I wanted to check something out

upnorth

upnorth

Joined
Nov 25, 2006
Messages
7,038
I have always felt that simply smashing kindling would be more efficient than splitting it with a hatchet. Particularly in very cold weather when there's no time to fiddle around. It is and it isn't. Smashing the softwood here splits it up quickly and brings out small fibers but it seems limited to early stage fire making. I would still need to add thicker stock to the fire meaning that I would need to split a little anyway. That is still ok though. I feel that I have learned how to save time now lighting a winter fire so the experiment was a success for me personaly. I took a couple of Condor cutting tools out of their slumber for a spin, because I thinned their edges out, and I wanted to see if the cutting performance improved. The Hudson Bay improved significantly but the Parang less so. I was pleasantly surprised with the Hudson Bay actually. The little booger seems to walk a line between machete and hatchet. The best choppers were from left to right. Hatchet, Hudson Bay, Parang. I am also notorious for collecting old bottles, marbles, pretty much anything old and interesting outdoors. I saw this weird tin can type deal under a tree last year and it was pinched\wedged by a large limb. So I decided to dig it out today. Unfortunately it was pretty trashed and partialy grown into the tree. I still find old toys or whatever interesting while out there. I left it for anyone that wanted it. If intact I would have taken it home.








 
Nice post, thanks for helping me keep in mind that I really need to sort out a large hatchet or small ax for my winter wanders here...now that I am up north lol
 
Smashing would make some tinder sized material. I agree that you need some bigger stuff too. I like your tools.

I have not played around with my Hudson Bay knife much yet and I am always interested in folks' reactions to it.
 
Nice looking set of tools, and the little rusted trailer is also very cool. I always wonder how stuff like that ended up where it is, when I find it out "in the middle of nowhere".
Did you find smashed wood works "better" than split? Or just that it too works, and is quicker/easier to "make".

UW
 
mistwalker said:
Nice post, thanks for helping me keep in mind that I really need to sort out a large hatchet or small ax for my winter wanders here...now that I am up north lol
Click to expand...

Thanks. If you see me doing something wrong on this forum, or know of a better method etc. please tell me. While I have a moderate interest in ''bushcraft'' I don't take it hard core. I respect and take seriously comments of the more skilled\knowledgable, like yourself and others. I have many different interests in the outdoors that generaly coincide. Various plants, berries, mushrooms, old relics, coins, animals, processing wood, cutting tool use, fires, etc. It is hard for me to be bored out there as there is always something interesting to do or see. Even in winter.
 
22-rimfire said:
Smashing would make some tinder sized material. I agree that you need some bigger stuff too. I like your tools.

I have not played around with my Hudson Bay knife much yet and I am always interested in folks' reactions to it.
Click to expand...

I am notorious for cutting tool lust. Which now seems to be spreading to axes. I will buy a knife or whatever, use it a bit, toss it in a box and go to my next lust desire. Although I have found ESEE's in my hands fairly consistantly. At first I bought the H.B. knife out of nostalgia. To me it represented a nod to the fur trade which I have a lot of interest in, as I lived by some historic trade post sites a few years back. When I did research on the area I realized what incredible events happened all around me 200 years ago. One near by post had women\children slaughtered. But the killing was on both sides so there was no ''bad guy'' here. It was mainly culture shock\clash. Anyway, my H.B. came a teeny bit bent. When looking down the spine it cants slightly to the left. Warpage at heat treat ? I don't know. But the knife feels great in hand to me and after working on the edge it slices\chops quite well. I remember saying that I wouldn't be using it for anything serious as I viewd Condor products as third rate, cheap and no one would comment on the steel or heat treat. I thought that they were butter steel kitchen\camping toys. Well I now feel that they are better than that. The steel on my Condors is harder than I thought it was. Not high end, but not junk either. I'm just saying that they are better than I gave them credit for. And with the new drive at Condor for quality control the products should be even better. The Hudson Bay could double as a hatchet\machete\camp, kind of, sort of, knife for me on a weekend. But I refuse not to bring a hatchet or better yet small axe and saw with me in really cold weather. I have scared myself or became very alert to potential problems with fire while out in serious cold. There is a degree of enjoying cutting tools for me that transitions into ''time to get serious''. It is usually season\weather influenced. Those are just my personal impressions and we are all a little different.
 
uncle willie said:
Nice looking set of tools, and the little rusted trailer is also very cool. I always wonder how stuff like that ended up where it is, when I find it out "in the middle of nowhere".
Did you find smashed wood works "better" than split? Or just that it too works, and is quicker/easier to "make".

UW
Click to expand...

From previous fire making with various materials and methods I saw potential with the smashed wood. Time epediency, dry inner core, small fibers etc. should all help me on initial fire starts. Time was my motivator because My fingers can lose dexterity in very little time during extreme cold. But it is all pie in the sky until I experiment more this winter. I remember struggling with a lighter and a big wad of shoreline grass in the far north. I realized that it wasn't quite as easy and potentialy dangerous if I didn't practice doing these things in the real world. What seems or should be a simple task can be complicated by the cold and or frozen materials which act a little differently. None of it is impossible by any means but I also can't be arrogant and think that it'll all just go lickity split, as it sometime doesn't. I have learned a lot from this forum and its members. And I have also taught myself some of the nuances or finer real world points by actually doing these things. I made it a point one time to make a fire after a three day rain with a ferro rod and natural materials. It was NOT the standard gather, scratch rod, add fuel fire situation. My materials like fluffy thistle heads were saturated blobs. I finally found a partial hornets nest which got things going. Even then the nest material was damp. It took quite a while but what happened eventually was that I had my grass\hornet nest etc. materials in a dome with my hnads under the material. Out of desperation instead of an occasion strike across the rod I was raking the crap out of it like a machine gun. I then noticed that this was warming my hands and eventualy my materials were drying. Finally the materials started to catch. I taught myself a lesson that day. Since then I have read here that people will gather\carry materials on their body to dry it. All the tips from this site and real world experimentation, not just typing about it, help to increase my odds to higher levels of success in extreme fire making situations. I still have much to learn.
 
If you liked the hudson bay, you are going to love what comes out next year.
 
That is a really cool find too. I would have dismissed it as a planter but a tin truck would have surprised me.
 
Joezilla said:
That is a really cool find too. I would have dismissed it as a planter but a tin truck would have surprised me.
Click to expand...

A guy just never knows what he'll find out there. Thankfully it has been positive for me overall. I know a guy that found a human thigh bone along a river bank once. That is definately not something that I hope to find....I did find a buffalo rib once though with a crack running down it, and at the start of the crack a perfect puncture from a stone arrowhead. You never know....
 
upnorth said:
Thanks. If you see me doing something wrong on this forum, or know of a better method etc. please tell me. While I have a moderate interest in ''bushcraft'' I don't take it hard core. I respect and take seriously comments of the more skilled\knowledgable, like yourself and others. I have many different interests in the outdoors that generaly coincide. Various plants, berries, mushrooms, old relics, coins, animals, processing wood, cutting tool use, fires, etc. It is hard for me to be bored out there as there is always something interesting to do or see. Even in winter.
Click to expand...

I like that you are out there experimenting! I do a lot of that myself. I think these types of studies that you're doing here will also help you deal with things if you ever find yourself out there without an ax and using a large rock to create tinder and fuel. I can just see paleolithic man out smashing wood with a stone hand ax, or even a haft-ed one, to get tinder if he needed to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top