make sure the background is neutral then that rocky ledge or forest trail could be in Oregon, Patagonia or New Zealand. We have a few days doing similar work lined up for 2018 already, and I suspect that we will be seeing more in the next few months.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7887″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7907″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7910″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_media_grid element_width=”3″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1513168937192-fc2cda18-8608-8″ include=”7911,7910,7909,7908,7906,7905,7904,7903,7902,7901,7900,7899,7897,7896,7895,7894,7893,7892,7891,7890,7888,7885,7884,7886″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Behind The Scenes, Company News, Mountain, Mountain General, Skills
Why is foraging still so popular in the U.K?
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Why is foraging still so popular in the U.K?
For a decade our foraging and wild foods courses are filled – but why?
My name is Richard Prideaux, and I am a forager.
It’s not much of a confession really – through Original Outdoors I have been leading foraging courses and walks for a decade or more, as well as working as a supplier of foraged plants from a local organic estate and working with chefs and restaurants to find new ways to use wild plants, fungi and lichens in dishes served to the most discerning of clients. It is safe to say that a large part of my working life outdoors has been linked to foraging and wild food, even if peripherally on our bushcraft courses. But none of that would have been possible if there hadn’t been such a demand for information and training in this ancient activity – so with shops and food suppliers all around us, why is there such a cultural draw towards edible plants and fungi?
I have two theories on this, and they require a little unpacking. They may also be complete cobblers, but allow me to explain…[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7768″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7772″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7769″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The TV Chef
The first is what I call the ‘Fearnley-Whittingstall Effect’. Hugh Fearlessly-Eatsitall is inextricably linked with the long-running cooking, downsizing and Dorset-promoting stable of TV shows, books, courses and eateries bearing the ‘River Cottage’ name. The first series (River Cottage) was broadcast in 1999 and featured Hugh (Ferrously-Washinghaste) embark on a life living in a gamekeeper’s cottage in the grounds of Slape Manor near Netherbury, Dorset – growing vegetables, raising livestock and trying the life of a smallholder. There was an emphasis on barter-economies, food as payment and self-sufficiency where possible in the narrative of the show. Subsequent series expanded into the wider world of smallholdings and downsizing leading to the River Cottage empire as it stands today. It is pretty undeniable that River Cottage was the big break for Hugh Ferretingly-With…(OK, I’ll stop now I promise) and led to his rise as a campaigner for everything from sustainability within the fishing industry to highlighting the standards and conditions of commercial poultry-rearing. Hjs profile and brand has genuinely done some good, and I remain a firm fan. But River Cottage wasn’t his first TV escapade – that came several years earlier in the form of A Cook on the Wild Side.
This was a wild food-adventure in two parts, the first being a tour of the countryside in a converted Land Rover (the Gastro-Wagon), hunting for and cooking edible plants, fungi and protein in the feathered, furred, finned and shelled form. This was broadcast in 1995, with the second series moving to a narrow boat cruising the waterways of Britain. This is where I think the Fearnley-Whittingstall Effect began, not with River Cottage. When I speak to clients and interested folk about foraging in the U.K, and particularly on television, A Cook on the Wild Side does seem to have found it’s way into the group consciousness about foraging but is often confused as being part of a River Cottage series. I think the second-life that TV shows have online as YouTube clips has no small part to play in this, and you can find most of the series online in some form or another. It’s over 20yrs old at this point, but the content all holds up and the accompanying recipe book is still on our list of recommended foraging books.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was obviously not the first person to really popularise foraging in the U.K. – my personal belief is that honour goes to Richard Mabey and his seminal Food For Free, first published in 1972 but the very first book I pull out of the bag when I talk about foraging field guides. His work came at exactly the right time, coinciding with the birth of the sustainability movement and the post-hippy ‘hobbitification’ of the British countryside by downsizers, small-scale farmers and those seeking The Good Life. A guide to the most commonly found edible plants, fungi, seaweeds and coastal foragables in the U.K. with background information and illustrations that just draw the reader in. It was hugely successful, and is still popular – but I think Hugh had a greater effect just by being on television. In the same way the Ray Mears did not invent the term bushcraft (or bush craft), or even write THE book on the subject – his early appearances on the BBC magazine show Tracks in 1994 led to the many shows that firmly embedded him in the national consciousness as “that bushcraft bloke”. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall with A Cook on the Wild Side and River Cottage did not invent the idea of foraging or wild food, or indeed first bring the idea to the modern public – but they did create the content that most people identified with.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7776″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7775″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”7774″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
An Ancient Urge?
The next theory is that of a dormant instinct embedded in all Homo sapiens (you lot). I think we can safely say that we’ve done quite well as a species – we’ve certainly killed off (literally) the competition from other hominin species over the last few hundreds of thousands of years. Reassuringly we are also deemed to be the species of “least concern” by International Union for Conservation and Nature (according to the IUCN Red List). So we have that going for us.
