IF I HAD TO PICK TODAY

good morning guys it's blackie okay today we're going to talk about canteens and what may be the best canteen for you for field use now i've got about 40 plus years experience utilizing a us army canteen field when i started out this was just a piece of surplus gear that i got from some family member i think my very first one was world war ii um canteen they had the old canvas cover with the crisscross marine corps uh uh flaps rabbit ears went over and locked onto it a canteen cup and that was it and that was the basis of my early camping to be honest because down here in my south you had to carry water there was no no other consideration you had to have water because the heat or just distances we had to carry you needed water so a canteen was a no-brainer and those were surplus and they were cheap now these old canvas covers like this had a lot of advantages one the canteen itself could be easily taken in and out while still wearing that on my belt so i could just reach over here and pull out take a drink of water put it back and snap it back one-handed without having to have any big fumble or fuss to it two the canvas covers were very very durable okay now the this is a us army 1969 i think it is um canteen that is a plastic canteen and the army got away from the stainless steel canteens and went to this the stainless steel canteens had advantages and we'll get to that in just a minute over the plastic the plastic was definitely lighter it was also about as durable it didn't if you did it it would just pop back out problem was it would the seams would split they would you know we'd say give up the ghost occasionally and if you tighten down the lid way too tight it would split up here at the top and crack off so if you are looking at one of these plastic canteens that's one of the things you inspect now this one has got the type of lid on it that's for the old gas mask system where you plugged in that to be able to drink while wearing a gas mask but you want to unscrew the lid and these you can get replacements of these lids and make sure that it's not cracked right along this edge because you tighten it down and it busts off the top okay but it's got this big plug in it that's for sealing it up and getting water out of it now i've seen these adapted to showers and everything else by popping this flap open right there to the connector and putting in one of the connectors and rigging it up for various things i'm sure there's videos on youtube about that but they were good field can teams but they also had weaknesses like i just said they split too easy they were one that if you um fell on it it was gonna bust just knowing it if it got cold enough and it froze it could split it uh you couldn't put boiling hot water into it you couldn't put extremely hot water into it use it for a hot water bottle because it couldn't handle that kind of temperatures okay now the old original canteen cups like this stainless steel and you had either the butterfly handles or you have the flat handles i like the flat handle like this but either one works just fine this gave me a much more substantial thing to grab a hold of to pick up and utilize in it it's got a nice wide bottom in it for cooking and this is the old type stove you can still find a lot of surplus surplus it pops off and then you turn around and you put it back onto the actual canteen cup itself and it stays there got a little opening right there to feed small sticks i like this because i could rake up a pile of coals stick this on and set it into the coals let it heat up and do its business and then be able to pick it up move it to a fresh pile of coal without having to pick this up separately this made it so it was easier for me to cook in it you know as far as keeping a constant heat with it and then the cover itself this cover had certain advantages that the modern ones don't if you look inside of them they have this synthetic wool insulation well this was two-fold it helped keep it from freezing in cold conditions and in hot conditions you could soak this whole cover down and due to evaporative cooling it would help cool the water now it's not going to refrigerate your water but what happens is as this is drying and evaporating it's pulling heat away from that canteen and therefore helping to cool the water a few degrees but it makes it where it doesn't get any hotter easier which is a big advantage and that allows you to cool off the water a little but now i use one of these for years as a pot cozy and what that means is is i would take the canteen cup with a lid on it after i had cooked and heated and i could stick it in here on a cold day to help hold the warmth while i prepared other food or i would put it in here and sit and hold it like a uh an oven mitt and be able to eat out of it and hold the heat longer with my cup so these are these old canteen covers that have the canvas and all and that lighter do have certain advantages now i upgrade several years ago and i've done several videos on this and this is my current canteen set that i carry in addition to my grail now i know several of you were confused at this point because black you've been talking about grill for a year and a half yes i still carry the grail the grail is the water filter processor and for short hikes day hikes scouts this is the way to go sorry about the aircraft noise guys but it's the way to go as far as a way to carry water but i have also come up with a system that you've seen in other videos and i'll put a link up here like here to my grail cook set and all that i came up with but the canteen cup set still goes especially if i need two with that grail and this i have the ability in longer campouts or longer walls i can fill this up and then turn around and refill that grill that grail does not hold as much as a canteen so this becomes my primary and that becomes when they're full to back up so that as i'm going along whenever this runs dry i then transfer the water from the grail into here and then we start looking for a water source to refill the grail and refill my system okay a big advantage to that grail is the fact that it doesn't have to boil water etc like i've done in the past and so if it's a cool stream it's cool water and