Every Day I'm Carryin': Building EDC Kits and Choosing Cutting and Combustion Options

Last week we highlighted and briefly talked about five blogs that I thought would help prepare for the next series we are going into: EDC kits. If you aren’t sure what EDC stands for, it is an acronym for Every Day Carry. This is a collection or group of items, equipment and gear that when working together can improve survivability in an emergency situation.

EDC kits range from very small to very complex. The smaller kits can be as simple as containing one item such as a knife, lighter, emergency poncho, or a gun. The problem with these simple kits is that they often don’t contain enough tools to improve survivability in an emergency situation. On the flip side, complex kits which are much larger and are filled up with anything and everything from take down bows, full fishing tackle, pop up tents, and a dozen or so MREs. The downside to this type of kit is that they are often too large and too bulky to be conveniently carried around every day. I believe your EDC should be right there in the middle. It should contain just enough tools to improve your survivability in an emergency situation and it should be light and compact enough that you will be willing to take it with you everywhere you go every day.

While putting together my own EDC kit, I came up with three qualities all of the items in your kit should have. The first of these three is Familiarity.  This is something we outdoorsmen are not new to. We are familiar with our bug out bags, our fishing gear, our kayak gear, and the firearms we take into the field, and so on. For the same reason, you should be familiar with your EDC kit.

Being familiar with your gear is going to give you two distinct advantages. The first advantage is that you are going to know the capabilities and limitations of your gear. For example, if you have a knife that you know you cannot baton with, you are not going to waste energy and resources trying to baton with that knife. You also minimize the risk of injury if something were to happen and the knife breaks while you are batoning and comes back on you. You become familiar with these items during what Dave Canterbury calls “dirt time” which is the time you spend out in the field actually working with your gear. I recommend that anything you pack in your EDC kit is as trusted as your best friend.

The second advantage you will have is knowing how to manipulate your gear into getting the desired result. For example you will know where to strike the ferro rod on your knife, what angle to hold it at when you want a deep or shallow cut, and how much wood and force to use when batoning. A person who carves spoons and bowls out of wood with nothing but a pocket knife has used that knife enough through dirt time that they know how to manipulate to achieve the results they want. It’s not all the knife and it is not all the skill of the person holding the knife, it is a combination of both. This is the familiarity you want with your EDC gear.

Now we can get into actually building our EDC kit. When starting off, it is important to have a framework in mind of what you expect from your gear. You can look for other ideas online, but I am going to base mine around the five C’s of survivability. First up is cutting tool. I have my Camillus Seize which I know can strike a ferro rod, and carve. My second option is the UST 11-in-1 card. It has a knife blade, flathead screwdriver, can opener, bottle opener, saw blade, 4cm ruler, different sized hex wrenches, and a butterfly wrench. It also has a feature called a directional ancillary indicator which I’ll do more on later. I like this tool for its saw blade which allows me to cut notches without having to carve with my knife, as well as it has various 90 degree angles to strike a ferro rod on.

Next up is our Combustion kit. In my kit I have a lighter, a micro ferro rod, and a magnifying glass like what you would see someone reading a restaurant menu with. Each of these tools has a purpose to make a specific type of fire. First, with a flick of the Bic, we have sure fire. This allows me to easily light my tinder and get my fire started. Next is the ferro rod which is not as good as sure fire but does cast better sparks than flint and steel. Both the lighter and ferro rod are non-renewable resources. Lighting the lighter uses butane and striking the ferro rod chips away material. The magnifying glass is a renewable resource because I can always use it to enhance the sun’s rays and start a fire. All items except my cutting tool are stored in an Altoids tin. It is cheap and convenient and can also be used for sewing and fishing kits. These tins are great because you can make them water tight by wrapping the opening with two overlapping pieces of electrical tape. It can be used as a signaling device with the polished metal inside the tin. Lastly there are enough holes in the back of the tin that you can actually char in it.