Our success is built on many things – language, development and use of tools, group communication and shared goals, the ability to discuss and visualise something we haven’t seen. We ‘won’ the evolutionary race (a dubious honour) through adaptation and improvisation, through problem-solving and out-thinking our stronger, faster and more resilient hominid cousins.
How long we have been doing that for is under some debate, and new evidence suggests that we may have evolved as a distinct species as much as 350,000 years ago (or even earlier, it’s not difficult to get anthropologists arguing over this). The broad point is that we have a few hundred thousand years under our belts, and the ancestors we evolved from (and alongside, there’s plenty of overlap between the timeline of species) shared a lot of our physical and mental characteristics. To achieve any of what we have we needed to fuel ourselves. This means eating, and prior to the invention of farming (probably around 20,000 years ago, depending on your definition of farming), that meant foraging.
To wander through a forest, an open scrubland, a meadow or along a river or seashore and be able to spot the edible or useful plants and the potentially harmful ones is certainly a skill, but it should be one we are still hard-wired for. There is a theory that any ability we have to visualise a mental map of things that are useful to us (our home in relation to the local shops or pub, or the layout of our workplace or home) comes from the mental maps our ancestors created to locate and memorise the ethno-botanical resources that we needed for daily life. It’s likely a paleolithic resident of the British Isles would know the likely spots to find the fungi that were good to eat after the autumn rains, or the trees that provided thorns that could be used for fishhooks. When every physical object you use or create has to come from nature you need to know where to find it – and without paper or Google maps it needs to be stored in your head.
The way we process information and ‘data’, and the biochemical system that follows on from that processing, is built on our extensive history of foraging and hunting for our food and gathering the raw materials for everything else we used. The part of our timeline where we live in communities of more than 60-100 people, grew our food in fields and penned enclosures and exchanged labour in return for food and resources provided by others is just a blip at one end. It can be argued that the way we live now is essentially an experiment, and some would also argue that we’re probably failing at it.
But what has that got to do with modern humans paying good money for a man with a beard to lead them through a forest and point at edible weeds?
Okay, so this is the theory I work to – we are interested in foraging for the same reason we enjoy sitting next to a campfire poking the embers with a stick. It is quite literally what we are built to do. We evolved to do just that, and any parallels we can find in modern human activity (Hunting for Pokemon anyone? How about chasing down other hominins over obstacles and through muddy watercourses in Tough Mudder events?) is not coincidental – we’re just finding ways to exercise our hunter-gatherer brains and exploit the chemical reward system of dopamine. We pursue the idea of foraging for the same reason we do other things that bring us closer to ‘nature’ or ‘the landscape’ – deep down we know that is where we came from and what we are part of. Any ideas we have that we are civilised urban beings separate from the mud, twigs and rain ‘out there’ is justification after the fact – we removed ourselves from nature so we need to justify it as ‘development’ and ‘progress’. We’re still just shaved apes after all.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
A Prime Time to Forage
So that’s it. It’s based on my own experience which is 99% from the U.K., and no doubt I have some unconscious bias that makes me overlook something that is blindingly obvious to you. The places are already filling up for our 2018 Foraging and Wild Foods courses as people buy places as gift vouchers for friends and family and I have a couple of TV and media enquiries about doing consultancy on different shows (as happens every year). The interest in foraging shows no sign of slowing, and I think it comes from cultural highlighting of the subject in the right way at the right time (Sunday or Tuesday evenings at around 8pm?) married with the innate need to hunt for our resources in the wild woods.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/3″][product id=”7241″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][product id=”7449″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][product id=”7604″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
- Published in All Blog Posts, Bushcraft General, Foraging, Gather
Do I need to bother with bow drill?
Bow Drill Skills: Are they worth learning?
One of the skills most associated with the world of ‘bushcraft’ is that of making fire by friction. The image that normally accompanies that description is somebody crouching over a contraption that looks like a fiddle crossed with a rolling pin, furiously sawing back and forth with (ideally) smoke billowing from the base of the device.
This is the ‘bow-drill’ (Bow Drill, Bowdrill, Firedrill, Fire Fiddle etc etc) method and has become inextricably linked with the popular image of bushcraft and survival skills.
We teach this method on our bushcraft courses, and it is often something that clients look forward to and specifically request when we have a free moment in the itinerary and ask them “what next?”.
So we break out some pre-prepared bow drill sets and get down to making some embers…
I’ve found over the years that the course participants normally pick up three very important things from seeing the demonstrations then having a go for themselves:
– It’s a lot harder than it looks to get a consistent rotation of the drill without something going awry
– It’s physically demanding and needs patience
– Success is not guaranteed
With skill, patience and the right materials an experienced user can normally get an ember with less than a minute of actual ‘drilling’ action but it is dependent on several variables all lining up correctly to achieve that.
