Getting Around With Something New: A Review of UST's Explorer Tool

Last week we made ranger beads and did some walking with them to try to lock in our pace. This week as promised we will be doing a review. Today we have UST Technologies 4-in-1 Explorer Tool. I will go ahead and state right now that I don't think that there are four tools here. I think one of the tools that they include in the 4 is just an offset of one of the other tools, however, the lanyard that comes attached to the tool could be counted as the fourth, and we will be talking about why here in a bit. The dimensions of this product are 3.75" in length, 1.5" wide, the lanyard is 5 times the length, and it is very lightweight. I very much like these things about the product. You can put it in your pocket, it your EDC kit and it's pretty much ready to take with you wherever you go.

Let's take a look at the features of this product. Since this is the compass series, let's start with the compass. This compass is going to be different than any other compass you've seen in this series because the face doesn't move, you have to move it yourself manually by rotating the entire tool. The only thing that moves on this compass is the needle which will always point North. To find your direction, line the needle up with north on the compass, then imagining your own travel arrow on the compass, find your direction. I like that the cardinal directions are indicated in large lettering on the compass as well as the degree system. The numbers 20, 40, 60, etc. are labeled in large numbers with large lines between them representing 30, 50, 70, etc. as well as smaller tic marks between them representing increments of 5.

The second feature and I believe the reason people buy this product are the folding binoculars. Simply fold out all four lenses and use the adjustable wheel to make it clear for you to see through. These binoculars are times 4 magnification and the lenses are 32 millimeters in length. The center of binoculars give me a crystal clear view of what I'm looking at but the outer ring of the lens is blurry and disorienting and it causes me to be nauseous when looking through it. In my opinion, if you only fold out one set of lenses and focus with one eye, it will minimize that effect and make them easier to use. Think spotting scope.

The signaling mirror is the third feature of this product. I did this review in doors and was able to reflect light well off of the lighting in the house and I got good results outside with natural light as well. In addition to signaling you could also use this mirror to check behind you or use it to dress a wound if it's in a location that is difficult for you to see well.

The last feature that is included in the 4-in-1 title is a magnifying glass. You can see clearly that it can help you start a fire, but that  is about the only use you will get out of it in the woods. Of course you can  use it to magnify an object, presumably times four, I believe that this is only a feature of the binoculars.  Yes it is a magnifying glass as well, but to me it seemed like a stretch  making that a fourth feature.

The lanyard however, could be considered a true fourth

feature. It is made of some sturdy cord, as hard as I've tried, I can't break it. What I've done is tied two simple knots in my lanyard and thought to myself, "I could make ranger beads." I wouldn't use actual beads being that there are two strands and they would not maintain the same tension at all times/ I would however use paracord because it will have something to hold on to and I can dress the cord as tightly as I need it. And as you can see you have plenty of room for any set up, be it 9 and 4 or 6 and 7 as well as having room for your forester beads.

I spent about $5 for this product at Walmart and I would say it's about worth that. I've seen it go for about $8 on Amazon as well. If you use the scope instead of using binoculars on the side of the compass you really do have an all-in-one explorer tool. You can spot where you need to go, use the compass to get your bearing, use your ranger beads to keep track of how far you walked from your original location, and when you arrive at your destination you can use your signaling mirror if you're in a lot of trouble. The biggest problem I have is that these tools are all very beginner. The compass would be extremely difficult to use with a map and as for the binoculars, times 4 magnification is not going to do much for you in the woods. Overall I give this product a 3/5.

Now where would be the ideal place to put this tool?  I wouldn't recommend putting it in your bush kit unless you were completely new to compass and navigation. This would be a cheap item that you could practice and learn with. I wouldn't put it in my hunting kit because I would really need pair of binoculars, and let's be honest, the binoculars are the worst feature of this tool. If you think about it, this tool is compact, has a lot of reusability, and you can familiarize yourself with them easily. Where have I heard all of those terms before? EDC kit! This would make an excellent addition to your EDC kit and even if you can't fit it inside, you can tie it off to the outside with the lanyard and have it ready to go if you need it.

That's it for this week's blog. Next week we will be starting our second C in our second set of C's, which will be candle. You won't want to miss it! As always feel free to comment, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.

