Walkabout and a Bear Story of Sorts

Bushbox Ultralight stove by Bushcraft Essentials

This is a little preview of the  lightweight Bushcraft Essentials Bushbox UL stove...more to come soon!

Some Thoughts on the Bushcraft Essentials Bushbox Wood Stove

I have used this great piece of kit for over a year...let's see how it could get better.

If you would like to purchase the bushbox, or are otherwise interested in supporting Suburban BushCrafter through your Amazon purchases, please consider going through this link to the Suburban BushCrafter Amazon Store.



Thank you for your continued support!

The Hidden Woodsmen Day Ruck Part Two

Here is part two of my "Walking with The HIdden Woodsmen Day Ruck."

The ruck is hand made in Massachussetts by Malcolm Coderre, and his company, The Hidden Woodsmen. It's a great and efficient way to carry your kit in the woods.

Bush Craft Kit Video Part Two: Sleep & Shelter System

Knife Build Number Two!--The Hunter!

Walking with the Surplus German 65L Flecktarn Rucksack

Ax Evolution

Here are some of my thoughts on choosing an ax, according to one's skill level:

Ax Evolution Film

New YouTube Channel Trailer

Here is the latest trailer for my youtube Channel:

Come along and subscribe!

Replaced ALICE with ILBE...

...the real reason I decided to replace my ALICE pack with the ILBE pack system......

...more to come on this pack system...stay tuned...

Latest Video

What is in my pack for an over-nighter in spring?....Come with me and see:

To Each His Own Kit

Tools in my current kit, from the top: Customized Gray Wolf Knives M-3 with full 5-inch blade in 01 steel, MoraKniv No. 137 with lamInated 4-inch carbon steel blade, Original Leatherman Tool and Victorinox Trekker Knife/ Multitool.

 

 

One is None, Two is One...

...so goes the saying, which likely originated somewhere in the US Marine Corps., but has been widely reiterated by survival experts everywhere. It's such a confusing statement. What does it mean exactly...in terms of knives and cutting tools for bushcraft and survival?  I've interpreted it above, as you see. Somebody else would come up with a different solution. While there is some good advice out there, nobody can decide what works for anybody else.

One is None, Two is One....I have four blades in the picture above....where does that leave me? How far do you take that basic advice?  It's not so obvious when you consider the possibilities. Am I "Tool Heavy" or just TOO heavy?

Not to pick on the Leatherman Wave, but I will a little. It has fallen out of my chosen kit because it is too heavy for me as a stand-alone back-up.

 

Conventional wisdom of many -- two blades , One Fixed and a Multitool:

On this advice, I bought a Leatherman Wave. It's a very nice multitool, but it also weighs 8.5oz without the sheath. Some people would opt for the Supertool 300, but it weighs even more at 9.5 ounces....that's over half a pound!

I found myself leaving the Wave in the car, or at home or anywhere but on my belt or in my kit. The fold-up pliers are nice, and all of those screwdrivers, but I almost never use them. I would love to more often use the knife blade and the saw blade, but since the multitool is oddly heavy and often awkward to use, I didn't have those with me because I left the multitool in the car, or worse, at home in that plastic gear bin.

My solution to a too-heavy single multitool is a pair of more user-friendly...and lighter multitools instead.

My solution is to follow the One is None, Two is One philosophy to the bitter end which creates more options. It now leaves me with two extra tools to keep track of instead of just one...an annoyance for some I'm sure, but this works for me and here's why:

For me, it's all about maximum versatility, while keeping weight reasonable. The reasonable solution might not always be the obvious one, after you put in some thought.

I have an original Leatherman, which gives me the fold-up pliers and some screwdrivers and a still awkward-to-use blade...but it only weighs 5 oz instead of 8.5 oz., and since I hardly need the pliers, but again, they are nice to have, I can stow that thing in my pack instead of on the prime real estate around my belt. I'm sure there are more current multitools that have good pliers and are even lighter than the 5 oz. original Leatherman I have.

The other half of the solution is a Victorinox Trekker....it features a larger, much more knife-like cutting blade than the Wave does, and an aggressive and equally user friendly saw blade, plus more of those sort of useful (but not always) screwdrivers, in a much lighter package, not to mention tweezers and a toothpick.

Other advantages....assuming you also carry two fixed blades...the Victorinox weighs in at 4 ounces and the Original Leatherman at 5 ounces. For only one extra ounce I get redundancy in quadruplet ( 4 blades) that is able to be distributed more carefully  as well as prioritized more easily in my kit. For instance, I can stow the fold-up pliers that are nice to have but almost never needed, in my pack somewhere, and I can put the much lighter Victorinox Trekker in my pocket, or even around my neck on a lanyard, where it is always with me and always accessible, without pulling my pants down. It's much harder to lose all your gear if it's not all in the same place, in my opinion.

Two other options to buying an expensive multitool just so you can have portable pliers.....get some pliers instead!

