Ignition Sources, My Belt Kit

afternoon folks I wanted to continue with our basic series a little bit and talk about my belt pouch kit which basically boils down to a fire kit but I wanted to talk with you about that but before we get into it I wanted to kind of discuss kit mentality with you and evolution of kit and research and development aspects of kit a lot of people ask me a lot you know why aren't you carrying this anymore why don't you carry that anymore what do you like about this how about this knife how about that knife how about this pack how about that back the fact of the matter is you know the things that I thought were great or that I thought worked well for me five years ago if I'm not carrying them today something has happened in the evolution of my learning the evolution of my skill and the evolution of my kit that has changed my mind about that particular item it may only be that I'm trying to use different items for research and development so I can better educate myself to tell you this works good or this works bad it may be a case of I found out for myself or from being around others that something didn't work out the way I thought it would or a piece of kit wasn't as robust as I thought it would or as multifunctional as I hoped it would be so I have set that piece of kit aside in favor of something else and your kit is going to evolve as you learn and as you study you know bushcraft survival trucking whatever it is you choose to call spending time in God's creation and I think that it's very important for us to understand that because I get a lot of questions about why don't you carry this anymore well you did a video on that and now you're doing a video on this and it's because I have to to be educational and to educate myself I need to involve myself in lots of different type kits lots of different types of merchandise lots of different types of knives axes fire-starting implements packs tarps all of those things have to evolve and I have to go through them in a Nardi process and with a Six Sigma mentality and use them for a while and then change up to something else and decide maybe that was better or this is worse and so I think that if I told you what I would prefer to carry now in my kit it would definitely not match what I told you two years ago or five years ago because everything is an evolutionary process and your kit has to be the same way you can take what I say at face value right now that I think this type stuff may be the best thing that you can carry or the best thing that I carry but that doesn't mean that next year I may find something better because I might so we need to understand that we're talking about kit mentality and generally speaking with any piece of gear any piece of kit I believe a it takes very little to sustain yourself in a wilderness environment if you have the skills and the knowledge and you own those skills and you own that knowledge to be able to manufacture things off the landscape the other thing that I believe very greatly is that any piece of kit that I carry actually be multifunctional in its aspects that it can do at least three things and the third thing that I think about when I carry things in my kit are is this something that's going to directly affect my survivability and how hard is it for me to recreate this object off the landscape how much skill level does it take specialized material does it take how abundant you know am I going to find this stuff I may be in a great environment for something that I can make something out of but if I'm not in that exact location where it grows and it's two miles away maybe it's not so great so I have to think about all of those type things and that brings me back to my fire kit so let's talk about what I have in my fire kit because I think you're going to see that the main components of fire for me don't change very much and haven't changed much over time but I think that there's three things that you should carry in your fire kit all the time without fail and those three things will help enable you to have the most success making fire no matter what the environment or what the weather stay with me okay so let's talk about this belt pouch first because I get lots and lots and lots of questions about this belt pouch this belt pouch was purchased at a reenactment event years ago I have no clue who made this belt pouch I have no clue how to get all over the person that made just no pouch I have no clue where to tell you to get this belt pouch what I can tell you is that if you want a quality leather belt pouch similar to this of the same design and style you need to get a hold of deep wood handcraft over in Alaska who makes all of my bush leather for the most part and many other people's as well he can make you something very similar to this he does a fantastic job all right with that said let's break this thing out because there's not very much in here to be honest with you so let's talk about our main fire components first I'm just gonna dump the whole thing out here and everything is in main fire components cigarette lighter ferrocerium rod magnifying glass I'll take this out of here so you can see it but this magnifying glass happens to be the lens out of a pair of binoculars from a yard sale but it's very very powerful any lens that's about five power will work well the most powerful magnifying glass you can get for this the right size for you would be perfect this is just an old tin that fishhooks came in and it just happens to fit this magnifying glass perfect so it protects it from getting scratched and I just tape it up with a piece of duct tape to keep it from opening up in my pouch and protect it and that's it now why these three items alright this is the big question number one bic lighter I say again