Why do people want to learn how to do it?
Here are 3 direct quotes about fire by friction/bow-drill from instructors that I have heard over the years:
“This is the most important outdoor skill you can learn”
“If you lose all of your equipment this will save your life”
“If you can’t do this then you are not a real outdoorsman”
A quick trawl through the various bushcraft/wilderness skills Facebook groups, forums, YouTube channels and magazines will come up with statements and comments that might not be as succinct as those above but are along the same lines. Then there are the hundreds of articles, blog posts and videos offering tips and techniques that will improve your chances of success. “Bow Drill” is now one of the keywords of bushcraft, along with “knife”, “axe” and “Ray Mears”. You can even purchase knives with divots in the handle so that you can use it as a bearing block (the top of the ‘drill’) in a dire survival situation.
There is undoubtedly some merit to the bow drill firelighting technique:
– It mostly makes use of materials from the environment, not items carried
– Components can be replaced as they wear out or are damaged
– Does not require electricity, flammable liquids/gas or metal components to use
It is also a truly ‘primitive skill’ and would have been understood by our paleolithic ancestors (or indeed indigenous people around the world today). In a world before lighters, ferrocerium rods or even steel then fire by friction would have been a skill passed down throughout a community and as important as making a blade or finding edible plants.
For the modern outdoorsperson and enthusiast it is touted as being an “essential bushcraft skill” (see instructor quotes above) and it is both expected by bushcraft course participants and a requisite for all good bushcraft and wilderness skills course providers.
Are Bow Drill skills that useful?
Yes.
No.
Maybe.
It depends.
Deciding if something is actually useful is of course dependent on the intended use. In a world where we do have lighters, matches, ferrocerium rods, chemical firelighting, electronic firelighting (you can have a lot of flammable fun with wire wool and a battery) and dozens of ways of keeping them dry the Bowdrill set becomes a little redundant.
But what if you lose all of your other gear?
There is another quote from an eminent instructor that I think answers this quite eloquently:
“If you are stupid enough to lose your lighter and firestriker and get all of your matches wet then you are probably too stupid to learn how to bow drill”
A real survival situation is something you try to avoid by making good decisions and with careful preparation. If you lose your lighter your fallback shouldn’t be to rip the laces out of your boots and start whittling a drill – it should be to call yourself an idiot and then go get the other lighter from your pack. Or the firesteel on your belt or clipped to your pocket. Because you brought multiple firelighting methods, right?
If you are travelling somewhere that it is quite possible that you will find yourself in a situation where lighting a fire will make a big difference to your immediate health or safety then you need to carry a way of making fire.
If you are travelling somewhere that you will have to light a fire to cook on, purify water or perform other basic tasks then you will need to carry MULTIPLE methods of making fire.
Accidents happen. Kit is lost on river crossings or can fall overboard. You might be separated from your pack or kit due to unforeseen circumstances. Things break or get lost due to carelessness. We’re human and things happen. But in the modern age we have so many cheap, lightweight and reliable firelighting methods that there aren’t many reasons not to carry more than one way of making a spark, a flame or an ember.
If I am hiking, canoeing or otherwise moving or working in an environment where fire is either required or desireable I will have on my person or in my kit:
1. Ferrocerium rod and striker (clipped to trouser pocket loop or belt)
2. Disposable lighter with ferro (‘flint’) striker (normally in pouch on belt or in pocket of PFD if canoeing)
3. Lifeboat/windproof matches (2 or 3 packs in various places in rucksack)
I also normally carry some prepared tinder or similar either in waterproof plastic bags or in a waterproof form (such as strips of bicycle innertube).
So if I lose my firesteel or it breaks in two then I can use my lighter. If I lose that too then I can still light a fire using the matches and warm myself whilst simultaneously deciding if I need to re-examine the decision-making process that led to me losing all of my other kit…
But what if it’s unplanned?
There are of course situations where you can find yourself thrust unexpectedly into a genuine survival situation. However, outside of contrived and survival TV shows like Naked and Afraid or Alone the number of possible scenarios where you will need to make a fire and you have arrived there with no other equipment whatsoever are pretty slim:
The Plane Crash
If you were a passenger on the plane then chances are that you hit the ground somewhere close to, if not actually inside, the aircraft itself. A big pile of jagged metal, flammable liquids and materials and batteries, electrical components and probably SOME survival equipment like flares etc. You have plenty of options to explore before you need to start trying fire by friction.