One is None, Two is One....but maybe you don't need it anyway....

 

Another solution....maybe no "Multitool" at all?  How about instead, if you really feel a need to have some pliers with you and you really hate carrying a heavy multitool that is awkward to use on almost all of its functions EXCEPT the pliers....just carry some pliers.....

Above is a very small pair of needle nose pliers that weighs three ounces. Combine that with the Trekker or an even lighter Victorinox, like the Camper, which comes in at under 3-ounces and still features a usable cutting blade AND a decent saw blade, and you have packable pliers and an ultralight back-up blade for around six-ounces total.

At the bottom of the above picture is another good idea, for which I must give credit to Dave Canterbury in one of his older "Bushcraft Kit on a Budget" videos. It is a small pair of vice grips where the adjustment screw is replaced with an eye bolt. This pair comes in at around 5 ounces, and is again stowable in the pack, separate from a small cutting blade, for those "almost never, but nice to have" scenarios. It's a good idea and definitely a very inexpensive tool option.

The Victorinox Camper is an ultimate third-teir blade redundancy, at under three ounces and featuring two cutting blades and a decent saw blade. The most useless feature of this model is in my opinion, the cork screw, but then again, if you find yourself trekking across the Napa Valley, maybe not.

To Sum up?

As I have said before in videos, and now on this blog....listen to experts sometimes for general ideas, but don't take what they say as the gospel. There is more than one way to skin a cat...as they say. Do research and figure out what works for YOUR bushcraft kit. Creative planning can sometimes save a camper, hiker, bushcrafter (You fill in the blank) space or weight or provide convenience well above supposedly "convenient" all-in-one tool options.

One is None, Two is One....but some times one of those and two of these is better all together, and it is definitely more customizable.

I hope to see you on the trail soon!

The Woodsman School Part Two: Advanced Class

This is me on the first day of class at The Woodsman School in New Hampshire, figuring out the logistics of melting snow then boiling the water over an open fire without shattering the old glass beer and  soda bottles I had available.

SURVIVAL SCHOOL
    
     I came into this whole wilderness survival thing sort of backwards, biting off more than I could chew on the very first try. For years, I was a reader of books on the subject, then later a watcher of TV shows and Youtube videos on the subject. I felt like I knew a lot about the art of staying alive in the wilderness, but I was not, until recently over the past couple of years, a practitioner of skills. I think they call that "book smarts."

     To make a long story short, I found an opportunity one weekend, via YouTube, to take part in a supervised experiment exploring the possibility of surviving a 72-hour scenario in the woods in a February, with not much more than a knife and the clothes on my back. Technically, I made it through the experience, but the thing I realized was that it would have been infinitely harder if it were real, and if I knew there was nobody around, and if I knew there was not a free breakfast at a nice diner the following Sunday morning. To be harshly critical of my own performance that weekend, my assessment is that if it had been a real situation, I would have ended up dead.

This experience is what made me decide to take wilderness survival classes.

ADVANCED TRAINING

     My first class was a basic survival class with Dave Canterbury at The Pathfinder School in Ohio. I cannot recommend a class like that enough. If you think you know everything there is to know about the subject, you will know ten times more after just that basic class. You can develop a passion for knowledge in the subject, which I seem to have done in these recent years, and that is why I decided to continue my education in an advanced survival class with Derek Faria at The Woodsman School in New Hampshire.

Woodsman School owner and Instructor, Derek Faria gives a demonstration and explains the finer points of making primitive fire with a bow drill during the Woodsman Advanced Class at the Woodsman School in New Hampshire.

     Derek is a friend and associate of Dave Canterbury, and they think about things in a similar way, but he also does things his own way, based on his extensive knowledge and varied training, including a career in the Army, his own research and training as well as teaching alongside Canterbury at his school in Ohio.

     In his own outdoor classroom, Derek has a way of doing two things on the very first morning of his class. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that  he gets you into the correct mindset for training, and does an assessment of what training you already have in a quick and clever way. For more on that, you will just have to take the class.

ADVANCED SKILLS

     During the Woodsman Advanced class, you are given certain tasks that must be completed in order to complete training. One of the big ones is primitive fire, and you must create a fire using that method at least one time before you will be permitted to make another fire by any other means. In other words...if you don't get the bow drill down, then you get to sleep in the dark night in a cold shelter without a hot meal until you get it done. This may sound harsh and off-putting to some, but remember, you are going into this class under an assumption that you have a certain level of woodsman skill, which you could learn in less demanding classes. That said, Faria is not unreasonable and he loves to see people succeed. His methods are thorough and he demonstrates every skill in detail before he asks his students to repeat them, then he remains to help them along.

Almost there....barely visible bubbles are starting to form in a found soda bottle I used to first melt snow, then boil the water on the first day of advanced survival training. Advanced methods for making water safe are explored in this class, and are also part of the requirements for successfully completing training.

