Bushcraft Skills - Camp Craft, Knife Skills, Pot Hangers (Overnight Camping)

[Music] welcome back everyone to ta outdoors I'm back in the woodland and today I am with Paul curtly now I've done a video with Paul about six months ago now which was a bushcraft skill related video and that's exactly what this is going to be it's gonna be very in-depth it's gonna be plenty of information you might want to get your notepads out we are doing a kind of wood craft camp craft cooking and an overnighter extravaganza it's gonna be really fun hopefully you guys gonna learn a lot I'm looking to learn a lot as well Paul is just in the background at the moment just looking at some hazel trees which we were going to use for resources to start this camp craft section so I hope you enjoy the episode let's crack on so back with Mike in the woods which is always always a pleasure and one of the things we're gonna do today is I think he's probably said is we're going to do a bit of camp crafts and a bit of cookery and there's a skill that I wanted to show you which is making a witty and there's a few species which are particularly good for Hazel's are good and whether it's European Hazel North American hazel and willows I'd go to it as well some of the species will do it as well but hazel and Willow are to the best so we've got some hazel here so we're gonna give it a go now it's early in the spring here SAP's just starting to rise some of this stuff might be a little bit dry still we need to choose something that's green and I can see there's a few little green you know there's a few buds here that starting to move and a few little leaves a bit further up on the tree so I know this is alive and whether it's wet enough for me to start twisting it up it is a different matter but to give you an idea what we're trying to do here it's strong yeah if we try and pull this and break it we're not gonna be able to do it but if we try and tie a knot in it it would just snap would get a greenstick fracture so the idea of making a witty is twist it up in a way that we've still got the integrity of the fibers length way so we've got the strength but we've got much more flexibility then we can start using it for constructing things and campers are kind of natural wire lashing if you like and that's that's the that's the principle that we're going to try and employ today in building some of the stuff we want to do in camp though you can see it's green there's a few little leaves come in there sometimes it's easier with a slightly thicker bit as well so let's try here I've got a little initial twist in there and now I've got to a knot here which again is a problem so it's good if you see all the problems there we go that's the sort of pop you want that's good so it looks like the thick of it might be better if somebody a mean Chinese burn [Laughter] there we go this is ideal so maybe maybe just so you see here see how they've got this damage here yeah so something's being snapped off there at some point and in retrospect it looks like that's limiting the flow of fluid flow of sap if you like up to this bit so we've had this thin a bit which is not going to be strong anyway and it's really quite dry even though it's still green it's really not holding that tension it's just breaking off it's too brittle as this stuff here is doing exactly what we want it to do I've got a nice twist in there and now I've got an area softened up I can create that crank and it's like a bicycle pedal there one where each hand is and then will crank in the middle and I can get more twists there more easily and then I can do that bit to push it down there and then it'll go quite quickly then there's all supple then you go it's very subtle look it's all subtle man yeah yeah and we lose a bit of fiber but we've basically still got that strength there and the mistake that people make at this stage is they do too much twisting in one spot and they'll end up weakening it so once it starts going just go with it keep moving it down try not to whip Mike with the end of it see there so it's twisting all the way down and I just keep I use the flexibility to increase my leverage like that and then once that twist gets to here I encourage that twist in further with my other hand and it's getting to a point where it's quite stiff now it's gonna be hard to get it much further as far as we're gonna get it little trick some of you will have seen before if you put something like this under tension you can you should be able to cut it with your knife just using the fibers and the tension so I'm pressing into it with my hand and I'm gonna cut there all the way through okay so that's just a little trick if you didn't have a saw but this is a this is a hazel coppice yeah and so we can reuse this this is a renewable resource and we need to leave this in a way that it's actually going to encourage it to grow back it's not going to get any infection so we don't want to leave this rocky end I want to saw it off quite neatly low down trying very carefully not to soar into there the thick of it that's behind it so then we're potentially gonna get shoots off that again in future points about this now is that we can bend it in ways that we couldn't before and we can start making lashings and bindings with it we can even and even actually twist it up so much that you effectively correct timber hitch like so yeah and then the other end that can be wrapped around something in the other end can be fed back through and you've got a strong binding so that's still quite dry though I have to say but it's it's usable so that's the basis of one of the techniques that we're going to use today and we'll see if we can apply it in a few different ways but that's a way of creating a really strong lashing from materials that you're just going to find in the woods and as I say hazel and Willow are particularly good for it got the Witte to start off with one of the with ease but now I've spotted this and even though it's quite long at the bottom there's a good fork towards the upper part and we want to make some tripods at least one tripod and one of the things I see people doing all the time is lashing three clean sticks together and then the lashing has to do all the work and what you really want is at least two fork sticks that can intermingle like this and that starts giving you some structural integrity to the whole thing to start off with and if you can get three all the better you hardly even need a lashing then and and that's something that we're going to try and do today so I've spotted this and this has got a nice fork and that can be one of our main tripod legs here's our nice fork here that I was looking at and we've got a nice tripod leg there as well the other thing that's running through my mind at this moment though is just looking at what's above this because one of the other things meat we might want is to create something that's a witty at the top with a hook on the bottom as a really neat way of making a tripod so the witty that you lash the thing together with is also your pot hanger so when I see a nice long piece like this with this side bit here I'm wondering can I turn half of this into a witty and have a hook at the bottom so I'm wondering Mike if we maybe have a go at turning the top part of this into a wither here and I'll do that before I cut it because then if it doesn't work out we can still use it from the original yeah original purpose that we spotted it for thank you so you know before the difficult bit was getting it twisted up to start off with yeah what I've got here is a little fork on the end here and I've left that there because I can use that like a key I can turn that and that gives me a bit more leverage to get the twist going initially that won't end up being part of the end piece but it just gives me that little extra bit of leverage to start off with so that I can start twisting so I just wanted you to see that because that some people would just take that off and then they would struggle to get the thing going in terms of twisting it but that's going to give us a real advantage to start off with again this is where it was up against another branch and it's rubbed you can see there's no bark there and it's a little bit dead and this again like the other bit that was dry towards the top may well be just the marginal difference that that makes in terms of how much moisture is further up here and this is all a bit dry up here which is why it's just breaking up as I try and twist it and it's unfortunate it was worth trying but the primary use that we chose this for is still there that off there and that's the fork that we we originally wanted it for it was just worth experimenting with maybe making a nice hanger out of that piece there'll be other pieces we can use it for as well that's it yes then you build up a nice little rhythm there so that's largely a nice flexible piece now eventually got there yeah you can do clove hitches with these as well quite easily twist them up you know do a nice do a nice couple of loops and you got a clove hitch so there's lots of things we can start doing with this that if we try to try to tie a clove hitch in this it's just gonna break here where's now we've got something we can bind stuff together with I found another piece here if one of our structural components I thought it would be worthwhile mentioning two things for the benefit of people watching first off people might think that we're damaging these trees particularly these hazel stools as they're known by chopping bits off them we're taking green bits you know for the widdy's but also the structural parts are going to be stronger if they're green we're going to have things that hanging close to a fire we don't want to be hanging nice dry firewood near to our fire so we want material that's green that is I'm gonna catch fire easily some people watching this might think well you're damaging the trees well two things hazel responds well to having parts cut it actually encourages new growth and traditionally in this part of the world it was coppiced which is it was cut back and allowed to regrow and the number of species that respond well to that Hazel's one sweet chestnut is another one we were in a sweet chestnut wood the last time I was here with Mike and even home being will respond to it to coppicing actually Mike if you come here you can see it's rotting right into the middle of that bit there oh yeah Hollow isn't it wasn't long for this world anyway that piece I'm not going to worry about cutting that right down low because so as Paul was saying earlier you can see that these hazel trees have been coppiced loads of them have been copies that there's a big one over there another one just down here it's creating a renewable resource tree over there isn't it yeah coppicing yeah and you know the bushcraft that we might practice in this part of the world in this rural part of Britain is tapping into that rural resource that's an additional resource that's already here I mean it's a native species it's here anyway it does grow with multiple stems from a single root stock but it responds well to being cut back and it will encourage even more new growth and it you know what do you want more than a resource that just keeps coming back that you can use and it's a fantastic resource as well this is the beginning of my sort of season of working here yeah and we can use this right through this it's not like something were just going to do for an overnight it's not just for the film yeah this is gonna be used yeah one of the things for pot hangars and camp cranes and things that we're looking at making is that we want these sort of tick shapes where you've got a solid straight stem with a side branch and that is quite a common feature with hazel once you start looking and then once you've spotted that it's like what else is around it are there any hooks above it below it what else have we got well I've got this twin set of branches here and I've got something in my mind that we can use we can bring those together we can then put that over something and then we've got a hook to hang down below cut that off hook here see that that hook forming there keep it quite long actually cuz again I can't stick bits back on but you can take them off later so that's quite a useful bit what's nice about this is it's pretty straight it's a pretty even diameter and it's still reasonably thick towards the top which means I can apply yet another pot hanger technique one you may have seen before and one and we'll certainly show the details of the technique but carving a beaked knotch so that we've got an adjustable hanger working off a rail higher up sign of the bushcrafter their suspect ringing going on for the handrail yeah yeah fibrous similar to cedar yeah yeah well they said this is the inner bark you know if a seed has got fibers right to the outer part hasn't it but um but yet on the inside it's its fibrous as well and there's a few species that you can use like this the other thing we can use sweet chestnut for when it's green is well the bark is great for a tinder when it's starting to rot away and when it's green we can actually use it as a binding so we might use that for some of our camp crafts as well and I'll I'll show you how we might take some of that off we're just gonna run a knife along cut right through all the bark to the wood carefully I'm cutting towards myself or bodily anyway I'm not that close to anything important and then as parallel as I can it's always gonna be a little bit approximate like so that's coming away now there there we go so it's like a piece of tape that's pretty strong it's quite thick want to measure it against the width of my knife it's probably a couple of MIL thick one and a half two mil and again we can do we can do things like make clove hitches very easily with that that works well I often see people stick the sharp end under it's actually more efficient because you've got this natural wedge shape where the tip comes into the beginning of the full width of the spine there that's a natural little thing that you can just get that under the side and and lift the edge he's the spine in the mine you're not risking cutting into it either you're not trying to cut in there at all you're just literally lifting it and once it's lifted comes away quite nicely like any salad there's micronutrients in there and I think one of the things that we lack in our diet these days is diversity of lots of different types of chemicals phytochemicals plant chemicals and you know rather than just eating tons of what land Miletus or things yeah the thing you need to be aware of with this is it's got quite a lot of oxalic acid in it yeah that's where its latin name comes from oxalis 2-seater seller and so that in some people apparently can contribute to kidney stones in in in bulk though in bowls yeah yeah and also you know you have to get oxalates in your blood it's not just about getting oxalates in your gut and it should just pass through you mainly but that's what gives it the sharp acidic taste it's the oxalic acid in it but there's a nice little wayside nibble you don't need much of it it's got a lot of taste to it but you say there's bluebells obviously everywhere there's bluebells here which is toxic yeah these are some of the hazel bits that we collected and as mentioned having these Forks means that we've got this ability to interlock things so it's got a lot of structural integrity before we do anything else with it and in some ways you could almost have that freestanding it's not gonna not really going to go anywhere but we're going to make it a little bit more secure with one of the widdy's that we've made and make a binding we can use a clove hitch for that wait about two Mickey Mouse ears I could do it around it as well but I think it's easier in some ways to do it like this the ends aren't too long I'm gonna get that around there there so buying that up you can actually round here you can see that nice classic clove hitch shape and then with the rest of it I'm just going to wrap it round you know 50 later on as it gets dark we'll probably still be working around the fire we don't want things sticking out but i hatch that's nice and tight so I've still got the ends there if I want if I need to retighten it because if I cut it off where the clove hitch is if I wanted to readjust it I can't then so that's why I like to keep the ends but I also don't want them to stick in my eye and there's a very solid tripod and the thing I was talking about before down in the woods if we'd managed to create one of these with a hook on the end we could actually have a perfectly serviceable pot hanger there in and of its own right with the tripod and the hanger you can actually through a bit thick I mean we don't need them to be this strong for this job it's really just to keep things together because that will hold itself together anyway we've got the rigidity with the with the forks if it's all a bit unwieldy you can actually split these down you've got a few you might have to pull them apart a little bit but no you might only need that and we can use that for something else so we've got that benefit as well and then the final thing say about these if they get a bit dry because you've had them out in the air all day you know Sonny you can wet them a bit and they will build you know become a bit more flexible with that as well some way to have a fire in the middle and we've got a cross beam and now we just need to create some things that will hang off it that we can hang pots and kettles and things on but this is going to last as a while Mike I mean it's worth as saying that we're not just doing this on a whim for a video yeah nor are we doing it because we're just here for an overnighter this is an area where I teach quite a lot each year and it's coming up to the beginning of my sort of spring/summer season teaching here so this is something we'll actually use for for weeks and weeks and the way these might get a bit dry we might need to replace those but the whole structure will last months and months and months and we'll use this a lot one of the things I see a lot people doing is leaving these hooks quite long and then it being really awkward to get underneath the hooks of various kettles and plots so all you need is the Bale or the handle to fit in there so you can take a good few centimetres you know an inch or so off that but you just need to be careful to keep your thumb out of the way we can use this chest lever grip yep it's powerful it's also controlled tidy that up nicely and then we also don't want too much material around here either so I'm just going to bring this around the other way I'm right-handed so again I don't want too much meat on here in case it gets in the way of anything but equally I don't want to thin it off too much because I don't want the hook splitting away so I just tidy it but not tape too much too much off it then I've got no issues when I'm dealing with a hot fire and hot pots and smoke in my eyes I'm not struggling to get things on and off the hook like so that's that's tidy enough so we've got this split here and this is strong that way and that's the strength we need people would look at this and think well it's not strong enough to have anything off well it's very strong and we're just going to put this around our pole there and then put a binding around the top and then it will hang pretty securely what's important is keeping a bit of overlap here yes I don't want to take it too short so I'm probably going to take it this is our sweet chestnut bark that we stripped off before and the idea is that we'll use that to bind this up here now sometimes it can be easier to do this first and then just slot it over the end but sometimes you can manage to do it here I think I'm gonna do it here be easier for me to keep it in one spot for Mike to to film it and also it's just I've got the ground to rest on as well against a clove hitch you can see that they're a nice shape squeeze that in much as I can I don't want to risk breaking either limb I'm just gonna pull that in nice and tight thanks oh and that's probably enough to hold it but remember this is going to get dry it's gonna be a lot of heat coming up it could crack when it's dry so I'm going to wrap this around and that does two things one is it gives it more strength and then the other thing is it actually protects the binding from the from the heat just tuck that under doesn't need to be any particular knot it's really just a case of creating a wrap you've already done the knot that's securing it to punch yourself in the face and there we go so we can just it's important that it's not resting on the binding itself you can see here that what's happening is that the bit that's resting is each part of this because of the diameter of this pole that means that that's trying to force those sticks apart which is pulling that way but that's exactly how the clove hitch wants to work it works very well that way and so it's a very strong binding so people think all these sticks aren't strong enough the binding is not strong enough while you're taking the optimal angles for each the sticks are strong that way they don't need to be particularly thick and the binding is strong crossways and that's the way that the sticks are trying to pull it so that works well it's a lot stronger than it looks it's also quite quite thick to be working on with my knife so I'm just going to store it to a more manageable length I can tied it off a bit so what we want to create here is an adjustable hanger because the one we've created is great but it's not adjustable at all it's that one fixed length which is really good for some jobs but not good when we want some adjustability variability and what we're cooking and so this is going to be an adjustable pot hanger and we're going to use