 Welcome all back to the channel everybody. We are going to go down a different avenue today of the outdoors called bushcraft and the first video is starting fire. First of all, let me say I am not an expert on bushcraft, woodcraft or survival. This is something that I have been reading about and practicing on my own for about a year now and was inspired about two years ago when I went to New Zealand and started backpack hunting and I've made that a part of my life. I love to do that every year and go in camping and kind of simplifying things in the backwoods. I love doing that and I think it's an important skill bushcraft is to learn as an outdoorsman. There's a lot of aspects of it that will help you be a better total outdoorsman which I want to be. I want to be a great total outdoorsman. Hopefully when I die my children will be able to say that. I thought this would be a fun series to share with y'all as I start out doing this, the first one being fire. We're doing this in the backyard very controlled environment. The next step is to go into the back country, the actual back country in Texas and setting up a camp and that's going to be a new experience for me in terms of setting up a really primitive style camp. So when I've done backcountry hunting, you know, I've taken a lot of gear. I've take really nice tins and equipment and burners for food and all this stuff. Bushcraft is different. Bushcraft is about simplifying things and kind of making your way with very limited tools and supplies and as Nessmuck would say that's called smoothing it. You're not roughing it. You're smoothing it. Survival skills and bushcraft are a little bit different. So bushcraft is more about enjoying your experiences with little devices and survival, you know, I mean that's basically like worst-case scenario type stuff. So I'm not going there. We're just going to enjoy doing bushcraft here. First step and probably the most important is making fire and how to do that with a Ferris Aram rod or a fire steel, whatever you want to call it and just your natural materials. So first of all, what is even a Ferris Aram rod? I'm just going to take the one off of my knife sheath here to show you as an example. First of all, if you're going to do bushcraft, you want to have a lot of fire steels. Don't just carry one, carry multiples, but the best thing about a fire steel is it goes, you know, hundreds, maybe even thousands of strikes making sparks and you can do it in freezing cold temperatures. So lighters, as I found out in Colorado last year, don't always work in cold temperatures. You can definitely carry lighter. Kind of the rule of thumb is though, whenever you're starting a fire, you want about five seconds of that light to really get things going. The fire is not just about getting the spark and the fire steel. Even if you have a lighter, you want to be able to get that fire going within five seconds. So we're going to go to that next, but a fire steel is basically magnesium. I'm not sure what other types of metals are in there. But when you strike a fire steel, it creates these sparks that you can then create a fire with. So you see these sparks coming off here. That's basically the idea with this and it burns very, very hot. I think it's around 3,000 degrees and it's super easy to carry. You carry a bunch of them. It doesn't take up much room or weight in your pants pocket or your pack or whatever you're carrying and it's very, very reliable. So that's why you want to use those. So the most important thing that I've learned so far about making fire especially here in Texas is having the right tender. So the way you start a fire, get a good fire going, is you have tender, which is going to be your really flammable natural materials like grasses and barks, things like that. And then you're going to have kindling. Kindling is going to be small groups of very dry materials, sticks like this. And then you're going to have your fuel and your fuel is your actual logs like water behind me. So those are the three things that you really need to make fire. So this bag right here has tenders in it. Some I've used before, some I've never used and we're going to try them and see which ones work the best. But you know here in Texas we have a few trees that allow us to use the bark of the tree to start fires. Probably the most common, if you're in Central Texas, I have some here is cedar. So the bark off of evergreen trees like cedar, you can scrape that off and you can use that. And it's a real dry, fine, crispy material. That's what you want. Another common one that we're going to have is dried grasses. So I've got some dried grass and this stuff is going to be extra dry now that I've picked it. I put it in this burlap sack and it's been hanging up for more than a day now. Dry rotted wood is one that I've never used before. I've only read about it. But you can use that and since it I got it when it was sort of wet. I pulled the driest pieces off but you can take this dry rotted wood and now it's I mean it is just super lightweight and dry now. You can kind of crunch this up and you can use that as a tinder. So I have quite a bit of that and you'll find this on the ground after it starts decaying and it gets spongy. Another one I