 Other skills covered in the advanced class include primitive tracking and trapping methods, advanced techniques for making water safe to drink, signaling for rescue, and simple navigation.

In addition to obtaining a primitive ember, students are also refreshed on how to make a good tinder bundle and how to find the best materials to bring their ember to flame.

     Some of the requirements for completing training seem like menial tasks, and some are time-consuming or just plain annoying because of the attention they require, but there is training in those moments too. You learn how to keep at it under duress. For instance I had to burn a four-inch deep bowl into a stump, which took a day and a night and a morning of maintaining a main fire, then also maintaining a smaller fire on the stump that was hot enough to burn the depression in the wood. After that, I had to heat rocks in the fire and boil water in the bowl I just made. It is all easy but time-consuming stuff akin to watching paint dry.......but how would you pass the time if you were lost for 3 days without food?

Boiling water in a burned out stump with hot rocks...a good skill to know, but marginally useful in reality. The real training here, is in getting your mind to stay focused in a stressful situation.

     This sort of training teaches you to keep your mind focused, if nothing else. That ability is crucial in a survival scenario. Don't do it in class, you fail...don't do it for real...you might be dead..... and that is the beauty of so many skills learned in wilderness survival. They are often multi-layered teaching moments that develop mental skills and self-confidence anyone can use in daily life. You also learn from each new task that there is so much more to learn about this seemingly simple thing called survival.

WHY SURVIVAL SCHOOL?

     Wilderness survival training is not just for "Survivalists" and "Preppers." Wilderness survival training is for anybody who thinks they might have the possibility of getting lost in the woods, and it is also for people who like to be self-reliant, and who like to feel a sense of self-confidence. In other words, in my opinion, there is something in wilderness survival training for almost anybody. I recommend it, even if you are a person who lives in a Manhattan high-rise. Who knows when you might wake up in the middle of a cold night with no power and no running water? What would you do? People are still animals, with the same basic needs of food, water and shelter that they have always needed since the beginning of time. Everything else in front of you is artifice.

Wilderness survival skills are basic life skills that can be translated for use in all walks of life.

     There was a time not terribly long ago when I would walk into the forest and start to worry about things like bears, and Bigfoot, but I have come to realize that those scary creatures are just symbols for something else...fear of the unknown. All of these experiences have helped me cope with that fear and sequester it in the farthest reaches of my persona, even in my daily life.

Take a class at The Woodsman School ...or if it is too far away, find some place else that's just as good ...Learn to build a fire and become self-reliant.

(ALL PHOTOS ARE COURTESY OF THE WOODSMAN SCHOOL)

Leather Web Gallery

Okay, due to popular demand, I have set up a quick web-gallery for my leather work: http://tomnutte7.wix.com/nuthouse-custom

Thank you to all who are interested in my leather work, and the work of Suburban BushCrafter....more to come!

Two New Videos added to the Suburban Bushcrafter Channel

Getting an ember with a dead Zippo:

A backpack review:

Customized Ontario ASEK With Custom BushCraft Sheath

 I have begun to learn about leather craft...especially to make custom sheaths for my knives, and maybe for some other people's knives, if they so desire. I have also begun modifying some of the knives that I have obtained, to make them more unique, and to better suit my personal use in bushcraft. Below is a recent project that has really worked out:

 What you see here are the makings of a horizontal crossdraw sheath for the Ontario ASEK Pilot's Survival Knife, that I have modified to be better suited for bushcraft.....that's coffee in the cup, not leather dye!

Here is the finished sheath, with a fire steel in the loop I added:

...and in case you are wondering, here is a picture of the intended carry configuration for this set-up:

The sheath is completely hand-made by me from vegetable tanned 9-ounce tooling leather. I'm not sure of how many sheaths I have made by now in the short period that I have been working on the skill, but each project is an improvement over the one before. I am pretty proud of this one!

Because of how the knife is built, I had to make the welt of the sheath tapered so it would leave a large-enough opening for the knife to go into the sheath easily.

As far as the knife itself goes, I basically cut off the longer-than-necessary pieces of the bolster, then repainted it. I convexed the 1095 steel cutting edge with a belt sander, then put it through a regiment of wet-or-dry sand paper, and the knife is razor sharp now. For the handle, which came as basically raw, unfinished leather, I dyed it dark brown with Fiebing's Prosessional oil dye, then warmed it up a bit and sealed it with a liberal coat of Johnson's Paste Wax. I am extremely happy with the knife, and I will be using it in the field for some of my bushcrafting adventures for sure!

Below is one of my Youtube videos about unusual knives for bushcraft, including this Ontario blade.

Thanks for watching!

HI

I've decided to create a blog for my Bushcrafting, leather craft, and knife-enthusiast endeavors. I am not a prepper, but preppers, and anyone else who is interested, are welcome to read this blog.  More exciting content is to come, but for now, here is one of my recent YouTube Videos: