Mobile phones for the outdoors

I've moved a lot of content over to my new blog, this page included. If you want to read my mobile phone article you can find it here

All the best,

Stuart.

BCUK axe and campcraft weekend (Part One)

(Image courtesy of Gary Waidson www.ravenlore.co.uk) 

Over the second weekend in October this year I was lucky enough to be invited along to a weekend camp organised by Steve "Mesquite" Harrall via the bushcraft uk forum. The camp was held at a private wood in Warwickshire, not too far from Coventry, courtesy of Damian at Woodsman Bushcraft.

As well as organising the logistics of the weekend for us Steve had arranged for Paul Kirtley of Frontier Bushcraft to come and give us some tuition on axe useage and camp craft techniques. This weekend was the first time I'd met Paul, in fact it was the first time I'd received any kind of formal bushcraft tuition at all, but both Paul and his tuition were pleasant surprises.

I've met a few bushcraft instructors over the years at various events and found them generally to be a little lacking as teachers. The instructors I'd met previously generally fall into one of three categories;

• There's the bushcraft bore, these types take it all way too seriously, they've obviously got a real depth of knowledge and a willingness to pass on that knowledge, they just don't appear to have any tangible personality. 
• Then there's the bushcraft bully, again these types appear to have quite a good depth of knowledge on the subject but that knowledge seems to have instilled in them a sense of arrogance (these are my least favourite types). 
• Finally there's the enthusiast, these are great people to be around, wonderful personalities, no sense of arrogance, great sense of humour, but unfortunately no real depth of knowledge or experience, this last type have usually done a course or two and gained some kind of vague qualification but just don't have an enormous deal of knowledge to pass on, I'd more than happily go for a weekend camp with these people, I just wouldn't pay them for the privilege. 

As I said previously, Paul Kirtley was a pleasant surprise, he manages to combine an obvious wealth of knowledge and experience with a great level of enthusiasm for the subject, and a proficient and well considered teaching style with a sense of humour and nicely laid back attitude. In short, he came across as a person first and a bushcraft instructor second, I'd readily recommend Paul and Frontier Bushcraft to anyone looking for some formal tuition in bushcraft. He's also more than capable of staring a piece of string into submission.

(Image courtesy of Chris Leeland)

The main project over the weekend was the construction of greenwood benches. The idea behind the construction of these benches was to demonstrate a variety of green woodworking techniques, but of course there was also the added benefit that we ended up with some nice seating to give back to Damian as a thank you for the use of his woods. The first stage in making the benches was to collect the materials that we'd need. A couple of recently fallen Beech trees (Fagus sylvatica) were selected and Paul offered some instruction in the correct method of removing the side branches as we only needed the main trunk for this project. This process is variously referred to as "limbing" or "snedding", put simply it means tidying up the trunk.

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

Once Paul had demonstrated the correct technique it was time for the rest of us to have a go, many hands made very light work of the job and in no time we had a couple of nice clean Beech trunks to work with.

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

In these two photo's you can see my mate Pete and I using a Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian forest axe that Paul had kindly provided for us to have a play with. It's a thing of beauty and I think that Pete and I  both fell in love with it straight away, so if anyone's stuck for what to get me for my birthday........here's a link!

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

After we'd limbed out our Beech trunks the next step was to divide them up into workable sections, what we were looking for were long straight sections of the trunk with as few knots as possible to make it easier for us to split them down. We started out by using a chainsaw to section up the trunk but modern technology quickly failed us and we had to resort to good old fashioned manpower. Thankfully there were enough of us to get the job done pretty quickly and without it being too much like hard work.

(Image courtesy of Steve "mesquite" Harral)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbuschraft.com)

The next stage in the process was to split our logs in half to start creating the seats of our benches. We accomplished this by first making "gluts", or wooden wedges, out of Holly (Ilex aquifolium) which we could then use, along with an axe, to split the green Beech along the length of it's grain. I'll probably write about making and using gluts at a later date, but for now here's a few images of us and our gluts to give you some idea.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Gary Waidson www.ravenlore.co.uk

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

The gluts did the job quite nicely......

