Building Shelter without a Mora?

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Thanks Guys,I see I have to do some reading to come up to speed.I will be honest,i thought things were a little hostile ,and therefore was a little nervous about getting involved. I will do my homework,before I start posting.

Onowa
 
No worries. Take it all with a grain of salt and jump on in. This thread isn't A typical of the site in general and I think that once you get used to the different posters, you'll find a very diverse and knowledgeable group and we all have our own way of putting the words down.
 
onowa said:
Thanks Guys,I see I have to do some reading to come up to speed.I will be honest,i thought things were a little hostile ,and therefore was a little nervous about getting involved. I will do my homework,before I start posting.

Onowa
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You are already as welcome as anyone. There is a tremendous amount of good info to be found here from a lot of very knowledgeable folks. This thread really is not typical, but there is still a great deal of very good info to be found in it. Once again, welcome aboard. :thumbup:
 
Welcome Onowa :thumbup:
No this thread isn't typical. It is a carry over from a few other threads.

Do search the archives, lots of good stuff & fun reading ;)
 
Did the Sammi not use large blades? seems they did "the Leuku".
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Yes they have, listen: they use always two knives, everyone has the small one, the big leuku is carried in those areas where only birch is found, when they come to the pine woods they use an axe like everyone else.

The big leuku is a very specialized knife for one purpose: whacking birch boughs.

Taking leuku as an example of all using big knives here is decidedly a bad one.

Besides the Saami hardly count as indigenious any more, they are more motorized than the rest of us and apparently they are no more original, they just retained the hunter culture a lot longer, the rest of us changed over to agriculture starting some two thousand years ago.

TLM

By the way, the name "leuku" refers to both size knives, handle and blade shape are nominative things.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome guys.

I have been doing some reading here,great forum, Very educational.

Onowa
 
No skammer I don't have it all figured out, I don't claim to, and I don't claim to be able to go in the bush with nothing and survive long term.
 
Hey, how about we call a truce and stick to the topic at hand. Everyones opinion is welcome. It's just a thought. :)
 
I agree, each opinion has it's own merits and all debate/argument will accomplish is the loss of a very informative thread.

What's that advice every mom in the world used to preach? Oh yeah, "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" :D
 
Onowa,

Welcome to the board. Pull up a log to the fire and jump right in... to the discussion that is, not the fire. This one happens to be a barn fire, but hey, it sure sheds alot of light.

I had the honor to spend a little over 48 hours on top of my favorite mountain this week with a newbie, Emerson. Great guy, 37 years old and he was fully capable of rational thought. He did great.

The BLADES...

Me - Big knife, Becker BK-7, used for cutting brush, probing wet sand for water (wasn't any) had to resort to backup compass in PSK once, glad I had it. Small knife -Newt Livesay NRGS neck knife, used for food prep, making new boot laces, cutting paracord, cleaning fingernails, dug out a splinter, glad I had it

Emerson - Big knife 10 inch Tramontina Machete, used for cutting grass for insulation, cutting brush, digging in sand, leveling ground. Small Knife - Frost's Mora SWAK, I don't think he used it this trip as I always had the NRGS around my neck and it was just there to be used all the time.

I like to have a big knife to do heavy cutting and splitting and a small knife to do just about everything else. Could we have gotten along with just the small knives, maybe but it would have been a hassle. Big knives save time.

Later this week I'll write this trip up and post it. We had a great time. I had forgotten how nice it is to have someone along who didn't need close attention. Emerson took to the wilderness routine very naturally. He's preparing to do a long distance motorcycle trip from here (Belo Horizonte) to Manaus and then down the east coast of Brazil so he wanted to get some wilderness experience first. He'll do great. Mac
 
I would like to start by saying after having readf through this thread I seem to be getting the impression that no one is drawing the difference between in expensive and cheap. Too often i hear people referring to Moras as "cheap " knives they would not want to depend on in a life or death situation. Anyone who has used a Mora realizes that it is a knife thats quality long over shoots its price.

So to be fair not to enter the argument on experience or no experience expensive or cheap large or saml. I am simply saying.

It is misleading to call a Mora "cheap" if you were to look at it in the fashion of gear rating as some publications do, it would easily fall into the "biggest bang for your buck category. Which is why it is pariased so highly I think.

Abe
 
ras said:
I received two Mora knives the other day and I can't see what the deal is.
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The edge is ground at ~10 degrees per side which makes them cut much better than most tacticals which have the edges commonly set at 20-25 degrees per side. Combine that with usually fairly thin stock 1/16-1/8" and they tend to cut very well. For example a Mora 2000 can hog carve wood over a stock Spyderco Paramilitaty several times to one. Of course it only takes 1-2 minutes to reset the edge on the Paramilitary to ten degrees, most of the high end knives from the small shop guys will also set the edge to the way you want.

In regards to the large knives and being "off", one of my closest friends learned how to forge traditional blades in Malaysia, I showed him most of my knives a few years back, he passed on most of them, picked up my SHBM and immediately took a liking to it because it had a very similar feel to the parangs he forges, though he did remark it was rather small for a knife if you were going to use it for serious work. The HI forums are full of guys who can talk about khukuris, long blades are commonly used for wood work and brush work by many people in many cultures.

Most of them are not prybars though, the Valiant Goloks for example are fairly thick, ~1/4" stock, and ground really well for wood work, but are soft spined and will bend to a set easily, you could not even pry apart a pine stick with them. Similar with the forged parangs, they would not react well to that type of use, nor would bolos, machetes, pretty much only khukuris would do that well. Most of them are stiff enough for prying in chopping though to clear chips aside from the Valiant Goloks, some Japanese large blades also won't do this as their spines are either annealed or just wrought iron.

-Cliff
 
skammer said:
While we are at it anyone who posts here should provide a detailed resume with references. This is nuts for a public forum I think you'd agree.
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It is meaningless in real life, you pick your own references of course and you choose them accordingly. There are many internet cites full of people who were busted on claiming military experience for example to sell themselves or a product, many of them con people for years, it is trivial to produce "proof" of your identity with a little work with a copier and you can mail order degrees trivially.

The internet is no different than talking to someone in person in regards to juding the worth of their words, you don't go by who they are you go by what they say, facts and logic and most important details. Someone who is making up stories can't get too detailed because they simply don't know the details, won't be consistent with them, and will never remember them from one story to the next.

-Cliff
 
skammer said:
All these guys with books out ALL were inspired by the original survival author Bradfod Angier. His writings inspired a generation of wilderness authors.
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Bradford was a great writer. Hardly ever mentions knives though. And I'm sure he never carried a sharpened pry bar into the wilderness. I'm surprised you would cite him since it undermines your prybar approach to wilderness survival.

True, he inspired a lot of other writers and he himself was a good writer but he was mainly a commercial writer who took from others. In general, a good copycat. He was not an innovator by any stretch of the imagination. His books were not seminal, just popular. Far more influential was Horace Kephart's book Camping and Woodcraft. In other words, Angier stood on big shoulders. Kephart was a giant. Anything you find in Angier's books, you will find in Kephart's and a whole lot more. Kephart was not a prybaby either.

Camping and Woodcraft
 
Jackdaw said:
Bradford was a great writer. Hardly ever mentions knives though. And I'm sure he never carried a sharpened pry bar into the wilderness. I'm surprised you would cite him since it undermines your prybar approach to wilderness survival.
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Didn't know that about BA thanks for pointing it out.

The fact anyone is not a prybaby means less than nothing to me as I have my own experiences to back my ways not following someone elses ideologies.

My grandfather was a trapper for 50+ years and never had a large pryable blade either ;) But he sure as hell carried a medium camp axe and small blade combo. So while he didn't carry a large knife he sure as hell had unlimited prying and splitting ability in the axe. Nearly all those old time woodsman used a nearly identical setup. Axe and blade. Cutting splitting and prying. Non of which is done at all well with a small blade.

Agree or not this is the point of opinions.

Skam
 
Yup, he carried a Randall but he never really says why other than it's a fine knife. But you can bet he didn't chop or dig or pry apart logs with it. That's why he talks at length about axes in his books. But he does say that " the blunt, chisel-like bevel found on the exceptionally hard-tempered knves that are advertised to cut through bone and metal will not take a keen enough edge to make them suitable for general wilderness user."

Still want to claim him as your knife guru? :rolleyes:

Of course Angier was a big city boy who took up the wilderness as a way to make a living because he couldn't sell his other books. His real outdoor guru was Colonel Townsend Whelen and together they authored "On Your Own in the Wilderness."

Here's an interesting excerpt from that book: "The trouble is that most sheath knives one sees are entirely too large, long, and thick bladed to be entirely practical."

And you were saying...?
 
I go away for a week and I find this post still going. :eek:

If we are going to start to quote woodsman, here is a quote from Nessmuk's book Woodcraft and Camping.

"A word as to knife, or knives. These are of prime necessity, and should be the best, both as to shape and temper.The bowies and hunting knives usually kept on sale, are thick, clumsy affairs, murderous-looking, but of little use; rather fitted to adorn a dime novel or the belt of "Billy the Kid", than the belt of an hunter or woodsman"

I love that little book. :D
 
Myakka said:
I go away for a week and I find this post still going. :eek:

If we are going to start to quote woodsman, here is a quote from Nessmuk's book Woodcraft and Camping.

"A word as to knife, or knives. These are of prime necessity, and should be the best, both as to shape and temper.The bowies and hunting knives usually kept on sale, are thick, clumsy affairs, murderous-looking, but of little use; rather fitted to adorn a dime novel or the belt of "Billy the Kid", than the belt of an hunter or woodsman"

I love that little book. :D
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So, as many here know, he carried a hand axe, 4-5" thin-bladed sheath knife, and a two-blade slip-joint ("pocket") knife -- in his part of the world.
 
Sounds like a Nessmuk trilogy photo op to me ;)
d2axwoodcanoe.jpg
 
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