that's a big advantage but back to this being my modern set and i have done videos showing it exactly um it's got pouches that i'm able to carry um aluminum foil spices stuff like that as well as water purification tabs in case of emergency on the outside of it and then the canteen inside of it is a nalgene i said it right is a nile gene canteen which is a clear plastic so i could see the liquid and it's also of a type of material that can handle boiling water well this gives it distinct advantages over the original gi canteen and where i can now utilize this as a hot water bottle on cold winter nights i can feel this canteen full up of hot water from the fire and then just take a sock or something pull over it and be able to stick it you know near my abdomen sticking into my blankets to warm up my blankets uh to help keep me warm on cold night a big advantage okay also it's when you get to be our age guys you got body aches and hurt this thing is great to be able to take and put it up against that shoulder that's just killing you you know having like a heating pad that i can put against put some heat into that shoulder and make it quit hurting so bad or shins or whatever so that becomes a heating pad as well pretty handy to have along on the deal but this is my primary use now the capacity of the original canteen and of this is the same now the next one i want to talk about is the pathfinder stainless steel canteen now this is like although much larger the very first canteen i had which is a world war ii stainless steel canteen it's got the seam running around the middle of it but it's a larger canteen and it's got a lot of advantages over my other two one it's got a very big wide mouth to it and that makes it easy to get water in at it and to clean it okay now with the original canteens and this is something you don't see in just a weekend gathering but through hikers and stuff like that will talk to you about it whatever your water carrier is if you're just putting the tabs in it or whatever it gets kind of funky after several days like a week or more of you drinking out of it and just refilling it and drinking out of it you gotta clean that thing because although you're putting sterilized water or the tabs in it and all like this trust me it starts getting a little funky and you need to be able to clean it well the problem with these old gi canteens is you couldn't put boiling water into cleaning you had to just double up on the stuff somehow or put a little bit of clorox in it or something and sterilize it a little bit so it's not so you know what i mean whereas the nalgene i could put boiling water into it and sterilize it but the reason the u.s army had gone with the stainless steel was because you could put it in a fire by taking the cap off and putting it into the fire i can sit and boil water in this and that is a distinct advantage now everybody that's coming to the pathfinder school knows about using canteens and the fire etc it's a good heavy construction that's well seamed up and holds up well in that now this one is not mine it's actually my friend chelsea she was kind enough to loan it to me to do this review now the pathfinder set comes with or you can get it with i should say comes with a canteen cup that properly fits it this is bigger than a gi canteen i can show you that easily right here there is the bottom of the pathfinder and there is the bottom of the gi it's a little is bigger diameter and will not interchange so if i take a us army canteen so it goes down about an hour definitely bigger much higher capacity so let's talk for just a second about the cups these two cups being comparable the stove slides onto the bottom of this one and it's got the click bail on it like i said the pathfinder one does the same thing it's a about equal if not slightly heavier construction so it's more durable it's also got click handle onto it you come up squeeze it and let the little tabs drop in but now their stove is solid now this has got distinct advantages it also means you can't lock that on although if you were so inclined and just had to do it i'm sure you could get somebody with a dremel tool to cut one out for that but this stove gives several distinct advantages as well it's a small grill so you can sit in the fire and it raises the canteen up higher in the heat column that's the same thing with the old model at ground level the heat is not as intense because heat rises right so every inch you come up into the fire is more heat you're getting so when you're cooking on an open fire raising it up just a couple of inches would make a difference make it easier to cook get heat more efficiently onto your set so that would be a distinct advantage it's a good heavy-duty construction and it slides on there like that now if this were mine i'd probably bend it just a little bit and make it slide on there and stick but that's just me the cup's got a good flat bottom on it a large flat bottom for cooking that's just things advantage whenever you're gonna be sitting here cooking it gives you plenty of room to get a pork or something down in there and cook into it when you're actually cooking not just heating up water and pouring into something a big wide flat bottom is pretty handy i can take a handful of bacon and throw in there and fry it by scrunching it around i can cook other things in here other than boiling i could sear with the lid that they offer you can now close that up and bake with it you can take the lid and put it sideways in there like that and be able to bake bread in there as a reflector of it so it gives you a lot of field advantage now the carrier that chelsea has is this big carrier nice big old buckle now this is not a light canteen it is a pretty heavy canteen especially whenever it's fully loaded with water and that is you know the achilles heel of it is not something that's you know inconsequential high capacity definitely gives an advantage over the original canteen the fact that it's got the broad lid and several european canteens had the big broad lid the british type 58 and one french canteens had a big broad opening like that and that is a distinct advantage be able to clean the canteen out if you you know heated up something whatever you could boil stew in