I Will Survive: Comparing the Survival Water Bottle to My EDC Kit

Last week we finished building our EDC Kit and we talked about the three characteristics we want our gear to have: familiarity, compactibility, and re-usability. We packed away all of our stuff into a fanny pack as well. We valued this kit to be about $57, however I only spent $10 on my kit for the fanny pack. The rest of my gear I already had lying around the house. I did not buy gear for this kit. This week we are doing the review. That’s right, this week we will be comparing the survival water bottle to my EDC kit.

First let’s get into the survival water bottle and see what we are getting for $20. The water bottle itself is a 1000 ml. plastic water bottle with a red carabiner attached to it. I have some black 550 paracord at the top of the water bottle, one bandage (the card says there were supposed to be three),

an aluminum carabiner with a compass and an LED flashlight. It also comes with a tiny pocket knife with a tiny nail file. The next item I remove is an orange safety whistle, and a floating compass with a container that stores matches, however, no matches were provided. The last few items are a survival blanket that reflects up to 90% body heat, an emergency poncho which I can see from the package is very thin and will not last long, (I may be able to fly it like a tarp), and an emergency sewing kit with a button and a latch pin. I am not satisfied with what I have for $20. I do not feel that it meets the criteria of 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. My final note is that repacking the bottle was extremely difficult and all of my gear was crammed back inside.

I am going to be testing the survival water bottle in the same location where I had my 3 Day Camp. I

am going to attempt to set up my shelter, start a fire, and boil water. Now, I am not going to spend all day out here trying to accomplish these tasks with this kit. If I hit a road block that I cannot overcome or at least overcome quickly, I am going to say the test is done. I am going to follow this same practice with my EDC kit as well. One flaw I am going to point out with the survival water bottle right away is that I had to dig a box of matches out of my car to add to the kit, because the kit itself did not provide them.

The first thing I did was use the paracord to suspend the plastic water bottle over the site where I am going to build my fire. I tied the paracord off to a tree, threw the length over a limb, tied a loop in it, and clipped the water bottle to the loop with the red carabiner. The goal is to get my water to boil by controlling my fire. Normally I would use a tripod to boil water, however  I do not believe I could cut down or carve one with the tools provided by this kit. This attempt failed

I used my matches to start my fire. If I had not supplied the matches I would have had absolutely no way to make fire. I could have added a lighter instead, however, the kit was designed to use matches. While setting up, the branch above me became over encumbered and fell out so I had to improvise and suspend the water bottle from a much less distance. I filled it up with 16.9 oz. of water so that it will be boiling the same amount as my EDC kit.

Unfortunately I was not able to get the water to boil. While trying to control my fire the water bottle began to melt and warp. Also the tripod type branch I was using was dry enough that it started to catch as well. I probably could have waited a little longer, but I was not satisfied with how things were going. If you don’t know how to boil water in a plastic bottle pre-emergency, you are not going to know how to do it in the actual survival situation. I’m ranking the bottle a D, not an F, because you cannot purify water in it, but it can hold a significant amount of water and that’s worth something.

For the shelter I decided to use the poncho as a moisture barrier and I used the survival blanket to wrap up in. It is very noisy and if I were to sleep like this I would definitely wake up any time I moved. Other than that it was kind of nice. I rank the shelter a C. If rain were to come I would be left completely out in the open. If I had a fire to sit next to it would be even better, however the blanket says to keep away from fire. I may even consider getting one of these for my EDC kit.

Now that we have finished testing out the survival water bottle, it is time to test out my EDC kit. Right away you will notice that there are things I can do with this kit that I couldn’t do with the other kit, and actually there is one thing that I could have done with the survival water bottle kit that I could have done, but chose not to. We will talk about why a little later.

I will be testing my EDC kit the same way I tested the survival water bottle according to the rule three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. My first order of business is to make a shelter. What I did was lash a branch horizontally to a tree with my bank line. Next I found some small rocks and folded them into the corners of my poncho, tied off the corner to keep them in place, and then tied the corners to the lashed branch. I took a long stick that was smaller in diameter to the one I lashed to the tree and used my 11-in-1 card to saw it in half. The stick was mostly greenwood so the 11-in-1 card had some difficulty getting the job done, but it did get the job done. Next I used my Camillus Seize to carve the two half pieces into tent stakes. I repeated the process with the stones in the bottom to corners of my poncho, attached them to the stakes, and then staked them into the ground. This results in my poncho being set up like I would my tarp.