a beaked knotch and then we're going to create something on here that we can hang the notch off so first off what you want to do is measure this up think about how high off the deck you want it think about you can have a loop of something here and we can look at different options in a little while and then the beeps notch is going to hang off that so I think if I create the first one about there your hook is there yeah that is the side that you put the notches not the opposite side because it it won't balance properly if it goes on this side I'm not casting aspersions at anybody it's just it works better so let's do it that way where I put my little mark isn't actually the center line it's a little bit off that as far as I can tell so it's more about there I'm going to move down a bit give myself a clear space let's do it about here so I'm going to create a across and I see some people hammer this in you don't need to yep cross that way and that way and there's the old adage of measure twice cut once just double-check that you're in the right place now the other thing that people do rock is now be cut the wrong way into this and they end up with the knotch the opposite way around we want a beak that points down towards our hook at the bottom so we're going to cut up to it there's a couple of little tricks to this first is start off you want that deep yes but you're going to be gentle to start off with you're just going to slide up to it gently like so and you're gonna reinforce that what you don't want to do is ping up and through the top of that cross now at this stage one thing I'll say is that you see people trying to cut underneath this with their knife often on some videos that I've seen you don't need to do that yeah both of your cuts will intersect one there one there you will naturally end up with a with an overhang as long as your undercut is that this cut here is slightly angled rather than straight into the wood you will then end up with a beak so you only need to do two cuts one there which we started and then one here this way again start off gentle and if you want to work down onto a stump or a log you can do that pop out in a sec there we go just mind your hand there you be mindful of what's going on I like to use my thumbs to reinforce because it's very controlled now it should be able to start to see as I sew cut in here because I'm doing it at a slight angle can you see here that that starts to get undercut because I'm doing one that way and one that way and those cuts are intersecting and that starts to give me the undercut here I don't need to start trying to get underneath there which can work to split that away and it just looks a mess when you finished as well and there is an aesthetic to doing things as well may sound a bit pretentious you can phrase it in the sense of if it looks good it generally is so you can see there I'm doing a cut that way and now I'm doing a cut that way and undercutting slightly there with that little stop cook just slicing it now the other thing is we don't want to make it too thin because then we start weakening it and we've got about enough of a notch there they may be one or two more slices like so we start with that cross one two we sliced up to that that side just that angle reinforce that cut sliced up to that reinforce that cut and then we end up with that nice beaked knotch there's no need to go under there now if your angles are quite steep there and there you might end up with quite a prominent Ridge there at most if you've got something quite wide to hang it off you might need to just remove that Ridge but that's it you don't need to be gouging out underneath it with the secret is once you start cutting in don't go vertical just go in a bit of an angle and then you get that nice little notch there no one there so we make as many of these as we need as we think we need in terms of adjustment but one final tip on this again something I've seen people do is cut it off really quite short particularly close to the first notch but in terms of this balancing well is good to have a counterbalance so keep the top end long the other thing with that as well as it allows you to lift it without having to to grab here even with a simple pot hanger you can get hold of the top and just lift the kettle off the fire using the stick and that's handy as well I think we showed that in the last video actually Mike yeah we did yeah so that's that now we need something to hang it off in terms of attaching this there's lots of different ways of doing it we just need some sort of loop so what have I used in the past I've used natural cordage I've used discarded bits of fence wire that I found lying around or you can even use a bit of paracord and that's one of the good things about this being up so high you have a hot fire down here but it's a meter below this so paracord is not going to melt up here if your flames are up here you've done something wrong you've got a bump on and a palm on you in a campfire or something so and again we can use the ubiquitous clove hitch and we can pop this around here put that through and then we're going to go round and do the same again clove just start off with shorten that up slightly do it and if we want to make that into a constrictor again I'm going to stick that under there Thanks so then I can trim that what I've seen people do a fair amount is just hang that off there like that yeah which because we've got the counterbalance at the top isn't too unstable but it isn't as stable as it could be there's a neat trick to making it very stable and that's this what you do is you pass the end up through the loop and then you hang that there and that sits against the bar as well as hanging off there and that's much more much more stable and then that's our adjustability from there so there and we can put some more in there if we need them now we're getting to the middle there so the end might be a bit too long if we're going to have notches down here that's starting to be a bit top-heavy at this stage but remember we're going to have 10 kilos of Dutch oven on the bottom so once it's at that stage it's probably going to be all right a case I hope you're enjoying the video so far guys it's certainly plenty of information there from Paul what we're doing now we just mean to collect some firewood we've saw an upload a load of it we've still got some more to collect but we decided not to film that because how many times have you seen us cut firewood before but Paul just collecting some kindling we're gonna get a good fire going get good bed of embers ready for some Dutch oven some cast iron cooking using the pot hangers that we've that pullers conjured up earlier so it should be really good it's sunset now it's about 5:47 p.m. the Sun setting bow I'd say half an hour maybe 45 minutes so obviously we're gonna lose light fairly quickly because we're still back into winter so the plan is is I'm gonna set up my tarp and get my sort of sleep system set up and then we're gonna get cooking and hopefully maybe film a few more craft skills for you guys before it gets too dark I thought we'd get the Catalan yeah we do it without you and they forgave us some hot water for cooking later on and stuff and washing up as well one of the things I always try and do is as soon as