saw on the ground that was even despite it being wet. This stuff was still dry and that was willow leaves. So old leaves off a willow tree. We're in winter right now so none of the trees have leaves but those dry, crunchy leaves off a willow tree. That's basically it right there and what we're going to do is make a bird's nest out of these materials and a bird's nest is used to carry an ember and then eventually light on fire. Another thing that you can do that I've learned in the backyard here in Texas, we don't have that many good trees that will feather stick nicely and light on fire. But a feather stick is another way that you can start a fire and you want to use your knife and create these curls that just increase the surface area of the wood material that you're using and it helps it light on fire a lot quicker. And the one species that I know of that you can do this with is ash. So I have quite a few ash trees in the yard. They are like ugly spindly looking trees. It's one of the few woods that you can take even when it's wet and you can still make feather sticks and get a fire going. This one has been dried out and it should light on fire pretty quick if I put some sparks on it. So let's get out the fire still and see this knowledge we've obtained, see if it works and we can make some fire with these tenders. I forgot to mention fat wood. I know some of y'all are going to say that in the comments. If you can find fat wood which is a resin soaked piece of wood off an evergreen tree like a pine tree that is probably the best. So to start off we're just going to take our knife and to do bushcraft you just need a good carbon steel knife or a good hard steel knife. I am a knife nut. That is one reason that I started getting into bushcraft. I have dozens of good outdoor knives, bushcraft knives. They don't have to be crazy expensive. I'm using a more bushcrafter which I think is like $60. You know you don't have to have a three $400 knife to go out and do this. You just need a good decent knife. This one's not full tang but almost. Anyways I'm really not sure the best way to process this but I'm going to try this right here. This looks pretty daggum good. I don't know if you guys can see that. You got to have a pretty sharp knife to be able to make these little curlies like this. Man I'm telling you what, this right here, this might be the best thing around. Dry rotted curlies you can see the holes in it. This reminds me of like little chocolate shavings. That's how smooth this is coming off of this this spongy wood. I'm going to try another piece but oh yeah that stuff is going to light up. Now with some other woods, you know if they're hard you can just take the spine of your knife and you can just run that on there and that's making a really fine little powder but this stuff is just so spongy. It's actually hard to do that so I'm just going to take these little shavings and see what we can do with them. Also what I've learned about bushcraft is it's just being resourceful so you want to take whatever you've got around you and that's what you're working with. It's not carrying in a bunch of stuff and getting bogged down with a heavy pack. It's just having the knowledge to go about and do this type stuff and it's a lot. It's a lot. I haven't until this point felt sort of confident that I can go do it on my own in the wild. Don't blow a key thing when using the fire still. When I first started using it I was trying to take the knife and throw the sparks at the the tender with the knife like push push that amount and usually what happens is the embers will hit and they'll start just bouncing around and usually if you try to do it really with the knife pushing it it's going to go over it and it'll it'll just go around it. The easiest thing to do is to put the fire still where you want that spark to go like really point it at it and pull back so you're pulling back like you're starting along more and more than you are pushing forward with your knife. You're going to have more control doing that. Let's see if we can do this with the wind. All right that's what you want right there I definitely missed but that ember staying lit like that that means you got a good piece flying off the steel hit it nothing there it goes okay that's lit that's a good that's a good ember on there that's lit so I could move that into my it's my grass bundle and I could probably get it going here I'm just going to see if I can get one more piece going that's still on fire right now I'm going to show you guys what it looks like to oh wow it's still going could actually light up there's a fire well those little embers got me so that's going I could put my my dry grasses on there and that's holding pretty nicely how I actually got it's a lot on fire I put my rod on the wood and I was able to get a lot of pressure on my knife to then make a good good curly bit come off of that fire steel try to do it again there it goes they're just lit so that is just literally spongy dry wood from the woods take the old crock stamp that out there we go wow that was really good stuff guys because it's it's staying it's got enough um it's got enough meat on the bone there to keep a good ember lit where you could take this you know I could