The reason I did not do this with a survival blanket is because I was having so much trouble with the

survival water bottle kit, I just wanted to get any kind of shelter together. I absolutely think that the survival blanket could do this, and it is roughly the same size as my poncho so I think it would do it well. The only problem being with that kit, if I chose to make the survival blanket into a shelter, I would have nothing to cover up with at night. If you have a extra survival blanket in your kit I highly recommend that you try to do this. Unfortunately with the survival water bottle kit, I just don’t think it’s worth it.

With the assistance of my lovely wife, we did a weather test on the poncho. I sat underneath it with my moisture barrier, the black contractor bag I included in my kit and she prepared the water hose to spray down my shelter.  Now the water from the garden hose was a lot heavier than any rain I would typically experience, but it held up well and no water got in. The hood of the poncho faced downward and while it did move and buck with the water hitting it, it did not open up to let the water in.

Now I am going to test the abilities of the second contractor bag that I packed in my EDC kit. First I

can get into it and use it like a sleeping bag if needed. While standing the bag comes up to my arm pits, but lying down I can hunker down into it and it will retain my body heat fairly well. The next thing I am going to test is how well it holds water. I filled the bag up just enough for me to be able to lift it and also so it did not rip out the bottom of the bag. It held up well, I have plenty of contractor bag left to tie it off and store it, and all I have to do is untie it to get more water.

Speaking of water, now it is time for our boiling test. I am going to use the same amount of water as well as the same type of bottled water as I used in my previous boiling test to be fair in judging which boils better. I used my lighter in my combustion kit to light my tinder and get my fire started. After that it was just a matter of placing the metal water bottle into the fire without the plastic lid on top and waiting for it to boil.

Another thing that I want to show you my kit can do is make char cloth. The Altoids tin that is also

the container for my combustion kit can also be used to make char cloth in. Now I didn’t have any cloth packed in my EDC kit so what I did was cut a strip out of the bottom of my T-shirt, placed it in the Altoids tin, closed it, and put it in the fire. It’s as simple as that. Now I can make char cloth while I am waiting for my water to boil, which it did! To remove it safely from the fire, I used my bank line and a small stick to make a toggle, carefully slid the stick into the bottle, and lifted it gently out of the fire to cool. The char cloth actually turned out very nice as well. It blackened well and there were no white spots. Unfortunately the inside of the Altoids tin charred up pretty badly as well so I can no longer use it as a signaling device.

For my final thought, I like to think it is pretty obvious which kit is the winner, but we will still go ahead and break it down. Overall I was very pleased with the fanny pack, more so than I thought I would be. Everything I needed was at my hip and was easy to retrieve. The water bottle just did not have what you needed to survive in my opinion. I ranked the combustion kit in the survival water with a D, because I had to provide my own matches and in that kit that was the one and only way provided to make fire. For cover I ranked it a C because of the survival blanket, but I think there could have been more options in the way of cover. I gave the container a D, because I could not boil or purify water in it. It's saving grace was that I could hold a large amount of water in it. I gave the cutting tool an F, as it was pitiful. It isn't the smallest knife I have ever had, but it was definitely the worst knife I have ever had. I gave the cordage a C. It did it's job, however, I had 33ft. of  550 paracord in the bottle, yet in my kit I had 60 ft. of bank line that was much more compact. Moving on to my kit, I felt it performed above and beyond. My poncho worked very well as a cover, and I was even concerned it would rip but didn't. The contractor bags served their purpose as a moisture barrier and even held up to the task of having extra jobs, so to my cover I give an A+. My combustion kit had a rocky start, but I did have multiple ways of making fire and even created a fourth way to make fire while testing the kit so I give it an A. My container did it's job boiling water and my cordage did a fantastic job setting up my camp. I even had plenty left over. The Camillus Seize performed well in the field. I used it to clean up branches and carve stakes with ease. The 11-in-1 card had a rough start, but it did its job in the end. The final results are the Survival Water Bottle overall is ranked D, and the Fanny Pack EDC Kit is ranked A, at the lowest, maybe a B.

