Friday, January 29, 2010

The Pathfinder Bushcraft Knife

**Update** Check out the leather sheath I made for this knife HERE


What can I say about this knife? For those who are not familiar with it, the Pathfinder Bushcraft Knife was developed for Dave Canterbury by the Ohio based Blind Horse Knives. Picking up the knife there are subtle cues everywhere that scream quality. The fit and finish on this knife are beautiful, and it is a joy to hold and admire.

A few stats about it...

* 1095 Carbon steel, full tang with green micarta handles.

* Total length of the knife is 10".

* Blade length is 5 1/2" total, with 5" of cutting surface (length from the tip to the choil).

* Blade thickness is 3/16".

* Scandi ground edge.

* Pathfinder logo stamped on one side of the blade, BHK logo on the other.

My initial impression of the knife is that it will be more than adequate for the type of tasks I use at camp. The length of the blade is long enough that I can do some decent baton work with it if I had to, and the scandi edge is superior for carving work. Because of the grind I'm a little weary of using this knife to baton with, because the nature of a scandi grind leaves very little material behind to support the edge. This may be counteracted with the temper of the steel, so I'll have to wait until I field test it before I form an opinion. The knife might be useful for light chopping work, but only with he addition of a lanyard to wrap around my wrist so that I can lower my grip further down the handle. Other things that I have noticed so far...

* Balance of the knife lies on the first pin of the handle. This makes the knife slightly handle heavy, but is not too much of a problem. In fact this might be useful if you wanted to choke up on the end of the handle to do some light chopping.

* This has been a source of controversy for a lot of people who have been waiting for this knife to come out, but the Thumb jimping on the spine of the blade really is not all that bad to be honest. I personally do not care for it, as it can tear up our finger, but I hold my knife in a strong fist grip so it doesn't get in my way.  I do find it has a tendency to get caught with dirt/wood particles and needs to be cleaned out periodically.

* Throws sparks with minimal effort from the back of the spine on both my LMF Army model and the Misch Metal type that I bought from GoingGear.com.

I have not field tested this knife yet as I only received it yesterday, but I plan on taking it out the first chance I get. I don't push my knives as some people like to do, but I do use them hard for normal tasks.

I'd like to thank someone very special to me for this knife, as it was a gift from them. I promise to make good use of it.

Firesteel not included with the PF Knife

**this was based on my own personal opinion, nothing more.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Why Bushcraft? My journey so far...

"Knowledge is the key to survival and the best thing about that is; it doesn't weigh anything." -Ray Mears

Being a that I am from Canada, it might not be such a surprise to see me take an interest in the outdoors . Canada has one of the largest expanses of uninterrupted wild forests in the world, and the country was literally born out of the trade of furs. The Boreal forest blankets the country all the way from Newfoundland to British Columbia, and even with all of this, my exposure to the bush really is only limited to the past few years.

The truth is, I've lived in an urban environment all my life. Growing up I was exposed to stories about the rugged Canadian wilderness and the romance of it all was intoxicating. I read the book "Lost in the barrens" when I was 10, and it made me want to explore the wilds. I never had the opportunity and didn't really know where to start; no one in my family had any experience outdoors.

I put it out of my mind. I mean, I didn't even know where to begin. It wasn't until years later that I stumbled onto a TV show where an unshaven Canadian with a dirty bandanna on his head demonstrated to viewers at home how to survive 7 days with nothing but the items in his pockets.

Doesn't sleep in hotels, or drink his own urine

All of a sudden the wilderness seemed romantic again. "I want to do that" I naively thought to myself! Ok, maybe not exactly like that, but I knew that I had pushed off wilderness survival long enough. So how do you break into something like that? Where do you start? I mean, I didn't even know how to start a proper fire WITH a lighter! And so I turned to what I could read, or view demonstrations on the internet. Do a search on survival and you'll find thousands of hits, so to say that the information out there is extensive is an understatement. Most novice people always start out at the same place-

"if I get lost in the woods, how will I get food?"

and naturally, the typical newbie answer is to hunt game. Regardless of the fact that food is the last thing on the priority list, and that hunting is a skill that takes years to perfect it always seems to be that people want to learn how to make a bow and arrow, and I was the same. While looking for examples of how to make a survival bow I came across a fellow who did a very good job of explaining himself. Moreover, he had a lot of videos of explaining all facets of survival.

This guy can hunt deer if he needed to. You probably can't.