The Stranded Vehicle
In this scenario it is a broken or stuck car or truck somewhere far from external help. It might be deep in winter or high summer in the desert, but as with the downed aircraft scenario you are basically sat in a big shelter/survival kit. It is powered by flammable liquid and needs a battery to keep the engine and ancillary components running. Also – if you are for some reason travelling through such a remote area why haven’t you thrown in a few emergency items for just this scenario?
The River/The Sea
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility for even an experienced kayaker or canoeist to find themselves washed on a beach or riverbank watching their very expensive canoe or kayak, stuffed with their camping and safety kit, drifting away downstream or on a current. Dressed only in a drysuit (at best), some kind of footwear and a PFD (Personal Flotation Device) what are they going to do? Well, if you have decided that yes, a fire is the thing that you need then you should just grab the small firelighting kit from the pocket of your PFD or belt and get cracking on looking for some dry kindling. You didn’t think of this possibility and have found yourself far from help, paddling alone with no provision for possibly falling out of the canoe? Well, natural selection is still in effect, and your corpse might provide food for another creature at least.
The scenarios could continue, but they all come down to either:
1. You will rarely travel without there being SOME other way of making fire around you
2. If you are travelling in a way that you won’t have other items around you – carry fire WITH you.
The root of all of this is that fire by friction and making a bow drill set should be a long way down your list of solutions when the need for a fire arises. It is fiddly and time consuming to make (especially if you need to make natural cordage), requires a lot of skill to use and success is NOT GUARANTEED. It is also quite wasteful of calories and can be very demoralising if not successful. It can be hard enough to get right when well-fed in ideal conditions under a parachute shelter in some pleasant woodland. There are normally aggravating factors in a survival situation, such as injury, lack of food/water and (if fire is required) the risk of hypothermia. Would you be better off building a simple shelter and getting out of the wind, off the cold ground and conserving body heat and energy?
What if I just want to learn how to do it?
That’s fine. It is very rewarding the first time you get an ember, and I admit that I really enjoy watching someone battle through the multiple failures to get to their first glowing coal in the notch of the hearth board. The point of this post is to highlight the difference between an IMPORTANT SKILL and one that is fun to learn and achieve, not to put you off learning how to do it for yourself.
It is also good to learn a skill that connects us with our ancestors and to start off with a pile of wood and maybe some cord and end with a roaring fire. The first time you see it it looks like a magic trick, and I suspect that is part of the reason that so many are interested in learning how to do it for themselves. The first time I saw it I immediately wanted to try for myself – a very similar thing happened the first time I saw someone turn a bowl on a lathe, shoot a bow or play Tomb Raider (a good indicator of my age/generation!).
So, should I bother to learn how to make and use a bow drill set?
This is normally where the demonstration of the bow drill comes to on our courses. After watching several people fail, succeed, get frustrated and learn patience with the technique the mood of the group can be a little less enthusiastic than it was. At this point I go through the points above – where are you going to use this technique? Is it as easy as you thought it would be? Are other methods easier/more reliable? What is your motivation for learning this skill?
The final decision is of course down to the individual user and it is up to you to form your opinions. I’ll leave you with a few things to consider:
- Are your fireskills good enough to reliably make a fire from a bow-drill ember every time?
- If you’re travelling somewhere you will need to light a fire are you carrying enough backup methods?
- If you lose your kit will you still have a firelighting method on your person?
- What’s your motivation for learning this technique?
- Do you need to improve your skills elsewhere too?
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft, Bushcraft General, Personal, Skills
How to save yourself – a tale of survival from a friend
How to save your own life
A tale of everyday survival from a friend
If you have attended one of our courses or engaged me in conversation about the idea of survival training or prepping for potential survival situations then you will probably remember my having some fairly robust opinions on the whole subject. One of the points I often try to raise is that real survival situations – as opposed to heading out to ‘rough it’ with minimal gear – sneak up on you. You can’t see the situation building up in the distance, with a sweeping fanfare of your personal inner soundtrack heralding the arrival of your ‘moment’. The time when you get to put your training and preparation into action will probably just blindside you and throw you deep into a world of hurt – sometimes literally.
If you read up on real survival situations and those who have survived them (and more importantly, those who did not) then there is the common theme of being in denial about the whole situation. It isn’t just panic, although that plays a part – there is also an element of lethal familiarity.
If you spend extended periods in and around dangerous and life-threatening environments then the psychology of denial will help bury those risks and lead you to actions and behaviour that will betray you when the ‘bad thing’ actually happens. Inappropriate actions under threat can be anything from driving headlong into the raging river because it’s your regular route home and the water “can’t be THAT deep” to actively trying to push your rescuer underwater when your drowning reflexes kick in.
The way to combat these potentially lethal responses to danger is via two routes – awareness and training.