Next week we will be picking up where we left off two series ago. David Canterbury first started off with the 5 C's of Survivability, later he added an additional 5, which in total became the 10 C's of Survivability. We will be beginning next week with Compass. It will also be our first on location video. Make sure you don't miss out! As always feel free to comment, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.

It Was My Last Resort: Cover Option and EDC Kit Packed Away

Last week we talked about the second characteristic of a good EDC kit, as well as added a 17 oz. stainless steel water bottle and 60 ft. of bank line. If you would rather use paracord, I added two other options for paracord, so definitely check out last week’s blog to learn more about those. Our EDC kit is currently valued at about $40. This week we will be talking about the last characteristic as well as adding cover to our kit and packing it away. Lastly we will do a grand total value of our kit and I’ll tell you what I actually spent on it.

The third and final characteristic is re-usability. Re-usability is important for any piece of gear in your EDC kit as well anything you use and like the other two characteristics, gives you two distinct advantages. The first is that reusable items are going to be cost effective. In a world where we have emergency tents and disposable ponchos that are great when you need them and have them, once they are used that piece of gear is gone and has to be replaced. I would rather have a good, higher quality item that I pay more money for and be able to reuse it, This does not just apply to cover options. Matches are one and done while lighters can be reused over and over again. Sure, a single match costs less than a penny, but lighters are a onetime purchase, are compact, and even after they run out of fuel you can still cast sparks off of it. The magnifying glass is easily the most cost effective item in my kit because I use the power of the sun to start a fire.

The second distinct advantage is that these items can be used outside of an emergency. I know this goes against what I said. This is an emergency kit, not a camping kit, however, if you’re going to have this kit on you all day you would be foolish not to use it in your daily routine. I usually have some sort of situation every day that involves a knife. You may use your lighter to light a cigarette for a friend, use you magnifying glass to read a restaurant menu, use your 11-in-1 Card to open bottles or cans, or even use your bottle to provide your own drinking glass at a friend’s house.

Now for our cover option. This item like everything else was chosen because it is familiar to me, it is compact, and it is reusable. My cover option is going to be a reusable poncho that I’ve had for about a year. It has stood up to a lot of rain and a lot of football games, but still has a lot of life left in it. The poncho covers most of my body and I like that the sides unbutton turning it into a serape. Having my ends open leads me to believe that I can them off and fly the poncho like a tarp. On the other hand I can wear it with the sides buttoned up and bring my arms in. The poncho will keep out the rain and cold and help me to retain body heat. If it gets too bad, I can draw string the hood and cover my face more.

The poncho alone is not enough for me in the way of cover, I still need some kind of moisture barrier. I am also going to add some black contractor bags to my kit. You may remember them from my three day camp. I actually chose to pack two. The second can be used as a spare, but can also serves several other purposes. I can fill it with water which will save energy from going back and forth to collect water for my water bottle. I can fill it with leaves to make a bed, I can use it like a sleeping bag, and I can even cut the sides and fly it like a tarp if my poncho were to fail. We also talked about re-usability outside of an emergency situation. The poncho is obvious, but with some careful cutting the contractor bags can be come two more ponchos for two more friends.

Now where will we be storing this gear? I considered using a backpack, but it was too bulky. I thought a haversack might be nice, but I couldn’t get my hands on one. So after looking for an option I found a water-resistant, neutral colored, low key pack to store my EDC kit. I chose…a fanny pack.

 Now, it’s not my favorite option, but it does everything I need it to. It easily stores all of my gear and even has a pouch in the front so I can get to the gear I need the fastest. I have considered using something more military that would appear more like a tactical fanny pack that would cost between $20-$40. However I was trying to be cheap. Once I set up camp I will even have room in the fanny pack to carry my tinder or anything else I collect.

Now it’s time to value out the kit. The poncho cost me $5. The garbage bags came in a pack of 10 for $10. With two in my pack that adds another $2 making our cover value a total of $7. The fanny pack cost $10 and was the only item I actually purchased for my EDC kit. All other items I had or was already using. This brings our total value up to $57. Again the only item I purchased was the fanny pack so its more accurately $10 spent and $47 collected.

Next week we will be testing the EDC kit I put together against the store bought EDC kit. I know I’m excited and you won’t want to miss it! As always feel free to comment, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.