I get the fire lit then you know unless we need the fire for warmth which we don't even at this time of year when I'm old and then get something over it you know otherwise you're just wasting firewood yeah and all that time collecting that firewood you're not using it easy cooking exactly so kettle is the best thing and so some people might say well why have you left it's so late to put the fire on it's like well we haven't needed one yeah we just have to collect more firewood but now we fancy a brew we ones that cooking yeah we'll get the fire going we need to get the the hardwoods set up and producing some embers and that'll take a while you know for roasting the the the dinner part of the dinner anyway so if we get the kettle on now we can start building the fire up and then that'll be working for as well we're doing other things this is the moment of truth with the pot hangers oh we don't want to test it over the fire we want to know it works that's a big kettle as well there we go yeah this is probably about eight or nine litres yeah in there so like I don't know what's that in pints 16 17 18 pints water yeah so this is what we're talking about here even with the weight yeah it's not pulling it down so that it's not resting on the binding its resting on the wood the woods pulling apart but that's strong bark and the clove hitch that we put on there's holding it all together so yeah strong enough absolutely technically it's going this is why you want your kettle filled all this heat this is why we use green see by the shape of your Ferro rod you use sort of the tip of it why is that yeah well I like to use the tip of the knife and I've done videos on this before and people can find them on my on my channel and but I'm I'm pushing a big spark off the end like so and I'm really thinking about not even think I'm not even thinking about making a big spark I'm thinking about pushing as much metal off as possible but there and I just do it fast enough that it creates a spark it's a big concentrated spark which a lot of things is what you want yep some things yes you want a big grey yeah like that okay but for a lot of things you know think about you know getting a spark exactly where you want it you want it very concentrated minimum distance from where the spark ignites to where it lands so it's nice and hot doesn't burn itself out before it gets there and get lots of heat exactly where you want it and it doesn't throw away your tinder material like you would if you slum down on an iron rod your material can go everywhere exactly exactly so I'm using the fact that you get a nice right angle between where the bevel most people are using flat beveled Scandi grind knives for bushcraft where that bevel comes up to the towards the tip that's a really good angle there even if this weren't caps your Ferro rod it normally will do they're the sharper up so I'm getting that right on there and I'm nearly cooking next to this yeah he's hot yeah and I'm getting that right on there I'm not not that angle that angle there you need to be careful you're not pushing it that way at all you're gonna Ram it into your finger literally I'm pulling back with my finger a bit there and pushing forward in a controlled fashion with my thumb like so as a useful tip I'm gonna move yeah it's really it's a bit blurry and fuzzy guys with us to set up but tonight it's literally just a flying top as they say simple triangle that's all I'm going forward shared the rain beds gonna go down there and yeah sleeping bag on top of that I've boosted the camera settings so it actually looks lighter than it is but it's darker darker than that fire is going I was going to get some coffee and we will be cooking seating but great camp set up you can see it there how it's all working really really useful and good sort of bushcraft skills using nature to make life a bit easier in the woods Paul what are we cooking up here for the companies well we are gonna do a roast chicken which is always good anyway but there's a little little bit of pimping that I got from a Jamie Oliver cookbook I can't remember which one but fundamentally it's some butter lemon garlic or lemon rind garlic some thyme which you very dutifully yeah pulled off the display for me and some Parma ham and then we use the rest of the lemon inside the cavity so basically and then I mix all this together and we've got this nice little corn thread chicken here we're gonna gonna slit the breasts you can can do that now because it's easier for me to do it before I get my hands mucky with the with the butter and we can we can do it from any end really and I'll do it from this end here it's gonna not make a big cut just going to cut the skin without cutting into the flesh too much and then get the finger in there and open that open that out that's where some of our some of our stuffings gonna go and if it's got decent size decent bear leg on it as well we can do a little bit like I say gonna pop that lemon lemon in there Stephanie to get this butter bit cold tonight so it's pretty hard basically you just take some of this and you stuff it in in there thanks so take some of the Parma ham you can mix the Parma ham with the with the butter but sometimes you end up with more butter than you want which is good to rub on the outside but I don't really like sticking the Parma ham on the outside because it goes goes a bit sort of crispy frazzles it about it's better if it's under the skin so I tend to keep them separate we do have a bit of a woodland treat I'm gonna have to up my cooking game now it's due time for me to well you have been hanging around with dusty I know who's a dab hand I keep I keep coming back for feasts all the time now the guy is gonna be like Mike come on you need to pull something out of the bag I can't be doing my beans on toast anymore actually quite hard to do it [Music] so the aim really is to keep producing poles over here and just keep raking them across I just take quite a lot of management and we get very used to cooking at home setting something on gas mark whatever or setting it 200 degrees and leaving it for this specified time and outdoors you've got a managing yeah it's steamy why doesn't look it on camera doesn't it you think oh there's no heat but right here my hand is my judge is always like my trousers gets so hot yes they touch my skin yeah where we are now couple of feet away we're feeling the heat there so that there's some good heat under that so with these Dutch oven lids they've got these lips so you can put embers on the top and we're going to do that so we've got some heat coming from above as well that means these are really hot to handle later on so one of the things I'm going to do is create a simple lid lifter you don't need to get one of those bought ones you know people produce them I mean you can have them in your kit if you want but if you've got an offcut of your of your tripod like this I'm just going to sham for the end of this so that fits under the lid without the lid rotating and they're just going to make a simple screwdriver end on that with my knife it's highly the end a little bit bit fatter on that side that I'm just going to test test that for size now let's have a look yeah that's perfect okay it's not going to rotate but it means I can from a distance I can