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

.....and then it was time to smooth the split sides down a little to remove any splinters that may otherwise end up giving someone a nasty surprise when they sat down.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

Once we'd worked most of the larger splinters out of the seats of our benches it was time to fit some legs. These were simply pieces of Birch (Betula sp.) that were sawn to length and then fitted into holes that were drilled through the seats of our benches.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

All that was left then was knocking in some hardwood wedges to the tops of the legs where they protruded from the seats to tighten everything up and hold the legs firmly in place, for this I used a couple of pieces of well seasoned Birch, other's used the Holly that we'd made the gluts from earlier,....

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

....and then sawing off the bits of leg that were left protruding from the seats.

(Image courtesy of Paul Kirtley www.frontierbushcraft.com)

Et voila, the finished product

We got up to loads more projects over the weekend but it takes longer to write about them than do them so this little trip report's going to be in a couple of parts, look out for the next one if you enjoyed this first installment.

Bye for now,

Stuart

Kolrosing a Mora 120

Kolrosing is a decorative handicraft from Scandinavia, the basic process is as simple as you like but the results are great. A bushcrafty friend of mine showed me the Kolrosing that he'd done on his mora woodcarving knife and I really liked how it improved the knife. Mora 120's are superb little knives, the blades shape really suits the kind of woodcarving that I do and it takes and holds a nice sharp edge, and the handle shape is lovely and comfortable right out of the box. The price is pretty good too, I think I paid £12 for mine (I've seen them even cheaper since), and, as with any good quality knife I fully expect it to last longer than I do. The only real downsides to the mora 120 are that the sheath that comes with it is more or less useless and the knife itself is the plainest most boring thing you could ever cast eyes upon. 

standard mora 120
(image courtesy of www.knifereviews.co.uk)

Anyway, I decided that seeing as how this is a Scandinavian knife a little Kolrosing on the handle would be just the thing to pretty it up a little. I went for a couple of fairly simple knotwork designs as it's easy to build up composite designs with knots, so the overall effect looks a lot more involved and complicated than it actually is. These knots are usually known as celtic knots but there's no real reason for that, yes the celts did use knotwork designs in things such as jewellery but then so has just about every culture on the planet, especially those with northern european links. I guess "generic northern European neo pagan knotwork" just doesn't have to same ring to it. I don't think it's finished yet, there's a little bit too much space left I think, time will decide that for me. Anyway, this is what I've got so far, feel free to let me know what you think.

Bye for now,

Stuart

Kiridashi

Earlier this year I decided to try my hand at knife making and decided on a Kiridashi as my first project. "What's a Kiridashi" I hear you ask, well it's a Japanese style of knife, made from one piece of metal (so the handle and the blade are made from the same piece of steel), usually without any additional handle material (although you quite often see them with a simple cord wrap), and with a chisel ground edge. They're used as woodworking knives by Japanese carpenters and woodcarvers, sometimes designed as a utility knife, something like the British tradesman's "Stanley" knife, and sometimes designed with a very specific purpose in mind. Mine was designed purely around the material that I had in the workshop at the time. I made it from one half of an old pair of garden shears that had been rusting away in the shed for years and were in desperate need a new lease of life. This knife was made using only hand tools and hardened and tempered in a home made charcoal forge with an engine oil quench.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out, although I've never done any knife making before this I do have quite a bit of experience of working with hand tools and working with metals and I think the skills and techniques that I've picked up over the years really shone through here. I made mistakes, and there's bits and bobs wrong with the finished items but it's all a learning experience and hopefully I can take forward what I've learned and do an even better job next time.

Kiridashi resting on a fox skull

Making this little knife was a really fun and satisfying project, and remarkably straight forward to do. I think I'll be trying my hand at some more knife making in the future, maybe something a little more involved next time.

p.s. sorry about the poor quality of the photo, I'll try and update it as soon as I get a better one

Bye for now,

Stuart

Tools

I like tools, all sorts of tools. I like big heavy duty tools and little delicate tools. I like power tools and I like hand tools. I like multi-purpose tools and I like highly specialised tools. I like tools that I use every day and I like tools that I can't for the life of me work out what they're for. I like old fashioned tools and I like modern tools. I like tools that work first time every time like a dream and I like tools that need a day of tinkering to get working. I really like tools. Most of my hobbies involve tools of some sort, some of them pretty unique to that hobby but some of them that seem to cross over all of my hobbies. So I think that I'm probably going to be posting quite a few bits and bobs about tools on here, here's a couple of my favourite tools to get started.

Gransfors Bruks small forest axe and "Cegga" custom axe

Bye for now,

Stuart