Now let’s talk price. The knife was the most expensive item, which I spent $30 on, however I have seen it sell for as cheap as $10. The 11-in-1 card was $2 but I got it on sale for $1. If the Seize happened to be on sale you would likely get both of these items for $20. The Altoids tin candy and all cost about $3. The magnifying glass and ferro rod come in a pack of 10 for $10 which translates to $1 each and the lighter also come in a pack of eight and is roughly $1 individually. Altogether we have spent about $25 on our EDC kit. The ones you find in store already put together run for about $20 so you are spending more, however, if you are using gear you are familiar with, these items should already be accessible to you and you really aren’t spending anything at all.

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.

Sharpest Tools in the Shed: A Review of Camillus Knives

We’ve talked about all the different types of cutting tools and how to properly care for them. Today we are doing a review, but we’re shaking things up a bit. Today’s view will be done in video form! Click here and here to watch. I will be talking about a brand of cutting tools that is one of my personal favorites; Camillus knives. I will be talking about six pieces of Camillus equipment today.

First we will be talking about the Camillus Trench, a Swiss Army Knife like tool which I spent about $15 on at Walmart.com. Its attachments include a 3” knife blade, a can opener which is oddly enough not sharp at all, a bottle opener which doubles as a Phillips head screwdriver, and an awl which is eyeless. I do not like the eyeless awl because you can’t use it to sew with. It also has a metal strap on the back which you can put a piece of wood through and create a spear. It has a metal scaled handle which is good for keeping a grip. In field testing, I know right away that this knife will not strike a ferro rod because the knife is not locked into place. You could actually cut your hand trying to strike the rod so I would not recommend it. When woodworking, this knife debarks the wood very well. It is not so good for taking off large chunks of material at a time, but it could get the job done. It was also able to form some nice curls in the wood. Testing out some of the attachments on this tool, I tried the can opener which was pretty easy to work with despite the fact that it is not sharp. It took me about one full minute to open a can of food. Next I tried out the awl. It took it a bit longer and a bit more work than I would have liked to get it to make a hole in the leather. It did get the job done though.

Next is the Camillus Seize which I paid $30 for at Walmart. It is a folding pocket knife with a 3” blade and thumb studs for single handed open. Unfolded the knife is 8” overall. It also includes a pocket clip and a lanyard hole. There is also a locking mechanism in place when the knife is completely unfolded and has to be undone before folding it back off. Finally, the handle is a nylon scaled grip. The Seize unlike the Trench locks its blade into place and has no trouble when striking a ferro rod and getting sparks. A very good carving knife for taking off big chunks of material and debarking. This knife was able to make tighter curls than the Trench as well.

Moving on to the Camillus Drop Point, the knife that got me into Camillus, which I found at Walmart for $10. This knife has a 4” blade and a rubber handle which makes for an excellent grip. Part of the spine is 90 degrees while part of it is beveled. This knife like the Seize, has a lanyard hole. You can also purchase this knife in black if the brown color is not for you. The Drop Point can cast spark with no problem whatsoever when striking a ferro rod. For woodworking purposes this knife took off large chunks of materials and debarked well, but due to its size it had difficulty making tighter curls. The Drop Point when used to baton a piece of wood about 1” in diameter did very well and there were no issues to report.

Here we have the Camillus Sin, $32 on Amazon.com. It is a tomahawk that
is 16” tall with a 4” blade. You will also notice the spiked edge. The handle is 18.5’ of 550 paracord wrapped. The circle behind the blade could be used for seize up, fleshing, or possibly even a draw knife. Find a place to strike the ferro rod on the Sin was a bit challenging, but when I found a place to strike it there were sparks made almost effortlessly. I did not try to do any fine woodworking tasks with the Sin for hopefully obvious reasons. When it came to processing larger pieces of wood, I simply used the tomahawk to chop unlike the knives which I used to baton the wood. With about a minute of work the Sin was able to separate a larger piece of wood about 4” in diameter.