get the lid on and off without any trouble without having to touch it with my hands that's not poss actually on the handle which is good I'm just putting this in - it doesn't completely stick to there the bird doesn't completely stick to the bottom of the Dutch oven when that goes in there's there can be more heat the heat can be it going over here which is fine for this side of the pot you can end it with a hot spot here and this side if something that you're cooking a bit cool so what you might want to do periodically is just rotate to take the pot off lift it and turn it around and then 80° yeah that's more importantly things like baking bread keep it uneven baby yeah even when your fruit is making a loaf of your proving it any but it's quite high again a cool breeze can make a big difference to how quickly it rises when you're proving got some nice root veg carrots parsnips a bit of oil and just going to do some roast veggies and but also a nice little addition some coriander seeds and bonus points for anyone that leaves a comment saying what do all of these three things have in common or is the common feature between coriander parsnips and carrots maybe a comment leave a comment below no prize other than our undying admiration yeah I think some people think it tastes so P or that it tastes of like stink bugs no seriously some people say that that's what they think it tastes like but apparently there's a chemical that some people can taste some people can't taste is very under and that's why some people really don't mind and silver absolutely can't stand it [Music] good ol clear juice it'll all looking pretty good so like the veg will be done very soon he's soft and tender should be we don't want an accident at this point looking very nice just a little veggie paring knife really midnight feasting good morning guys hope you're doing well I changed my setup last night originally I had it as a triangle fairly low to the ground but because there's no wind at all actually changed it last minute lift it up one side quite a bit because it's then facing the sunrise and I had a really really nice sunrise because I knew it wasn't gonna rain and there's no rain forecasted in the night so I figured if I lifted that side right up I'd be able to kind of wake up naturally with the Sun on my face and it really it really paid dividends actually this morning got a really nice sunrise just coming up over the back of the the trees of the there's some kind of mixed Scots pine and small silver birch trees just over beyond our fire and cooking area and it was just awesome and even last night where I lifted it up the fire was still going I could still see the fire whereas by having it shut down like that it's good for kind of stormy conditions and heavy rain and strong wind but when it's a lovely still day you don't get to see much of the kind of surrounding wouldn't so actually it worked it worked out really well if it was really strong winds or rain this would this would probably be a bit useless because it's too high it's gonna catch the wind alocs basically acting like a parachute so that's essentially the setup of the tarp just a tiny cut a small kind of lip here it's been about two or three feet away from the ridge line so any rain does get shed and I'm still well underneath there so would have kept dry if it did rain but basically all I've got is the kind of small really cheap ground sheet that I use with my lovey that's why it's kind of shaped funny because it's for the Lavi and yeah just had that then I had a therm-a-rest which is their air mattress sleeping bag on top of that and yeah just Rob my jacket up for a pillow and it works really well really pleased with it so it's handy having a tarp like this because you can then sort of take your boots off and actually step on something it's not directly on the ground before you get into your sleeping bag it's just handy I find and it rolls up to nothing anyway and just sticks under there another bag and the bottom straps there with the wooden tarp and I just I carried on my original I had an extra-long originals I carried it on from the air to the top here wrapped it around this big old silver birch and then I wrapped it out around the others Burch over there which is at an angle and then I can just err it's not wet anyway it's a little bit of moisture on the sleeping bag just air it all out afterwards [Applause] grab as much bacon as you want pool thank you first pancake look at that that's really good yeah I was quite impressed the sacrificial pancake oh is that so we have just had a lovely hearty breakfast that Paul was cooked up pancakes bacon maple syrup went on a treat bit of coffee as well what we're gonna do is film a little bit more camp craft stuff for some simple pot hangers that are kind of ideal for maybe the guys out there who are doing the solo trips and you know that the overnight is where you're not here for maybe too many multiple days just a quick simple pot hanger setup that is efficient and gets the job done right well we're out on our own we've got our solo Billy pots were just simple one pot meal we want to get it over the fire maybe you want to boil some water we're not going to do anything elaborate we're just here overnight maybe we've arrived late in the day something really simple if you can find this type of fork stick that we were looking at yesterday that's pretty much your simplest pot hanger done you need to make a point in the end and it can go in the ground and of course that in itself will hold the Billy and we just set it the angle we want and we can look at a couple of ways of doing that but that's your pot hanger done it's not adjustable but if you're just boiling doing a simple meal that's all you need so that's a really quick and easy way of doing a wagon or a simple pot hanger one thing I would caution against is well this is probably strong enough while it's in in the kind of cold form that's going to get warmed a bit would those tend to get a bit more bendy when it gets when it gets heated particularly Greenwood but more importantly still probably is the fact that this is quite thin here and when that's in the ground it will have a tendency to cut into the so once you get a kilo and a half of water on the end of their litre and a half three pints or something it's going to be cutting into the ground so you might then need to put something underneath it and that's a good general trick to hold it but I generally like to start with something a bit more sturdy and my my rule of thumb and it literally is a rule of thumb is something about thumb knuckle thickness is good because then you can have no trouble with it bending or breaking or cutting through the ground as much okay so we'll use this yeah because this is this is obvious most people are thinking yeah okay I can make a pot hanger out of it I don't really need to tell you how to hang a Billy pot off that this however maybe is less obvious it's just a stick we can't always find a fork stick we might not be in a terrain where there are lots of things like hazel or sweet chestnut or other things with lots of nice side side branches we might just be having to rely on other species where there is less option so we can still make a good pot hanger out of this now that's about as short as I want