Adapt and improvise; knife mods

The Eickhorn Nordic Bushcraft (left) has been one of my favourite production bushcraft knives for about three years now. It's no longer in production but has really impressed me over the years and is still a knife I enjoy using. 

It does have drawbacks though, the aluminium handle scales make it very cold and uncomfortable to use in cold weather and as I visit Scandinavia fairly frequently and the cold never stops me from getting out and doing some bushcraft so I needed to do something about the handle. 

The original aluminium handle scales weren't uncomfortable other than in cold weather. 

I'm not a great craftsman and there is a very good reason that most of my knives are either production made or made for me by someone else but I particularly like this knife and didn't want a relatively minor issue like the handle material put me off using it. 

The handle scales were easy enough to remove with a torx bit, before my modifications the Eickhorn squirrel logo and designers name were visible on the ricasso but my new handle would cover them up allowing me to move my fingers closer to cutting edge, I also ground off the pronounced finger guard. I don't really like finger guards unless there is a very good reason for them, fighting knives or heavy duty chopping tools for example, they just get in the way for fine carving and most backwoods tasks. 

I chose a piece of burgundy micarta with white and red liners for the new handle.

I secured the handle with epoxy between the various layers and then pinned it all in place with dowels made out of box wood. 

The new handle does make the knife more comfortable to us in the cold but it doesn't make the knife itself any better. I prefer the way it looked before my modifications, the removal of the finger guard makes the handle look out of proportion to the rest of the knife but I do really like the layered handle and the way the liners turned out. 

I don't have the time, skill or patience to get the finish I would expect on a production knife on the micarta handles of my project but I did achieve what I wanted. 

I do like the way the handle liners look

The finger guard is gone and the ricasso is now partially covered by the new handle to allow me to grip it closer to the cutting edge. 

 While I can't boast the skill to make knives and knife handles to a particularly high standard I do enjoy tinkering with knife handles from time to time and personalising kit to meet your specific requirements is just a part of bushcraft.

 


I used to make a lot of knife handles, when I had more time on my hands and, and while my results were similarly mediocre to this project it was a lot of fun.

Some of the knife handles I made, over ten years ago now in my late teens and early 20's that I am most pleased with; this one is a small Bowie knife I made for my Dad with a handle of Puriri wood I brought back from New Zealand, brass and buffalo horn bolster and a home made mosaic pin.  

 A little whittling knife that I gave to my brother for his eighth birthday made of mahogany and rose. 

Adapt and improvise; bushcraft draw knife

As we've mentioned many times before bushcraft is all about adapting and improvising and one such adaptation you can make to your bushcraft knife is to turn it into a fairly effective draw knife very easily. 

A home made draw knife. 

A draw knife is used for a lot of green woodworking tasks and is normally a fairly long blade with handles set at 90 degrees to the blade edge. The blade is generally sharpened to a chisel grind meaning that one bevel is completely flat and the other slopes to meet it with no secondary bevel at all at the edge. The flat bevel is then used against the wood being worked, which is clamped in place, and the knife is then drawn towards you to remove shavings from the work piece. 

This sounds dangerous but the shape of the tool and the way you use it means that even though you pull the cutting edge towards yourself it will never reach you and can't cause you any harm. Draw knives though are heavy, expensive and too specialist to be carried amongst the average bushcrafters tool on a trip out to the woods so you can adapt your knife to be used like a draw knife with a bit of ingenuity. 

First take a stout green stick and carve s slot in one end, you do need to carve this rather then just force the tip of the knife into the grain otherwise it will split. 

Into this slot you can then insert the tip of your knife, this forms your draw knife, while both handles won't be at 90 degrees to the blade the stick forms one and the handle of the knife the other handle and it can now be used and controlled very easily for draw cut towards you. The addition of the stick adds power and leverage to the tip of the knife to power through knots and imperfections in the grain as you work wood.

The 'draw knife' in action on a piece of English Elm that's going be become a 'quick bow'.

 The knife used in this post is my custom knife made to my design by Ammonite Knives which you can read about in a past post HERE and HERE.