One message that he kept emphasizing was that these "self reliance" skills weren't something that you could learn for watching. Sounds obvious, but when people become overwhelmed they tend to shield themselves a false sense of security where they feel like they've seen it enough that they don't need to try it out to know they can do it when they need to. Real life doesn't work that way I'm afraid, and I was guilty of that myself. This new guy encouraged people to go out and try things, even if they didn't work. In failing, you'll learn how to do things the right way and you'll be doing so in a controlled environment where you life wasn't at risk (in many ways a good lesson to take into other aspects of life).

The thing with learning something like this, is that it's a journey. Every time you learn something, you learn that there are 100 more things you don't know. As a result my interest, which started in camping, grew to survival, which grew into how to sustain myself if I needed to in the bush. Running it's natural course has led me to where I am now, which is learning bushcraft skills. Ray Mears puts it best I think, when he says

"Bushcraft is what you carry in your mind and your muscles."

Which I think is a very elegant way of summing it up.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Custom Firesteel Handle

. Last weekend I was browsing a capentry shop I stumbled onto some exotic hardwood pieces meant for turning pens. Noticing how affordable they were, gears immediatly started turning about what I could make with a few peices I thought looked nice. Knife handles? Spoon carving? FIRESTEELS!! Of course! I could turn my own firesteel handles, and add a personal touch to a tool I use quite frequently

I like the LMF firesteels because of how readily they give sparks and decided I wanted to customize my existing army model. I removed the standard handle by melting off the plastic and was left with a clean blank.

Out of the two exotic woods I purchase, I settled on making a handle out of Ebony (I have a Bocote peice that I'll use on another steel in the future). The peice itself cost me about $3, and honestly I have enough left to make 3-4 more handles if I wanted to.



After drilling a lanyard hole and a seat for the firesteel to rest in, I epoxied it into the hardwood and waited overnight for it to cure.
The next step was to rough out a general shape. I did this by mounting the firesteel into the chuck of my standing drill press and began smoothing out the corners of the block but turning on the drill and removing material with a rasp.

With a general profile laid out, it was time to start shaping the design. Being that this was my first go at making a firesteel handle I wanted to keep things simple and opted for a fairly basic design.

After filing out the shape, I used some fine wet/dry paper to smooth out the rough surface of the handle and sealed it with mineral oil.

The finished handle. It doesn't look too bad, and is certainly much nicer than the standard plastic handle it had before. Overall I'm pleased, and may try to do something more elaborate in the future.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Help Haiti

Funny thing about learning the skills to survive, you gain an new respect for the things that you take advantage of every day. We need health, shelter, water, food and above all of that we need the will to live. If you live in a developed nation it's easy to forget that, because most of the time we don't even think about how fortunate we are.

Then one day something terrible happens and it robs thousands of people of the basic requirements to live.

I've never donated to a disaster before, partially because I was student who had his budget stretched...but also because I never really understood what it would be like to not have access to clean water, food or shelter.

That being said, I'm not longer a broke student and I can afford to spare some extra money to help. I urge as many people who can to do the same...because where would you turn if your home was destroyed, your water tainted and undrinkable and your family was hungry?


https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/donate.aspx?EventID=43149&LangPref=en-CA


(Note: The Canadian Government is matching the donations of people like you and I when we give to eligible charities. The link to the Canadian Red Cross is one of them, so your donation of $10 is suddenly $20, $20 is $40 etc...)

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Leather backing for ESEE 4 kydex sheath

My main knife is the ESEE 4 and it came to me with a kydex sheath. My biggest complaint about this was that it rode too high on my hip, and so was uncomfortable and a bit awkward when drawing the knife. To remedy this, I grabbed some scrap leather I had lying around and made a backing to drop down the kydex 3-4 inches.

The feel is a lot better now, but the leather wasn't the best quality for the job and is very soft. I made end up hot waxing it to add some rigidity to the leather, and possibly add a firesteel loop to it as well.


Saturday, January 2, 2010

Wilderness EDC

Just another EDC 'kit' that I put together. This time for my girlfriend to wear while out in the bush.


This kit consists of:
* King cobra 550 bracelet w/ ITW whistle clasp (not shown)
* Mora SL-2 (not shown)
* Neck lanyard made of 550 cord in a Snake Braid
- LED flashlight
- Whistle
- Magnesium mini match
- Pill fob w/ 5 chlorine dioxide water purification tabs