For $30 at Walmart you could pick yourself up a Camillus Carnivore, a machete. The blade is 12” long which is good for a measuring tool. About 9-10” of it is a saw blade and above it is the gut hook. At the top it is chiseled and then flat which makes for an excellent digging tool. There is a plastic grip handle with a lanyard hole. The Carnivore is good for large woodworking tasks, but not good for fine details. With your purchase you will find a smaller knife, good for finer woodworking skills with notches on the blade for making it into a spear. There are two hexbolt wrenches, the smaller is 7mm while the larger is 9mm. When trying to strike the ferro rod I tested both the machete and the smaller knife. I struck against the bottom of the knife blade and the bottom of the machete below the teeth and got sparks off of both blades. I did not try to do fine woodworking with the machete, however I did give the smaller knife a go. It debarked well and struggled to take off larger chunks of material. It couldn’t really form a curl well, but I am will to give the benefit of the doubt that it is just out of the box and may need a profile touch up. Now, the gut hook on the Carnivore should be sharp enough to cut paracord if I needed it to. Unfortunately the gut hook on this product was not sharp enough to do that and barely broke the mantle on the cord. I chose to process larger pieces of wood with both the saw blade and the machete blade of the Carnivore. The saw itself did pretty well and worked perhaps even quicker than the Sin, however the effort was straining on my hand. When using the machete blade to chop it was much more inefficient than the Sin and would take longer to completely separate the wood.

Last but not least we have the Camillus Bushcraft, which my wonderful wife got me for $68 onAmazon.com. It has a 4” coated blade with the hump of a butcher knife. It is a full 90 degrees and full tang as well. The handle is canvas with a lanyard hole and makes for a very good grip. It stows away in a leather sheath with holes drilled all the way through it which you can use to tie the knife into it. The Bushcraft got sparks off the ferro rod, but I wasn’t too concerned with that due to the design of the knife. This knife performed the fine wood working tasks effortlessly. It took off large chunks of material, debarked, and formed tight curls with ease. For a larger wood working task I used the Bushcraft to baton a piece of would about 1” in diameter and had no problems with it whatsoever.

To wrap this up, I think we all can agree that these tools are all unique and have their own individual talents when it comes to certain tasks. I’m sure you’re wondering which one I would recommend taking with you, and as I’ve told you before, the tools you take with you are going to depend on what tasks you are trying to accomplish out in the bush. If you are looking to process large pieces of wood while you’re out, the Camillus Sin may be a good choice for you. The same if your pack has some canned goods stored away for you to eat. The Trench will be your friend come dinner time. 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. Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. If video is more your thing, then check out my YouTube channel Backpack Bushcraft. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.

The Daily Grind: Maintaining Your Equipment in the Field

Over the past few weeks we have talked about various cutting tools you would take into the field such as knives, axes, and saws. But let’s be honest here, these tools are going to do absolutely nothing for you if you do not care for and maintain them. With proper maintenance, these tools could last you for years and you will find that they even perform better, but without it, you will be out a considerable amount of energy trying to work with them and money having to replace your tools because they have fallen apart or are now completely worn down. So as you can imagine, this week we will be talking about proper maintenance for your cutting tools while outdoors so you can get the most out of what they have to offer.

The biggest problem with taking maintenance tools into the bush, is the amount of weight and space they can take up in your back. While I’m sure your Japanese water stones are the best when it comes to sharpening your blade, it can be highly impractical to take it with you, along with a belt sander or various other things that you may use to sharpen your knives. However, some items are sold to be taken into the field to help you keep that edge.

The first thing that I want to introduce you to is a two-stage portable knife sharpener. This will resemble a square with two open slices into the top side and the bottom side. One side will contain sharpening stones and be called the “coarse” side. This will be used to take off large amounts of material as you begin to treat your blade.  The other side will have one labeled “fine” which will have ceramic rods in it. Now I am going to be honest with you, I am not the best knife sharpener and when I was young, I always believed that you had to start with coarse side and move to the fine side. However, now, I have been told that you should only use the coarse side for fixed blade knives and that the fine side is for something different. So when you begin to use this product you want to slowly draw the blade across the stones. You will end up having to apply pressure and you will more than likely pull it at an angle than straight across. It make take a few swipes to get it sharp enough. This will be good to sharpen most pocket knives.