it because I want it to go into the ground I want my fire here but I don't want the main body of it too close to fire one of the common mistakes I see is people making short little sticks too high an angle is too close to the fire it's also really difficult to get the pot hanger that the pot hanger to hold the pot and if you've got more of a stet a gentle angle you can more easily balance the pot on the end and I'll show you a neat way of doing that in a second first thing now we want to make sure we know which way this wants to sit it's going to have a natural stability point an actual point at which it wants to rest it doesn't want to sit there it's Center gravity's lower than that as it where it wants to come to an equilibrium down there so that's where we're going to let it sit because as soon as you put a weight on the end when it's sitting where it doesn't want to sit it's just going to turn around you might end up with your pot on the fire so first off ascertain which way it wants to sit and wants to sit that way then we can maybe mark that as the top just that we remember which is the top when we're working on it okay of course you can do all of this quickly it's not going to take as long as it takes me to explain I'm just gonna get rid of some of these little slide branches I get my point on the ends just a 3-sided point it's a quick and easy point there we go nice sturdy points on that end this end just going to bevel the top because I will maybe need to knock this into the ground so I don't want it just split now if there's a trick to this at all this is it it want to be able to hang out put on here okay we might be able to balance it on a little knot but this it's a bit precarious it's certainly not going to sit there alright so we're going to just do a simple thing so it will sit there make sure my fingers are out the way I'm gonna do a cut across and I'm just going to scallop down to that now with this type of pot with a really thin bail you don't need this to be particularly wide with one of the zebra type billy's that a lot of people use and they've got a quite a wide handle on them and you need a bit more space so I'm doing this more in the style that I would do that would accept any Billy can just with a bit broader cutter you can do a lot shallower Crescent if you're if you're using something like we've got here with a more spot one other thing to say another reason for having a fairly chunky stick is that even once you cut into it you're not weakening it overly so whereas a thinner stick by the time you've cut a reasonable recess in it you're almost all the way through and you're gonna be in danger of the end of it snapping off you can easily get that to sit in there people want to put all sorts of fork sticks and things in here you don't need to do that you've got reasonably hard ground think about how much fire you gonna have maybe about that much size of your Billy like that and then we can just I can mark the ground now it's gonna get something to knock this in with another reason you want this to be strong okay and you might be thinking well that's empty yep we've got full Billy can there plenty of water in there Lita in a bit at least in there and then that's gonna sit nicely on there and that holds not very well and if you at all worried about the ground being soft here as I mentioned you can still do this trick where you pop a proper stick in and it just spreads the load and that will that will hold it quite nicely and that's what you want if you're just doing a quick overnight when you're not staying there very long just a quick meal quick Brewer even you can do that so we've made our really simple pot hanger but maybe you want something that's a little bit more elaborate maybe you want to do some more elaborate cooking maybe you want to have something that's adjustable well this is a really nice way of taking that concept of a diagonal pole and creating something adjustable on the end we're going to need four main pieces for this be quite a long pole I'm six foot tall you know 180 and this is taller than me it's at least seven foot yeah so just to give you some idea of the length of this pole that I'm using you need some sort of hook similar to what we made yesterday with the beak yeah so we want something with a nice tick in it like here but I do actually have one here and the reason I like this one better is because this is all aligned so I can hammer that in without any risk of that splitting off if you imagine I hammered that one I might break that off so when it's like this where it's a bit more of a lie rather than a tick shape you're more likely to split it so ideally you have something where you've got a vertical and then you've got a side branch that's that's perfect so I'm probably going to use that one for my upright this one for my tick for my hook and then the fourth piece that we need is another tick like that and that would actually that would make a hanger as well but I'm going to use this one that way around it's a bit long the reason I keep all this quite tidy is because the more clearance you have here the more it will work on different types of ports clearly there's a lot of clearance here but sometimes you've got less less room between the handle or the bail and the top of the lid particularly if you've got a cattle with maybe like a little wooden bit on the top or a pot with a little wouldn't there isn't always a lot of room so you want to make sure that the the bottom of the pot hanger will fit in here I'm going to leave that for now but we're gonna put some beats notches on that like we did on the big rig yesterday I'm gonna need a point on this end because we're gonna go into the ground so again just do a quick three-sided point to sides isn't a point to sides as a chisel shape the minimum number of sides you need to make a point is three doesn't have to be three-sided but it is still quite it's quite strong structure still then and it's also relatively quick and easy to do once you've got the angle sword in your head like so we're gonna hit this end so we want to just as a matter of course there's pretty much anything that we hit just bevel it so it's less likely to split and fray off but also level that off a little bit on the top actually it's just a little bit people watching this might be thinking what he's cutting towards his hand well I'm actually bringing the handle to the web of my hand like so so I'm not bringing the knife towards my thumb that would be bad yeah I'm bringing the handle in like that and I'm just prying off off the side here for a bit of purchase but that blade is not coming towards my thumb just want to be clear about that anybody wanted to try and replicate that it's a common mistake good rule is that if your fires here okay that's your little campfire there you want the upright clearly not to be right next to the fire and a good rule is for it to be a step away so something like that okay then you need to think about the height you want the pole to be over the fire and I would say that's probably a good height from experience there may be about three feet off the ground at the end of it so then I can see that I want this pole here to be a bit shorter because at the moment my my v-notch is up there and I want it to sit under here and support it