take this and move this entire thing into uh into a fire if I wanted to so really impressed with um what I just did right there quite honestly because I've never done that before and that material seems to to hold that uh that heat hold that burn for a longer time than say a smaller dryer material which we're about to use gosh this wind is freaking crazy so the way to really do this if I if I really wanted to get a fire going was take the dry spongy rotted wood and I would place that into the dry grass once that is going all that will catch you know you can literally find little sticks feather sticks they take a long time to do and if if you're in a hurry what I would do is find small diameter twigs that are dry like this if you're in a hurry if they're snapping like that and they're you know less than pencil diameter you can use that just as good as you can this if you have a little time and you want to break down a piece of wood like this you can take your knife and you can baton the sticks or take your axe whatever you want to do and uh and you can make you know just start processing the wood down it's really easy to do you just take a heavier stick and you knock on your knife if y'all want to see it how to do that I'll just show you real quick just take your knife and you'll knock your knife into the wood you can also lay it down and split it you can split it that way there's uh there's there's you know a couple ways that you can split it and if you got an axe you can break down bigger pieces of wood but anyway that's just something you can do with your knife to uh to help get those those kindlings going what I've been doing is just stacking my kindling in a little square like this just like you're playing Lincoln logs I think it's easier than trying to build a tp real quick because it's going to happen fast your tenders on fire and then you're trying to like build that so this is just super simple you know make your little Lincoln longhouse set it on fire so with the dry rotted wood it took me like 10 strikes to get that thing going which isn't terrible I mean when I used to try to get fires going I would do like 30 or 40 strikes on the fire steel you just really start removing a lot of material and at that point you need to step back and go okay my my material of my my tender is not good this is probably 1095 high carbon steel I have I have other knives that are really really hard steels like L max that's my favorite steel and there's another one called AEBL steel that is my absolute favorite for just for striking a fire steel there's something there's something about it the hardness that it just really comes off but you can do it with any carbon steel knife high carbon steel knife it's just some are a little bit better than others so that's the idea though you want to have a great 90 degree spine even on your striker if you get a striker a lot of these will come with strikers you're going to use that 90 degree spine and get it at a sharpest point and try to get the most material off there and it's not about speed it's just about pressure and being smooth with it and just fast enough to where it will really pop off a good chunk of that you want that hot spark to stay going as long as you can to really ignite things now what I have here is bark off a cotton wood tree cotton wood as the the name implies I'm assuming maybe a long time ago people found out that this this material is really good for it's really fibrous so if I if I pull this material apart you'll see these inner barks of the tree and there's there's layers of these inner barks and they are just really dry fibrous just great material for starting fire so that's that's one of the few trees we have around here that would be a good example of that so inner barks you can get them off other types of poplar trees things like that this this is a type of poplar tree but cottonwood if y'all are from Texas cottonwoods are they're very noticeable they they run along creeks and they are huge they're one of the biggest trees that we have in Texas so you'll know when you see one and you can know if you open it up and you see this this kind of bark right here that's a cottonwood so almost looks like a corn husk we're gonna take that and see if we can get that to light just by itself I'm gonna take that outer stuff off and I'm gonna take this and I'm just gonna get it real crunchy and a lot of these pieces will actually fall on the ground so if you have like a like a dry bag or a sack or anything I have a piece of wood right here that I've cut but if you're out in the bush you know you could use the outer bark of a tree to do this over and that way you keep this in here that's actually a really good good idea to do didn't get a spark that time here's one two nothing yet three that was a weak one nothing there we lit lit but I don't think we're gonna go that one's weak too I'm hitting those big pieces I need those little fibers in there I can get hit okay that's a good one not catching like the dry rotted wood there we go that took like 15 strokes right there that should just continue to go and I could take this and I could move this to do my fire lay or I could just start placing the kindling right on top of this I'm gonna have to use the croc