Lashing a knife to a staff

I have never found the need to lash my knives to sticks but in some of the above scenario's I would have no reservations about doing so !
As for fire hardening sticks, as Doc says it takes valuable time and energy. This also applies to battoning wood ( people have said you should start the split and then make wooden wedges ! If you are freezing to death are you going to sit down and start fashioning wooden wedges ?)
And digging for plant bulbs( they say make the fire hardened digging sticks again....if you are starving to death are you going to worry about scratching up your knife ? )
C'mon we all know what we should do but desperate times often call for desperate measures !!!
 
This is just reason # 10,000 why having more than one knife with you is a good idea.

How many people here have lost a knife--either misplaced, fell out of a sheath, borrowed and not returned, sank out of reach, fell down a cliff, etc.? I'd bet it's a larger number than the number of those who've broken knives. Your most indestructible Busse is probably as vulnerable to this as is your grandma's Ontario Old Hickory butcher knife. Why not pay the extra $2 it'll take you to buy one of the latter at a flea market, and that way you have something to put to risky use, that you can leave in your pack until and unless some emergency arises?

As for mounting points onto wood (arrowheads to field/expedient shafts, or, I presume, spearheads), notching the wood is better than splitting it. Ohiyesa / Charles Eastman, a Sioux, author of Indian Scout Crafts and Lore and Indian Boyhood, wrote (if I remember correctly) that he had never seen an arrow made of split wood. I'd imagine that the head would just deepen the split on impact, and you'd at least lose some serious power right when you needed it most. They'd notch their shafts, instead.

Two fairly simple ways of doing this. One, you can saw a notch with a saw-blade (or file) on a Swiss Army Knife or Multi-tool, or a real saw, if you have one handy.

The other way--more low-tech--involves boring a hole through the shaft. The hole becomes the bottom of the notch when you're done. Then, if you want a quarter-inch-deep notch, you cut two parallel notches, a quarter of an inch away from the hole you just bored, one notch on either side of the shaft, so that they're parallel to the hole you bored through the shaft. The idea is to cut the notches deep enough that the wood grains at the bottoms of the notches line up with the sides of the hole you bored through the shaft. Then you just flex the shaft, and the wood breaks along the grain lines, and you have a stick with a notch in the end. Much stronger than a split.
 
I have to say that until this thread, I was always one of those "never lash your knife to a pole" guys.

But there's some really good arguments for doing it on occasion in here...finishing off the pig is a good one and cutting down fruit is a good one too.

I think that in general my instinct would be to go with the fire-hardened stick but never say never!

Making a good fire-hardened spear is pretty easy...one thing I have done in the past is shave the pole down to a fairly flat blade, around half an inch thick, and bevel the edges to get a primitive wooden dagger out of the thing. My best results have been a sort of convex spear tip. I make the tip out of the thicker end of the pole as it seems to be sturdier.

Then I dry out the wood over an evening by placing it very close to a fire, often just inside the rock ring, if there is one. I have a belief based on absolutely nothing that the rocks reflect the heat back and help the "blade" to dry more evenly. I have no evidence to support this but I can grow a big beard, and I look the part.

I think with a 7x2" "blade" on the end of a six-foot pole, you could probably do in a lot of animals, and maybe you could even chop down fruit. I will give it a go around Victoria Day; should be out camping around then.
 
JackBauer24 said:
I was so disappointed when les stroud did that crap. I know he's not a knife guy, but I thought he had better reason than that.
Click to expand...

If we’re thinking of the same episode, then it was a cheap bowie he tied to the end for defense against lions and such. He always has a multi-tool (Wave?) on him too, so it wasn’t his only blade.

-sh00ter
 
I would only do so for a couple reasons. Perhaps to finish off a large dangerous animal possibly caught in my snare. Although if I set the snare knowing the possibility that a large dangerous animal might get caught in it I'd probably make a good spear beforehand. Fire hardening or trying to find some animal bone or something besides my knife. Small pieces of scrap metal seem to be littered throughout the woods. As are broken glass bottles and various other useful materials. I could think of several other ways to dispatch a snared dangerous animal. Just throwing a good sized stone at its head would probably kill or stun it long enough to move in for the kill. If its snared I would imagine you can actually get fairly close while staying out of reach. A club would be far easier to find. A large dead limb would certainly do the trick. Once again stunning it long enough to sever an artery with the knife in hand. I would be less than keen on sticking a wild boar with a knife lashed to a stick for a couple reasons. Wild and feral pigs have notoriously tough skin and are fairly heavy boned. Imagine sticking it with a lashed knife spear and having it snap off in the shoulder blade or ribs. Generally stabbing a pig is done while its held with dogs or with an actual spear.

As for getting fuit out of a tree why not just knock it down with a throwing stick or even the Apache throwing star from Hoods Woods? Just my .02. Never know what you might have to do in a real survival situation. Just not sure I would compromise a good blade.
 
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