Survival Awareness
By being aware of your surroundings, the potential hazards and being realistic about how likely the various potential calamities are you can develop an appropriate response. Live in an area prone to earthquakes? You can read up on the current advice on what to do in case of a quake and what items you should have in your ‘earthquake survival kit’. Do you regularly travel in remote and wilderness areas? Then remote-area first aid training and equipment specific to wilderness first aid should be high on your list of priorities.
Survival Training
Television shows and gear manufacturers would have you believe that survival training is all about running up and down mountains, swimming in icey waters and knocking up a pile of useful equipment entirely from twigs and berries – but in nearly a decade of survival training with civilians, businesses, SAR, emergency services and the military the truth is a little less exciting.
Survival training can be split into two areas – prevention and reaction. Prevention is everything you do to make sure that you don’t end up in a survival situation, from ensuring your navigation skills are up to scratch to having a realistic approach to equipment and personal admin. Reaction is what you do in the seconds, hours and days following the ‘bad thing’ occurring. That kind of training is about building constructive automatic responses to life threatening situations and re-coding your brain so that your reflexes save your life and don’t kill you or endanger those around you.
Very recently a friend sent me an article she had written for somewhere else, and with her kind permission I have included it in this blog post. It perfectly illustrates all of the points raised above:
- Survival situations hit you quickly and often with little warning
- You won’t be as prepared as you think you might be
- Training and constructive reflexes will help you get past the inital adrenaline-filled moments
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November 2015 – somewhere alongside a canal in the south of England
It was about midnight, -1ºC, nobody around, and I was due on an early shift the next morning. I’d spotted it was getting frosty so went out to the car to cover the windscreen so I could get away quicker in the morning.
I was wearing jeans with long boots underneath, a heavy fleece top, and was carrying my handbag.
As I returned to my boat, walking pretty briskly, my foot skidded on an icy metal panel and I fell flat with one arm – the one holding my bag – out in front of me. The weight of the bag and the fact that I was on a wet frosty wooden pontoon meant I just kept sliding. Strangely, I had two clear thoughts that I can still remember – 1) “I’ve fallen over”, closely followed by 2) “I’m under the water”.
Thankfully my keys were in my hand and I managed to fling them up onto the pontoon so that was one less thing to worry about.
It took a second for the feeling of cold to kick in, but sure enough, off went the gasping. I clearly owe a lot to my Wilderness First Aid training as we’d covered the gasp reflex and I knew in theory that it should stop soon – but now that I was actually in that situation did I risk waiting, or try to get out?? Because my clothes were so heavy with the water and there was no straightforward way out, I decided to test the theory. I held onto the pontoon, which thankfully I could just reach, and waited.
Sure enough, my breathing gradually came back under control.
Right then, I thought. NOW I’ll get out.
My first decision was that I needed 2 hands. Bye bye, handbag… Ideally I’d have got rid of my shoes but they were long leather boots which were under my jeans and it would have taken too long to struggle with them, so they stayed.
Even with both hands free it was far less easy than I’d anticipated. I was trapped in a small triangle of water between the bow of the boat and 2 pontoons at right angles to each other. The boat has smooth high sides, and the metal was frosty and there was no way I could climb up. I couldn’t touch the bottom of the canal – and frankly probably wouldn’t want to…
The pontoon was a floating one and when I tried to heave myself up onto it my legs just swung up underneath it, so I had nothing to push off. I tried that 3-4 times, and was aware I was getting very cold and tired and probably didn’t have the strength to try again if I failed again.
Over my head I could just reach the rope that moors the boat to the pontoon. I held onto it for a few seconds’ rest while I considered my options.
I could shout for help, but it was very late and I probably wouldn’t be heard, plus I was so cold I doubt I’d have got much noise out, yet I could end up out of breath or swallowing water. I decided this was last-resort Plan C.
I could go under the pontoon because I knew there was a ladder on the other side. However, having got my head above the water, I didn’t fancy going back under again. It was very dark and I didn’t want to risk being stuck under the pontoon or attempting to surface in the wrong place. That route became Plan B.
That left me with the option that did get me out – a gargantuan effort to flick my legs out of the water and cling sloth-like upside-down to the rope overhead. I managed to do that, and then to flip myself from there onto the pontoon.
Relief!! I made it!!
The relief didn’t last long, though. I was shivering violently, and realised I needed to get the wet clothes off fast. With numb and trembling fingers I managed to strip the heavy fleece off on the front deck, retrieve my keys (Yes!!) from where I’d managed to throw them earlier, get inside, and towel down and get a dressing gown on.
This being a boat, the indoor temperature was about 10ºC so I needed to get a fire lit in the stove, which took a little bit of doing in the chilled and weary state I was in.
As the room warmed up, I took stock. My arms, legs and ribs were bruised, battered and pretty sore from the various attempts to climb out.