bic lighter there's lots of lighters on the market I get asked questions all the time what about this later what about that letter what about a Zippo what about butane what about what about what about BIC that's what I'm telling you in my experience of almost 20 years or over 20 years of hanging out in the woods and way way over 20 years of smoking cigarettes a bit lighter will not let you down if it gets wet it's not very hard to dry out and you can use it again people say that the fluid leaks out of them it does not leak out very much because I've carried the same lighter sometimes four six or eight months lighting cigarettes with them every day and then they run out of fluid but they never fail to work so you're not going to leak all the fluid out of this very easily and if your worried about that you can always take a balloon put it over the top of this tie it around at a small balloon put it in your pack it's not going to leak it's going to be waterproof and you're going to be good to go if you only use that lighter for emergencies it would be better if this lighter was orange because it would be harder to lose the reason I carry a magnifying glass is because obviously this has given me instant gratification alright that's what the world is all about instant gratification flick my BIC that's going to give me open flame to ignite tinder but in really wet weather really damp weather sometimes this isn't good enough you need more maybe it runs out of fluid maybe you lose it the Ferro rod which throws off very hot Sparks is going to ignite most tinder that's even marginal but fairly dry if it's a good tinder source with lots of surface area and fine hairs to catch sparks a ferrocerium rod is going to ignite it like I said in the video when we talked about these I just wrapped mine and duct tape pull the handles off of them wrapping wrap them in duct tape I carry a small one like this in my adult pouch and a larger one in my main kit again with the kit mentality everything is a layering process two is one one is none I've always said that you've got to have multiples especially of the first five seas and combustion is something you should have multiple areas of your kit that contain combustion elements so if this is on my belt I've got the exact same items or elements inside my backpack I probably got another lighter in my pocket and I probably got another Ferro rod somewhere else besides a big one I probably got another small one somewhere else as well always carry multiples of these items this is just a belt pouch kit a magnifying glass will give you solar ignition you're not using anything except nature with this if you scrape this it's one less fire you can make if you flick your BIC it's one less time it's going to make flame with this as long as you have Sun you're not expending any resource but the natural surroundings and landscape to make a fire as long as you understand how to control an ember and we've talked about that in other videos so these main components are these three items a magnifying glass a Ferro rod and a cigarette lighter are always going to be my main fire elements ignition with a Ferro rod can be can be very easy with not only natural tenders but things like steel wool quadruple or steel wool is easily ignited by a Ferro rod things like dryer lint things like light maha things like wet fire devices that are sold on the Internet surefire devices like mini and micro inferno all of those things can be ignited with a Ferro rod so it makes it very very good as an ignition source it's also very easy to ignite things like char cloth and we talked about that as far as our next fire it also will ignite natural accelerant if you scrape them off like fat wood and we've talked about that in birch bark we've talked about those things in other videos so I carry this 10 this wad of steel wool becomes a fire starting element that also is useful for something else we'll talk about that in a few minutes there is a rubber band around this 10 also highly flammable or a flame extender if I need it I carry a small compass in here just for general direction this is a true Nord compass in here I have a roll of lamp-wick that's charred on the end I asked some char cloth I have other material in here to be charred that's made out of 100% cotton I have several other pieces of lamp wick and I have some charred Punk wood all of those things are in this charring 10 that I used to char material with when I needed and generally I had this out the other day for a demonstration but generally I'll keep my char cloth wrapped up in another piece of cloth that's uncharred just to help protect it and I'll put that in my kit like this those those items give me lots of ways to affect ignition or give myself an ember without ever having to worry about it you have charred lamp-wick you have charred Punk would you have charred cloth all of those things can be ignited by the lighter they can be ignited by the Ferro rod they can be ignited by the magnifying glass the only thing that's not going to be ignitable with a magnifying glass is going to be shavings from fat wood and most likely you're not going to get ignition on steel wool I'm not going to say it could never be done because somebody may well prove me wrong but I have never tried it or never got it - got it - work listen it that way so although that goes in this ten and then I can use this 10 - char material for my next fire always taking advantage of the fire that I have and that goes in my kit the steel wool is in there for ignition also for cleaning items like my firearms and my knives to keep them from rusting up or to get any surface rust off of them I keep a hank of cordage in here that's got a t-handle on it or a T toggle on it basically this is used to take my containers