Fixed blade knives such as my old hickory butcher knife, to ensure that I get the entire cutting surface, I want to use a different set up. The sharpener that I use for it only has the coarse stones, and, has a guard for your fingers so that you are able to draw the knife across the whole thing without worrying about cutting yourself. It may take you a few swipes to get your blades as sharp as you want. Be patient and check your knives frequently by using the paper test.

 

Now as I said earlier, you can’t take your giant Japanese water stones, however, you can find some smaller versions that can be used to hone your blade while in the field. A good rule of thumb while using them, you want to maintain a good 20 degree angle. To do this, take the corner of a piece of paper, fold it in half making it 45 degrees, then fold it in half again making it 22.5 degrees.

Sometimes you’ll even find tools that do them all. I picked up this device at a gun store on a discount. It has three sides to sharpen your knife on, and a 20 degree guide, along with a fishing hook sharpener. This could be an all in one device that you take just for your maintenance. That’ll just about do it for knives. Now let’s move on to your axe.

When working on my axe in the field, I like to have a bastard file with me. You can pick these up at Walmart in the tool aisle. The reason I always like to pack my file with me is to treat a nick that can be very common when using an axe, or just to touch up the face if I had made a previous mistake. Remember that files only cut one way so once you figure out how that file cuts, you only want to use it in that direction. Unlike with the others that give you a rudimentary guide, you really just have to eyeball this one. What has always helped me has been to look down the edge and you will be able to see the thickness of the metal that is still left.

Once I have removed a good deal of material, I like to follow up with a Lansky Duel Grit Sharpener Puck. It is $7 on Amazon.com. Take my advice, only use water when using stones like this. If you use oil, you’ll have to bring oil in the field. However, if you use water, it’s easier to come by and gives you pretty much the same result in my opinion. I submerge my puck in water until the bubbles stop coming up. Then I find the coarse side and in a circular motion rub it on the edge of my axe blade. The goal is to take off a enough material to bring my edge back.

Lastly I like to follow up all of this with a diamond rod. This really could be the only device that you may need for your maintenance out in the field as it gives you something to hone your blade. The one I have has a flat face, a round face, and a pointed end. This allows me to make sure that I can run the length of my blade no matter what I’m working on.

That will have to do it for this blog. If you are looking to purchase any of these items to take with you I suggest getting, a file, a diamond rod, and a 2 stage knife sharpener. This will give you a great start. If you have an axe I highly recommend getting a puck too. Next week will be the final week in this series of cutting tools. Thank you guys so much for tuning in each week to read my words. However, the next blog will be a little different. Not only will you get the blog, but I am also going to put up the first episode of backpack Bushcraft on YouTube. Both the blog and the video will be a knife review, so you don’t want to 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. Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Also check out my YouTube Channel: Backpack Bushcraft for video updates and corresponding tutorials. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.

Battle of the Blades: Fixed Blade Knife vs. Hatchet

We’re finally here. This is probably going to be the most anticipated blog of all of the blogs we’ve posted up in the last few months. This series of blogs will encompass the final C, the cutting tool. Bushcraft should almost be synonymous with knife stuff. Whenever you see someone talking about Bushcraft, there’s a knife involved. There’s a knife either on their belt, around their neck, or in their pocket or hand. I won’t even lie, even I am holding a knife in my cover picture for the website. Now why would that be? Because everything that we do requires that piece of metal. Think about something as simple as starting a fire. More than likely you’re going to use your knife to process the fine material and to baton wood for fuel. It can be used for carving feather sticks for your fire lay. You can strike a ferro rod or flint against it to create sparks. You could possibly even use the handle as part of your socket for a primitive bow drill set. That’s 5 uses for your knife in making fire alone.