again stomper out the croc might as well add that to the to the bushcraft tool list cedar is going to be probably really close to this category same sort of thing and you're just collecting the the outside bark of that cedar and crunching it up this same way and I've started a couple of fires doing that just the way I just did there I want to try to get these little willows in here and start and start these because this is something that I just saw and I thought man that looks like excellent tender material but we'll give it a try I mean this stuff is just about as crunchy as it gets some of these actually a lot of these are on stems they're just going to crunch them up they almost look like chili peppers if you were to take a dried chili pepper looks kind of like that but they are extremely light and look extremely flammable so I'll tell you guys what I actually really like is using the inside of this cottonwood to help hold that stuff I'm just going to do that well y'all it's looking like the stems are too much like it's not letting the uh it's not letting the spark really get in there good enough it's hoping that would work out and kind of enclose it but I don't think it's going to work okay willow leaves thought it would work but not working the best that was something I've never tried before not saying it won't work but if it's not lighting up after like 20 strikes I'm just gonna say it's not as good as some of the other things we could find so here's what we got laid out we have our bird's nest nice and tidy little bird's nest that is probably two fists size with the dry grasses and some of that inner cottonwood bark and then we have our spongy rotten wood that we've made shavings out of we're going to put that into the bird's nest right here I would do it right now but the wind's probably gonna blow it away and then we have our kindling we've got some of it stacked on top of there ready to go and then a feather stick we got a feather stick so once we get our tender on fire we'll stick this above that that'll really get this going it'll catch on the kindling really well and then we have fire then it's just adding the fuel so logs like that you're ready to go okay now that it's calmed down just a little bit we're going to put this all together rotted out wood right there to the center I really like the way that stuff caught knife fire steel and we're just going to pull back on that fire steel oh ember went out got it feather stick under there should catch really good and there we go that is a well-formed fire so that's catching and then we can just add our fuel from here we'll probably add just a little bit more kindling and then we're all set so that ladies and gentlemen is starting fire with your tender bundles now I want to show you guys a cheat code because I've used this cheat code and I would still suggest and I will carry cotton balls with me because a cotton ball takes one of these sparks off a fire steel so well and it will hold that flame long enough where you can really get a fire going if it is wet and as an addition to that some Vaseline if you carry a little bit of Vaseline with you which is also good for you know cuts and putting on your nose and your lips to suffer from being windburn and sunburn and all that so it has multiple uses but putting Vaseline on a cotton ball it is literally like a little torch and it'll stay lit for minutes at a time and it gives you a chance to to really get a fire going in damp bad conditions one of the tenets of bushcraft is really extending all of your resources and materials as much as you can so last resort would be would be using a lighter something really valuable like a lighter or these cotton balls for example but the next thing that I really want to learn is using an actual flint and steel to make sparks but cotton ball if you guys are getting into this want to learn like the basics of fires and get things going plus just have an emergency um uh thing to resort to this is it right here oh there it goes there it goes even the tiniest of sparks will get that going still going that is about a minute's time so that's about all you get if you put some Vaseline on there you're getting I'm going to say two minutes so that is step one so I feel pretty confident in making these fires out in the bush so that is the next step I'm actually going to go out into the bush and I'm going to set up a camp in the wilderness in the wild and in fact I've camped around this area before many of you saw it and it's a little sketchy you guys want to stay tuned for that go ahead and subscribe to the channel I want to know in the comments if you think this is something cool if you think this is a cool skill to learn with me here on the channel if you want to see more if you want to see like all of my knives and all the stuff that um you know the little knowledge that I've accumulated over the last year or two I'm happy to share it either way I think it's going to be entertaining just just me going out of the woods and trying to do these things especially for the first time make sure to smash that like button for creating fire out of just sticks and natural materials and stay tuned for more outdoor greatness right here on the channel y'all god bless see you soon