I couldn’t phone anyone because my phone was in my back pocket, full of water, and useless.
I’d lost my purse and all my bank cards, driving licence etc, plus my work pass, as they were in the bag. I went back out with a net and fished for it, but no luck. In fact, despite the canal being only about 7’ deep and the bottom visible depending on the weather, and knowing precisely where I let it go, I’ve never found it – mystery!
I was about to head to bed when I heard a funny noise, like someone blowing a loud and prolonged raspberry. Just to add insult to injury, the ‘Key Buoy’ keyring I had attached to my keys suddenly activated, and shot out a huge flashing orange balloon which proceeded to mock me for the next 3 days. “Well, that’s a lot of use NOW!”, I shouted at it. I may have added some other words too.
I was on time for my early shift…
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The RNLI is currently promoting a safety campaign that should be required reading for anybody who ever goes near water (so, pretty much everyone): How To Float
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, Mountain General, Personal, Skills
How to put together a first aid kit for the outdoors
How to put together a first aid kit outdoors
Wilderness personal medical kits
How do you put a first aid kit together for the outdoors? Or a bushcraft first aid kit? Are first aid kits for mountain biking different to ones for kayaking?
Carrying a first aid kit in your rucksack or in your personal kit is pretty difficult to argue against. The problem is – how much do you carry, and what exactly do you carry? Once you start going down the road of visualising every possible emergency medical scenario and wanting to ‘be prepared’ for it. Before long you end up carrying several kilograms of equipment that in all likelihood you will never use – but you somehow feel that you need to.
The reality is actually a lot simpler. There are two important points to remember for outdoor emergency first aid:
- Training is the absolute most important thing you can put your time and money into. Knowledge weighs nothing and the most important lifesaving techniques require good personal skills but little to no equipment.
- If you are on your own in the middle of nowhere then the options open to you self-treatment are actually very limited.
With that mildly-sobering thought in mind – how do you put together a first aid kit for the outdoors?
The answer is dependent on several factors:
- The environment you are travelling too/through and specific hazards it may contain
- The length of trip
- Distance/time to evacuation and medical care in case of emergency
- The number of people (and animals) in the party
- The existing medical conditions of those in the party
- The training and skill level of those in the party
- The activities you are performing
- Your carrying capacity (rucksack, canoe, vehicle, porters etc)
For example – the medical kit for a 5-week sailing voyage to the Lofoten islands would be different to that of a solo lightweight backpacker on a 3-day summer trip in the Cairngorms. For the former a Bag Valve Mask (BVM) and full suture kit would be appropriate but would a little ridiculous for the solo hiker.
I have used various medical kits in my work over the years. In my time in a Mountain Rescue team I carried a small personal first aid kit that contained a minimal number of items and drugs – but it was designed to be pooled with the other kits carried by fellow rescuers to form a larger and more comprehensive kit. I supplemented this with items purchased myself such as Tuffcut shears and nitrile gloves. When working as a remote-area medic as support on long-distance races and outdoor challenges I was either carrying a very comprehensive kit issued by the company employing me, or I was given a budget to supply my own equipment at my own specification. I have also put together my own for various trips, plus also kits for Original Outdoors staff and freelance contractors to use when working with our own clients. Each case has been slightly different…
The easy answer to “what’s the best outdoor first aid kit?” is – they all are. The real skill is choosing or building one that suits where you are going, what you are doing and what you’re doing when you get there. To that end I’ve put together a video on the decision-making process that I go through for any trip or scenario, and the items I carry in one of my personal kits:
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First Aid Kit Contents
The list below is based on the items shown in the video, with links to buy them directly from Amazon. Some of the brands or sizes are slightly different or only a few representations of what I carry. The items are not listed in order of importance, just to roughly match the order from the video.
I’ve also put a link to the Lifesystems first aid kit which is a very similar off-the-shelf kit that I can personally recommend – even if it’s used as a base to add other items to.
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Nitrile Gloves
Get them in any colour other than red or black – you need to be able to see if blood suddenly appears on them when giving a primary or secondary survey as it will steer you towards a major bleed you may have missed.
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Resus Face Shield
An item of personal safety that should be somewhere easy to reach but can also make your CPR technique more effective.
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Anti Bacterial Wipes
Great for cleaning up after dealing with a minor wound and preventing your kit contaminating everything it touches.
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Alcohol Hand Gel
Be aware that carrying alcohol in your first aid kit may cause issues when travelling to countries where alcohol is banned or severely restricted
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Normasol Sachets
Sterile topical solution in sachets for careful application over wider areas.
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Sterile Eye Wash Pods
Sterile topical solution in pods for washing foreign bodies from eyes.