in and out of the fire if I need to it's also used for a cleaning kit where I can drop this down inside my 12-gauge barrel and pull it through with a piece of steel wool on the other end or some kind of piece of cotton material to clean my weapon with it's also an emergency string for bow drill fire if I need it last item in my belt pouch kit is a folding knife I get lots of questions about folders there's lots and lots of good folding knives out there I generally have one in my pocket as well case is always a good brand of folding knife the older strains are always good Swiss Army is good barlow is always good there's just lots of them out there there's no reason for me to name them all but a good high quality folding knife is important and this one happens to be a carving jack and we've talked about that in several other videos so it has several tools on it that will help me affect carving tasks if I need to like making a bow drill or something like that but it also gives me a spare a few spare blades in case I lose my knife and they're all hard 90-degrees spines so it gives me an extra striking device from my ferrocerium rod where I to lose my knife now I don't necessarily have to have this I could use a piece of broken glass I could use a piece of rock any hard sharp 90-degree edge that's harder than the rod that's going to throw sparks off of it so it's a very simple kit in its elements the main elements of this kit that you need to understand are the ignition elements which are the lighter the Ferro rod and magnifying glass you can put whatever else you want to kit beyond that I would always recommend some type of a 10 that you can char material in and hold charred material in other than that like I said I keep some type of accelerant in there of natural accelerant like fat wood or pine sap would work just fine some birch bark shoved in there wouldn't hurt anything a little bit of steel wool that's multi-functional for an ember and then some cordage in case I have to make a bow-drill fire and a folding knife to carve out a set and also strike my ferrocerium rod in an emergency real simple all that fits in this belt pouch very conveniently very easily and doesn't weigh too much ok folks that was just a quick and simple look at my ignition kit on my fire kit that I keep on my belt pouch there's a couple other elements in there as well but those are just things that I want to keep on my body for an emergency if I've got to start a fire and for some reason I've lost my kit and this is not going to be the first thing I reach for obviously and that's important to understand is that some of your elements of layering are for a reason and this is my emergency type kit on my belt pouch because the last thing I'm going to lose unless somebody steals my pants the kit that I carry around is going to be what I use to start my fires with most of the time and save this stuff for emergency like I said you're going to have duplicates of all of these ignition sources in your main kit as well and I would at least suggest that you carry three ferrocerium rods if you're going to carry one on your knife have two more somewhere else carry a minimum of three of those because they are going to be your most reliable ignition source overall in any weather and environment as long as you understand your surroundings the available material off the landscape so that you can make a good tinder bundle or find a natural accelerant of some sort the thing that I would combine especially in my main kit would be some type of artificial sure fire element like mini or micro inferno that can be ignited can be pieced apart to use in different areas of your fire to help you in wet weather and that's one thing that I've found out from teaching all the classes that I teach out her at the pathfinder school is that those especially the mini infernos that are just a round disc you can rip those into four pieces light them off be each other after you get the first one lit and strategically placed them in different parts of your fire lay and they will help you get better ignition in wet weather or damp conditions if you only have something that you can light up in its stationary you can only put that in the middle or on the edge and I've since I'm type of container it's pretty much going to be gone because once you shove it in the middle of your fire and pile stuff on top of it that's the end of it if you're just gonna try to light sticks off of and throw it throw it in your fire you're wasting time like we talked about in other videos big fires are survivable fires little fires are messing around and cooking fires I'm Dave Canberra at the Pathfinder school I appreciate everything that you do for me from a school for my family I thank you for your views your comments and your support I'll be back to another video soon as I can thanks guys you

Channel: David Canterbury

Views: 137,098

Rating: 4.9432836 out of 5

Keywords: Bushcraft, Survival, David Canterbury, Dave Canterbury, Pathfinder, The Pathfinder School, Archery, Hunting, Fishing, Camping, Primitive Skills, Fire, Water, Shelter, Navigation, First Aid, Search and Rescue, Signaling, Prepper, Preparedness, Self Reliance, Survivability, The 10 C's, Knives, Axes, Saws, Bow Drill, Ferrocerium Rod, Ferro Rod, Tarp, Hammock, Canteen, Cooking, Longhunter, Trapping

Id: xBs1IsbqGNM

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 02 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/brswan]

Don't understand all the hate on Dave. I know he was a little extreme on TV but guess what, its TV! He's much more mellow and a very good teacher on his YouTube videos.

I enjoy his channel and have learned a lot from it.

[u/Revvy]

Two lighters, three rods, and a large magnifying glass seems just a little excessive.