Tuesday, April 27, 2010

April 27 Hike

Went for a small hike today. Only lasted an hour, but was nice to be outside. I managed to take a few interesting pictures, so here they are...

The first Trilliums of the season. Official flower of the province of Ontario.






Horseshoe fungus. The "false" tinder fungus. Can be prepared into a material called "Amadou" that takes a spark from flint and steel kit.




How could I resist the chance to make a debris shelter?


...of course it's not exactly complete, but not bad for 20 mins of work.


If I DID want to stay here for a night or so, I would've needed to spend another 2-3 hours just piling wood and leaves on top and sealing up the holes where I could get a draft.


A tiny Maple tree forest.


Bad picture of a Crampball fungus, also known as "King Alfred's Cake" fungus or the "true" tinder fungus. This stuff takes a spark and will glow like a piece of charcoal.


Close up. Notice the concentric rings on the inside of the fungus.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Arrowheads and broken axes...

** UPDATE: To see the first post in the Axe Restoration Project click HERE **


Went to a flea market today and scored two great finds for under $10! A broken rusty axe head ($5), and a flint arrow head ($2).

The axe head will be a side project, cleaning up the rust and re-profiling the grind. I'll have to find a sturdy hardwood to carve a handle out of as well, so this will be fun. I think I'll make it about the same length as a small forest axe, because of the balance of portability and leverage.

The flint arrowhead...well that's going into a future flint+steel fire kit that I'll now devote some time to building. I've already tried sparking it off one of my carbon steel knives, and it works brilliantly.

A pretty good find for a day that promised to be mostly uneventful when I first woke up.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Tinder: Petroleum Cotton tubes/capsules


Petroleum Jelly cotton balls are widely known as the goto homemade tinder. They're cheap, reliable and can be tightly packed into an empty film canister for countless fires. Problem is...they're messy! I hate having to dive into a container and end up with grease and dirt sticking to everything when I need to start a fire.

On solution is to pack some home made capsules of PJ cotton and cut them open as needed. The nice thing about these is that they can be packed into Pocket Survival Kits (PSKs) because of the relatively small size.

These aren't my idea and I don't remember where I picked it up from, so if anyone knows who the credit belongs to- feel free to leave a comment.

STEP 1
Gently warm the end of the straw with a heat source. Be careful or the straw will take the flame and become uneven.

STEP 2
Once the plastic is warm and has curled up on itself a little, quickly take a pair of pliers and press down on the open end until it is sealed.
STEP 3
Using a bamboo skewer (or something reasonably long and thin) begin pushing the cotton into the open end of the straw. You may need to fluffy up the cotton a bit to get this to work.

STEP 4
Repeat step 1-2 on the opposite end

You now have a self contained tinder capsule, ready to cut open and light using a firesteel, matches, or lighter!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Tinder: Petroleum Jelly Cotton


The ultimate goal of being self reliant in the bush is to be able to walk in with tools and be able to take the things you need to make life possible directly from the forest. The trick of course is to do this in a way that is not destructive to nature, but that is another talk for another time.

While learning, it's hard to just walk right in and start fires using what nature has to offer. To that end, most people will begin by taking modern or home made tinders into the woods and then progress from there. Even when you become experienced it makes good sense to carry sure fire ways to start a fire in the case of an emergency or when the tinders you normal count on are not available.

The goto home made tinder for most people is just simple cotton balls (or cotton wool) which is lightly coated with petroleum jelly. When ready to use, the cotton is pulled gently to reveal the soft fluff which readily takes sparks from a firesteel or flame from a lighter/match. The petroleum jelly acts as a flame extender creating a pseudo candle which gives you plenty of time to get a fire going, even in wet weather.

To store or transport the cotton balls, a simple film canister will do, and will keep the balls waterproof. Added security can be achieved by covering the seal with tape.

All in all, if you're starting out this is a good tinder to start using thanks to it's cost effectiveness, availability and reliability.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Survivorman fan's last footsteps retraced

The Globe and Mail has posted an article detailing a recreation of the last few hours of the Survivorman fan who tragically perished during a "survival" trip in the woods near Huntsville.

Read about it HERE.

I'm obviously no expert, lets get that straight. I created this blog to detail my journey learning these skills, but I still think it's important to discuss some of the lessons to be taken away from this tragic case:

(1) Know your terrain. He traveled out into the woods in the winter in Ontario without snowshoes or even making some temporary ones from spruce bows. This meant that he would have been covered in snow from the waist down which would have sapped the heat right out of him and melted right onto his legs from the body heat he generated. Cold and wet = death.

(2) Proper preparation. Looking at the gear he took with him, it was clear that he wasn't dressed properly for the winter climate. The key thing here is layers, and the specific lack of wool. Layering allows for precisely controlling the temperature you need to avoid sweating in the cold. Les Stroud himself has commented "you sweat, you die". Secondly, wearing wool would've given him a distinct advantage even if he had changed nothing else, as wool retains 80% of it's ability to keep you warm even when wet.

(3) Fire skills. This is crucial! Even in other seasons of the year, having the ability to make a proper fire does so much. In the winter, this become even more of a priority when hypothermia can set in, in just a few hours of exposure. It would've been even more important to dry off the soak clothes he was wearing from his trek in and keep his core temperature from dropping.

(4) Not recognizing early enough the severity of the situation. Very often a group of people can be hit with a storm and think "the road/cabin/safe area is only an hour or two away, if we just push on we can make it out of this storm". In reality the best thing to do, is hunker down and set up camp to ride out the weather. You save precious calories and keep yourself sheltered from the elements. The important thing is to recognize early that pushing on is not the best course of action, which can be hard since many times it can be wrongly equated with inaction.

In the case here, a map with information detailing almost exactly where he would be and when he was expected to return. He needed only wait a day or two and rescuers would've been on his location. Instead he decided to try and walk out which means it took an extra few days to follow him, and by then it was too late.

(5) Things can go bad because...of a lot of little things put together, not always because one bad event occurred which turned things into a shit-storm. In this particular case it was a combination of all the above factors that resulted in his death, and anyone of them could have been crossed off the list to give him a better chance at surviving.

I'm sure that someone with more experience than myself could point out even more flaws but if a novice like myself can point these out, then they're worth noting. Survival isn't a game, it's the difference between life and death. If you're going practice these skills, do it in a way that you're safe. There's no need to