What are you going to do with that fire? Cook with it? If that’s the case you may need to carve yourself a bowl and a spoon. Maybe a fork. Maybe make a plank of wood to soak and grill fish on. You may even want to carve a stake to roast your fish on. If you’re cooking something bigger, you may even need a spit to roast your meat on. But let’s say you’re making soup in a pot. You’ll probably have to carve a pot hook and lash that together in conjunction with your tripod. You may want to carve notches into the pot holder so you can adjust the level which you are cooking on. A good rule of thumb that I have come up with is whatever you don’t plan to bring with you, have a plan on how to make it. Nine times out of ten, you’ll need your knife to achieve that. 

Now before you go run off and grab a big steak knife or cleaver from your kitchen, not all knives are created equal and trying to talk about all the different knives and their individual uses would take all of this blog as well as the next few. So instead of carrying a bunch of knives, we want to find that great multitasker in the drawer. Now our forefathers found that the best knife to use was a butcher knife. Now they didn’t read Ye Ole Blog to find that out. They did exactly what I’m telling you to do now, which is to think “what is it that I’m going to be doing?” and find a knife that accomplishes all those tasks. For the woodsmen back then, they would mostly go out to hunt and possibly collect materials from the outdoors, so they would need a knife that could perform tasks such as skinning, cutting meat, working well with wood, and maybe even chopping up herbs. These men did not have disposable incomes. In fact most of the time these trips were used to increase the coiffeurs of the household. So often they would just grab a knife from out of the drawer. Most of the time that knife was just a 6” butcher knife. You can find them still today, mostly still the same way for a reasonable price. They have features such as a full tang so you can baton with it, a long blade that is good for skinning with, and because it is good for skinning it is good for fine carving tasks. It has a wooden handle with pins in it, meaning that if you lost the handle you could repair the knife or maybe even craft a handle on the fly.  And as dictated by free market, the success of this knife would have been passed on from friend to friend and throughout their generations.

Now I promised you last week a battle and I couldn’t do that if I have another competitor. There are a lot of cutting tools out there that can be companions to a good belt knife. A saw, an axe, a pocket knife, or a specialty knife. In modern days we could even use a multitool. However, there is one tool that I do believe can replace a knife if you want it to. And that tool would be the hatchet. A small one-handed axe with a 4” cutting edge. Similar to the Native American tomahawk except for the fact that the blade could not be taken off, it could be used to process game, cast sparks if made from the correct metal, could be choked up on to get finer carving tasks that you could get out of a knife, and of course could be used like an axe to process fire wood or chop down saplings. There is even a famous book called Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, in which a young boy is stranded in the Canadian wilderness with only a hatchet to survive with. Side note: this was one of the first books of my childhood that got me into the outdoors.

And with all that, let’s give my childhood a little closure and figure out which is better, the knife, or the hatchet? For this series of tests I will be using a Camillus Drop Point fix blade with a 4 ¾” blade (purchased at Walmart) and a Truper boy’s camping axe (purchased at Tractor Supply). The goal of my test was to see how well they could each chop, carve, split wood, and also cast a spark to make a fire.

For the first one, I had a green branch of a tulip popular tree. I started with the hatchet first and attempted to cut off a 9” section of branch to carve with. After about one minute of work, the hatchet had went through more than half and I was able to snap it off. If I had chosen to, I could have continued working with the hatchet because it wasn’t taxing. Then when we switched to the Camillus to do the same job, I found that it only took out a quarter of the material in one minute, and that it was a taxing process. Also, unlike the hatchet, I had to use a piece of wood to baton strike my blade to get it to cut into the wood, and I had to perform the technique known as “beaver chewing” which is where you would cut the wood in the way a beaver would chew through a branch. For the first round, I am giving it to the hatchet; not surprising seeing that this task is the hatchet’s primary job.