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Fabric Adhesive Dressing Strip
Adhesive dressing strip on a roll for making custom plasters/band-aids for tricky areas like between fingers.
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SteriStrips
Temporary adhesive suture strips for wound closure.
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Blister Plasters
Being able to treat or manage a blister can make the difference between carrying on or turning around to go home
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Non-Adherent Dressings
General use dressings without any adhesive.
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Triangular Bandage
I have yet to use one of these as a sling, but they are quite useful for holding other dressings on or wrapping over wide areas.
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Wound dressings (Various sizes)
Absorbent wound dressings in various sizes
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Travel Mirror
Great for reaching places that the eyeball can’t!
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Glucose Gel
Glucose gel for hypoglycemic emergencies.
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Round-Tip Scissors
Small scissors with rounded ends for safety
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TuffCut Shears
Tough shears for emergency clothing removal
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Tweezers
For removal of small foreign bodies
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Microlance Needles
Tiny sterile needles for making small holes to drain blisters etc
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Disposable Thermometer
Of limited use in a first aid environment but helpful for long-term monitoring of a patient
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Tick Removal Card
For safe removal of ticks
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CAT Tourniquet
Not for general carry and must be trained in use
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SAM Splint
Useful but heavy and other items can be improvised to replace it.
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Lifesystems Mountain Leader First Aid Kit
A comprehensive and well-designed outdoor first aid kit.
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Emergency and Safety, First Aid, Mountain General, Personal, Skills, Tools and Equipment, Videos
UK Knife Law Explained
UK Knife Law Explained for the Outdoors
UK legal carry law discussed with a former police officer
What can I carry in the UK? Is my knife illegal? What knife can I carry for bushcraft?
The above is a good example of questions we’re asked with regards to knives, axes and what we can carry for working in the outdoors in the U.K.
We of course discuss all of this on our bushcraft courses, but sometimes it’s easier to listen to a discussion than a lecture. For that reason I got one of our instructors, Kevin Field, to talk through his understanding of the current UK knife laws and how they might affect a bushcrafter or other outdoor enthusiast or professional.
Kevin was formerly a police officer, and I am an experienced outdoor instructor – but neither of us is a solicitor and we cannot give formal legal advice. The content in the video is our best understanding and interpretation of the current laws, but it is down to each one of you to do your own research and make sure that what you have in your pocket or bag is legal for your situation.
UK Knife Law Key Points:
- The legal length for a non-locking, folding blade is 3inches/7.62cm
- A knife with legal length can still be deemed an offensive weapon if it can perceived as such by someone else
- Locking folding knives, fixed blade knives and knives longer than 3inches/7.62cm are all illegal for carry in a public place without a further defence
- It is the duty of the person carrying the knife to know and understand the law – ignorance is not a defence
- Access land and public footpaths are also public places
- More information can be found on the gov.uk website
So what can I carry?
Well, the broadest answer is a folding blade, without a locking mechanism of no more than 3inches/7.62cm. That leaves you with something like the Victorinox Swiss Army Knife – however, even though it is not illegal necessarily to carry this as a knife, you could still be accused of carrying an offensive weapon.
The actual wording is:
“It is an offence for any person, without lawful authority or good reason, to have with him in a public place, any article which has a blade or is sharply pointed except for a folding pocket-knife which has a cutting edge to its blade not exceeding 3 inches.” [CJA 1988 section 139(1)]
There are specific defenses listed for the carry of knives outside of the definition above – including use for work, for religious reasons or as part of a national costume. The crucial part here is “without lawful authority or good reason”. What constitutes a ‘good reason’ is very subjective, and can depend on everything from how you act and behave with that item in public to how a member of the public perceives it. It is also not limited to knives, but hatchets, folding saws, ice axes and other sharp/bladed articles that an outdoor enthusiast may use.
Whilst it is impossible to give cast-iron guarantees and advice on what knife or other item you may carry, and how you can carry it, there are some generic situations where it is common for knives to be carried in public space:
- A small, folding locknife with a serrated blade on the harness of a climber or the PFD of a canoe/kayaker for the purpose of cutting through rope, webbing or line in an emergency
- A fixed-blade bushcraft knife being used by somebody camping on land where they have legal permission to do so, and ensuring it is being used safely and responsibly
- A multitool with a locking blade in the toolkit of a mountainbiker at a trail center
- A long filleting knife in the tacklebox of an angler on a pier where the public has access
All of those are fairly common scenarios, and there is a very good chance that a police officer, the Crown Prosecution Service and potentially a judge agreeing that it is a ‘good reason’ for that item to be carried or used in public, in that way, at that time.