this or cook a soup in this or whatever if you needed to just cook in it you know and be able to clean it yeah it wouldn't be great but if it's all you had you could do it with it the canteen lid has drain holes right here so you can actually let steam out and you can tip and pour off excess water for whatever it is you're cooking good heavy construction like i said you can sit that lid flat up there and use it to cook on itself or you could actually you know put it inside the canteen cup and use it as a spacer whenever you're baking breads or things like that mosquitoes waking up all in all the canteen and canteen set to me is just one of the most perfect woodsman field cook sets i carry my water i carry my ability to make water i can boil i have an ability to cook eat i have ability to dig i can dig with that canteen cup if i need to if i'm using a canteen cup to the stainless like the pathfinder or the nail gene i can use it as a hot water bottle a heating pad i can sterilize it in the field very easily if i throw in some aluminum foil with the set well now i've got other baking set so it becomes not just my water carrier it becomes my cook system as well for a personal use type thing now if you're doing dehydrated meals or whatever it's perfect for just heating it up and pouring the water into you can make coffee you can make teas you can make whatever in those little canteen cups and it's usually my experience enough for a single serving you know enough for you to get a meal out of it that's going to tie you over and go through um if you're a big eater no you're gonna have to do two or three cups to fill you up but something in a camp out that i'm going to utilize works great so oh and one other thing i want to point out in my digging through remember i told you of the advantage of the original canteen um of course this nylon set from pathfinder is not going to give you that advantage but as i was digging around in my collection i came upon this and what this is i believe is a french canteen cup that i've got surplus it's got a big belt loop on it and it's got the wire hooked going the old world war ii type thing you can cut that off pretty easily it's got a double set of snaps on this and the pathfinder will fit into it where the cup and all is going to be real snug and you can come over and snap to the bottom ones with the ears just like that well now i've got the same advantage i had had with my old original because this has got a little bit of a liner in there like that to help warm it cool it and also for me to be able to have it as insulated so i can hold that hot canting cap on cold day so just want to pass that on to the if you look for these with a double row of snaps up here in the front two snaps then that will you know let you know you're looking the right thing and it's got a little bit of a wool liner like a wool blanket line on the inside of it this would work as a field carrier for the pathfinder canteen so in conclusion and i've had a couple people ask me about it um if i was going to be today getting a canteen cup set i don't have one and i've got to get one if money is a big factor go the us army surplus set if you can afford just a little bit more get a nalgene canteen to go with your set because it brings you the advantages of being able to boil your water see how much water is in it etcetera like i said and you can clean it sterilizing the field a lot easier that gives you some distinct advantages on the other end if you're looking for a one and done system the pathfinder this is a very well made robust canteen the components of it are good you know my only concern and this is the i got to just be honest here guys if you look at the tiny tack wells on it um that's my only concern i haven't heard anybody talking about they fail um but that's just me you know it seems you know solid it doesn't seem like it's gonna come off there and i'm just used to big old tack wells so modern technology my canteen is my canteen cuts probably in 1940s or 50s uh just the old stainless steel cup i got in my first set and so that one yeah the technology wasn't there this modern this is made modern manufacturers so they're probably knowing what they're doing but other than that i got no fault with it i think that it would be a very good canteen it's going to be heavy and so the carrier like chelsea's got the shoulder bag type deal may be the way you want to go as a cook set and as your water carrier would i recommend to get a grail to go with it yes these grails are not cheap i'll tell you that straight up but what they bring to the table is worth it i've been using mine for over a year now and i'm very very happy with mine it gives me the ability to go up to a cool running stream fill up right now and drink fill up a pot etc and then whenever you pair it with a like my multi-bag pre-filter to keep that filter going i've been using that same canteen now that same grail now for over a year on the first filter i've got two replacement filters sitting in the house but i haven't had to use them it still runs just fine after a year and a half as long as you pre-filter it and keep that filter from plugging up it's great so a pathfinder system and a grail would be a big investment but in my opinion you'd be well served you'd be one of them one and done cry one time and not worry about it for the next 10 or 12 years just my two cents work on it i hope this gives you some ideas guys please leave any questions or comments below and thank you very much for supporting my channel till next time i'm blacky wishing you safe journeys have a great day guys

Channel: BLACKIE THOMAS

Views: 16,418

Rating: 4.9866219 out of 5

Keywords: NEW AND IMPROVED, #STAYDIRTY, #WOODLIFE, #WOODSCRAFT, #BUSHCRAFT KIT, #BUSHCRAFTSKILLS, #CAMPING GEAR, HIKING GEAR, HOW TO CARRY WATER, US CANTEEN, PATHFINDER CANTEEN, THE PATHFINDER COOK SYSTEM, ARMY SURPLUS, BUDGET CAMPING, OLD WOODSMANS SECRETS, GEAR TRICKS NO ONE KNOWS., SECRETS NO ONE KNOWES, STAINLESS STEEL, THE BEST CHOICE, BEST GEAR, FAST, THE #1 CHOICE OF, TO SAVE MONEY, IF YOU COULD HAVE ONLY ONE, NOTALLTHOSEWHOWANDERARELOST, RVCAMPING, ATV GEAR, BOY SCOUT COOKING

Id: 8Qvcs1DvJLk

Length: 23min 15sec (1395 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021