For the second round, I wanted to carve both a spiked end and a blunt end. Starting with the hatchet again, I was able to debark very easily and make a crude spear point. Next, working at my stump and anvil, I had to go about the task of trying to give it the round top, which was not easy and the hatchet was difficult to work with in performing this task. When I test the stake to be put into the ground, the top mushroomed out, and the spear was not good enough to go deep into the ground and therefore wouldn’t make an adequate tent stake. Moving on to the fixed blade, it debarked easier, made a much better spear point, and rounded edge, and it was very easy and controlled while being worked with. When testing the second stake in the same manner as the first, the top did mushroom, however, the stake actually went deeper into the ground and would have made a decent tent stake. The winner of this round goes to the fixed blade for its control and better shaping of the wood.

 Following this test, I wanted to carve feather sticks, something every woodsman needs to know when making a fire (something we’ll probably talk about in a later blog). During this test, the hatchet was not sharp enough to give enough control to round the curve without taking everything off at the top. The few curls I got were not good and deep. However, when using the knife, I did have that sharpness and control. I was able to get very big elaborate curls. Again, the winner is the fixed blade. The hatchet just could not perform the task that it was given.

For the fourth task, I wanted to baton wood. I am prepared to go ahead and give this to the hatchet because I already know that between the two of them, the hatchet could split larger pieces of wood if needed. However, with that being said, while batoning both with the hatchet and the fixed blade, I got very good results, with possibly better out of the hatchet. However, the quality of the product is just as important as the quality of the work. Both knives got the job done and did fairly well at getting the job done, but the each performed in different ways. With the hatchet, if the wood would have stood by itself, I could have split it. However, since it couldn’t, I had to baton the axe the way I would a knife. It still did its job fine, gave me a very clean cut, and I was not worried at any moment that I could possibly break the hatchet. When I split with the knife, it split the wood well, was not any more tasking than using the hatchet, however, with every strike, I had to worry if I could possibly break my blade because of how thin it was compared to the hatchet.

                                    

For the final test, I wanted to throw sparks off of my ferro rod. I knew I was going to be in trouble when starting with the hatchet because I could not find a 90 degree edge. After look it over two or three times, I knew what I was going to have to do. I struck the ferro rod against the cutting edge to produce sparks. It didn’t seem to hurt the hatchet too bad, however I would never, ever, advise that unless you absolutely had to. I did it in this experiment because I was testing a scenario in which I had to do that. The sparks provided were pretty good and I do believe I could have built a fire. Following that performance I switched to the fixed blade where I used my 90 degree spine to cast sparks easily, and consistently. For the final test and the tie breaker, I have to go with the fixed blade.

In closing, I believe that both of these tools are great in their own right, however, when it comes to multitasking, I find that a good fixed blade can often outperform or at least keep pace with a hatchet, but not the other way around. Due to the hatchet’s design, it does not allow for the smooth, even carving that you can get from a fixed blade, which is why it fails in the carving task it was given. However, where the fixed blade is full tang, it provides it with some durability to accomplish those tasks that I would give to the hatchet such as batoning and beaver chewing. It doesn’t accomplish it as well as the hatchet, but it does get the job done. Finally I believe that the fixed blade wins overall because it can be used to strike that ferro rod which is something THIS hatchet couldn’t do, which brings me to my final point. My hatchet could not strike a ferro rod, however if I took some time and put in a 90 degree edge somewhere on my hatchet, worked my profile to accomplish those carving tasks better, this could be a new ballgame.

Overall, I think that I prefer fixed blades over hatchets. Tell me what you prefer down in the comments. I hope you enjoyed this little contest. In the end if you don’t know which one to take, go nuts and take both. Next week I will be going over another cutting tool that in some ways can put both of these to shame. Comment below what you think it is by 11:30 pm EST Sunday July 30^th, 2017. The first commenter that gets it right will get a shoutout in the next blog. As always feel free to comment, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one. Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.