so I know that I need to take maybe a little bit less than that off the bottom because we've got a bit of room at the top and then we also need to put it into the ground so I can measure it that way upside down so I'm going to take it off about about there and put a little point on the end of this one that's going to be a few inches into the ground and that's going to sit in there and that's looking pretty good that's a little bit high at the moment but once I've knocked that in a bit it will come down this is a touch on the thin side it's thinner than the big pot hanging we knocked in earlier so I'm going to be gentle with it don't want to break it that's gonna sit in there like so now again that wants to sit there while that's there we know this is the top so we need to do something to this end here and get rid of that little side branch there and wants to sit there yeah definitely wants to sit there measure twice and cut once I'm going to flatten this off now just tidy that end off just to keep it from getting tatty okay now I'm gonna cut a tiny little notch in here a little V that's pops in this back where we want it when it wants to sit like so now if I hang something off there even though the pivot points close to this end enough weight it's going to lift the other end so I'm going to need to pin the other end there now we can work out where we need the notches so I've got the pot but I know I've got I know broadly how big my fire is going to be so we can work out what's the lowest it's gonna want to be probably about there yeah we don't you know there's not going to be no coals or fire underneath it that's probably about as low as we want it so we can have a look at that and think okay just double check that's where I want my my first beak you can see there I hope on the camera you've got that nice beak I've done nothing to undercut that directly it's literally the intersection of two slightly undercut side notches that overlap they're the intersect and then you naturally get that beak there all right so this is the little notch that I made earlier this is my beaked notch and that should just sit in there now you can see why I thinned it out at the bottom as well so that that end that screwdriver end will fit in there I could probably make that just a little bit thinner now that I've I fitted this so we can do that you don't want it weak but this here I can just thin down from the bottom just to touch I need to fit now and this is why you want the beak on the same side because if you think about the center of where that weight is pulling down it's literally directly maybe slightly off but it's almost directly underneath the beak whereas if you put the beak on the other side and again I've seen lots of pictures of people doing that posting it on social media it tends to hand hang a funny angle imagine it was the other way around where the hook was on the other side it would it would pull it away and it's more likely to fall off so it balances really nicely just keep those beaks on the same side as the notch as the hook rather sorry and make sure they're all nicely in line so there's no kind of skewing force there we go that's a high position or low heat if you like and that's a low position or high heat and we might choose we want to put another one in the middle there of course you know how to do that you don't need me to show you how to do that but yeah I would caution against putting loads in so close together you generally need you generally need a low and a high and maybe one in between for you know varied Billy can cooking or or a kettle and that's it that's your adjustable pot hanger or wagon stick and very simple really about material selection and then a little bit of knife skill and your away it doesn't take that long to make Paul thanks so much I really appreciate it I should always a pleasure Mike really really good I certainly learned a lot of skills here I know they seem kind of basic but you know it's it's like you said you were saying earlier it's good to get the basics right yeah yeah and I hope you guys have you know picked up some tips here this has not been so much about me it's kind of been about the skills itself it's one of those skill videos I have actually done one previously with Paul where we did a lot of in-depth information on axe skills and kind of camp crafts like this as well some soaring tips as well and also the hand drill if you want to see that I'll put a link in the description for those of you wanting to know more about this kind of stuff Paul what can they do to kind of find more of yeah Mike if people want to learn more of my stuff and from me I've got a blog at Paul curtly co uk and Mike um sure we'll link to that but polka dot uk' and I've been writing that since 2010 so there's eight or nine years of free material of info there's some videos not as many as Mike's made but the some vids and there's podcasts there's Q&A sessions there's lots of written tutorials photo blogs and whichever way you like to consume information there's ton of stuff there and for people who want a more focused bit of learning perhaps I've got an online course because not everyone can come and do courses with me in the woods it's expensive you've got to travel etc etc and also they're generally quite full I've got an online course online elementary and if you want to get a couple of free videos for that people like your channel like video so if you want to get a couple of free videos from that course and learn more about the course no obligation if they go to pork curtly code at UK /oe bushcraft so o F or online elementary Oscar eco bushcraft yeah that will take them straight to a page where they can ask for those videos and I'll send you the links for the videos well that's that's very generous and you know guys that that many years worth of information it's quite hard to find in one place mmm so yeah do check those out I'm also going to put links as well as text on the screen there's going to be some links in the description below I hope you've enjoyed this video we've had a fantastic time spring is pretty much here or wonderful isn't it was really nice we've had some really good weather I've actually got some a couple of canoe trips planned with Paul this year I'm not going to tell you too much about that at the moment it's all secret secret squirrel but I'm really looking forward to them I hope you've enjoyed this video be sure to hit the subscribe button if you have and go and follow Paul's stuff there's links in the description below thank you so much for watching guys and we will see you soon in the next episode thanks guys take care you

Channel: TA Outdoors

Views: 769,457

Rating: 4.9013457 out of 5

Keywords: bushcraft, bushcraft skills, camp, bushcraft camp, camp craft, axe, knife, camping, survival, woods, overnight, wilderness skills, bushcraft knife, bushcraft axe, camp skills, beginner bushcraft, bushcraft for beginners, tent, cooking, cast iron cooking, building a camp, primitive, withies, hazel withies, bushcraft tripod, survival knots, bushcraft knots, forest, tarp, overnight camp, overnight camping, pot hangers, pot hanger, natural materials, building, cook, ta outdoors, paul kirtley

Id: R42S4TccbRo

Length: 80min 17sec (4817 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019