But what if that climber still has that knife in their pocket when they sit down to a bowl of goulash in the Siabod Cafe later that day? Or if that bushcrafter forgets they have a knife on their belt when they pop into Tesco on the way home? Could the mountainbiker get into an argument with a stranger whilst adjusting their derailleur and threaten the stranger with the knife on the multitool? Can the angler drop into the pub when walking back home, dropping their tacklebox under the table?
The short answer to all of the above is that they are much more likely to have committed an offence. By making poor decisions, not paying attention to how they are handling the potentially illegal item in their kit and being complacent or just foolish they have moved outside of their (potential) legal defence.
One also needs to consider if they are trespassing, which in itself is a civil matter not a criminal one – but if you are found to be in possession of an offensive weapon then it can possibly become armed trespass.
There are so many variables that it possible to turn any hypothetical scenario into a situation where a law has been broken.
Seriously, what can I carry?
The best advice I can give – as an instructor and somebody who was once the victim of knife crime – is to make sure that the knife, axe, saw or whatever you are carrying is:
- appropriate to the activity you are conducting, or about to/have been conducting and there is no other practical way to transport that item
- not being used or carried in a manner which can cause distress or alarm to a member of the public
- not likely to be accidentally carried on from your place of lawful use and activity to a public place (on the belt of your trousers etc)
- not an item otherwise prohibited from being carried or owned (including flick knives, butterfly knives etc)
- transported and stored in a way that cannot be misconstrued as being a weapon (i.e. in a rucksack in the boot of a vehicle, not in the cupholder next to you)
You also need to ask yourself if you REALLY do need to carry that item. Is there a ‘good reason’ for carrying a machete-like survival tool on the PYG Track of Snowdon? Do you need to have a £500 craftsperson-made bushcraft knife on your belt at the local game fair? Do you actually need a knife to go foraging, or will a pair of scissors or secateurs be more appropriate? There is a world of outdoor media, from Instagram to old episodes of Ray Mears shows on Youtube that may trick the unwary into thinking that anything is allowed because you’re being ‘outdoorsy’…
So please, make sure that if you are carrying a knife or bladed item in the U.K., no matter what the style or length, that you are aware of the rules and laws around the use and carry of those items. More importantly, you should also be aware of how your behaviour and actions could be seen by another person. You know that you are a safe, responsible person who is a student of wilderness skills and want to try out your new knife and axe – but has the person walking their dog just seen a threatening-looking scruffy person heading into the woods with camouflage gear and a Rambo-knife?
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Full Video
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Axes and Saws
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Zombie Killer Knives
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- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Foraging, Law and Ethics, Mountain General, Videos
How to camp in the woods – a time lapse tale!
How to camp in the woods
Setting up tarps and living by firelight with Kevin Field
In this short time lapse bushcraft instructor Kevin and I set up two DD Hammocks 3mx3m tarps, light a fire between and settle down for the night in a simple woodland camp.
The next morning we carefully and quickly pack things back down, making sure that we properly extinguish the fire and return the forest floor to its previous state.
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For this camp we rigged the two tarps in similar ways, with ridgelines stretched taut between trees. The fire was a long, thin fire designed to give out heat along the length of our shelters and provide space to cook on.
The easiest way to tidy up in the morning after a camp like this starts when you first arrive the night before:
- Identify the area you need for your fire and shelters/tarps
- Clear the floor area of any leaf litter or debris, back to bare soil
- Set up your tarps or shelters, with consideration to wind direction
- Gather enough firewood for the night before you light the fire
- Light the fire, cook your food and enjoy the evening
- The next morning, consider if you actually NEED a fire
- Make sure that the fire is properly extinguished, even if it burnt out the night before
- Clear away any burnt wood, then scatter ashes across the forest floor by hand
- Once the shelters and your equipment have been safely stowed away you can scatter the leaf litter back across the forest floor. If done properly it should look like you had never been there!
- Published in All Blog Posts, Articles, Bushcraft General, Original Outdoor Moments, Videos
MindShift Gear Rotation 180
MindShift Gear Rotation 180
Innovative gear bag for outdoor photographers
At the Outdoor Trade Show at Stoneleigh Park earlier this year we stopped and had a good look at the photographer bags and accessories that Snapperstuff.com had on offer. Helen from Snapperstuff was kind enough to give us some time to go through the range, and one thing that really stood out was the range of bags from MindShift Gear – particularly the MindShift Gear Rotation 180 series of bags. They are outdoor adventure rucksacks that conceal a top-loader DSLR waist pack.
I’ve used Nikon DSLRs for over a decade and finding a way to carry them which protects them but keeps them accessible has always been a problem. My current solution is either a bulky shoulderbag under my rucksack straps, or a drybag clipped to the rucksack straps – could this be the equipment solution I’ve been looking for?
- Published in All Blog Posts, Mountain General, Outdoor Gear News and Reviews, Videos