Adapt and Improvise; grain sack backpack

Having something to carry your kit in the wilderness is very important, we have included a page on making a roycraft pack frame in our bushcraft basics section  which is a great traditional way to carry loads in the woods. Another option if you have a few scavenged items is to make a pack out of a sack or a bundled blanket. To use an old grain sack or something similar as an improvised pack all you need is some cord and a couple of pebbles; 

Drop the pebbles into each corner of the sack and tie a simple snare style running loop at the end of piece of cord twice as long (plus a bit) as your desired pack straps. Do the same to the other end of the string and tighten each end around the bottom corners of the pack. The pebbles will help prevent the cord from slipping off. 

Now in the centre of the pack at the top to secure the straps and close the pack tie a clove hitch. To do this make two loops in the cord as shown above. 

Next cross the second loop behind the first and force the bunched up top of the pack through the loops. 

Now pull both ends of the cord and it will tighten, you know you have tied a clove hitch correctly if it forms an x shape as above. The clove hitch is a particularly useful knot for shelter building and climbing too. 

And there you have your finished pack, fashionably modelled by yours truly. The cord straps are not uncomfortable with normal loads but if you need to carry something very heavy consider using webbing or plaiting the cord to increase the surface area pressing on your shoulders.

So give the grain sack backpack a try, it's a cheap way to carry a load and a good option if you haven't got anything else. 

Adapt and Improvise; packing crate cabin

Shelter is often your priority in a survival or bushcraft situation, when I am on expedition I always pitch my tent first even if the weather is god so I have somewhere to keep and organise my kit, somewhere dry in case it does start to rain and somewhere to unpack my bag into so I don't loose kit amongst the leaf litter or undergrowth. 

At least half the fun of bushcraft is seeing what you can make out of nothing, In Riddy Wood we have a little cabin built out of heavy duty packing crates salvaged from the delivery of heavy machining equipment. The heavy duty ply wood isn't the most traditional or rustic material but it makes a great wind break and reflector for the stove inside. 

The cabin in Riddy Wood with the tarp roof looking a little the worse for wear after high winds. 

The walls are held up by sturdy ash and elm poles harvested from the woods with a single ridge pole in the centre held up by three taller forked poles. Over that ridge pole a heavy duty tarp forms the roof and one of the walls. A gap between the top of the walls and the roof let in the light but not the rain and give a little bit of air flow.

The ridge pole in the cabin is strong enough to hang equipment and keep blankets and carry mats up off the ground away from the rodents. 

The cabin was our home for Christmas in 2016 and was really warm and comfortable, the children loved spending Christmas in the woods. 

Another improvised cabin of hazel wattle and larch planks made with an Alaskan chainsaw mill. 

Another cabin building project in Riddy Wood was my sons log cabin made from coppiced elm poles. He loved spending a day in the woods building it. It's not a masterpiece and certainly isn't as impressive as the cabin of one of my 'bushcraft heroes' Dick Proennecke, who you will hear more about on this blog in the future, but it was great fun to work on.  It has two bunks in it and a tarp roof and the children love sleeping in it when we spend time in the woods.

Adapting and improvising is always going to be a big part of surviving out of doors and also a big part of life for self taught bushcrafters not to mention that it's great fun and often an exciting challenge.

Preparation Pays!

To write about scenes from a high seat, first they have to be installed! Well before the season started some like-minded friends and I went to the farm and installed some high seats, these were mounted 8 to 10 feet above the ground and usually secured to a nice solid tree and access gained via an integral ladder. The purposes are multiple but primarily to facilitate observation over a wider field of view than would be possible from ground level and second, to permit the bullet to go downwards harmlessly into the ground after it has passed through the target or, heaven forbid, if you should miss!

The location of the seat is decided based upon multiple observations during the closed season, how many deer have been spotted in an area which can be overseen by the seat, is it safe, away from public access and is there a tree to attach it to. The locations for the 2 seats we set up pre-season  had been carefully considered based on the points above.

The first was placed against a big old oak tree, slightly withered by a lightning strike at some time in its history. The size of tree and softness of the ground required some ingenuity to get it rock solid but we got there in the end, aided by a ratchet strap for further solidity, a chain and padlock for security and a little pruning to improve the view! Job done.

On our way to the next tree we saw a big old buck Chinese Water Deer standing defiantly and looking at us all in turn, in a couple of weeks, such a defiant posture at such close range will have him in the freezer but all we could do was watch and smile!

Murphy’s Law is alive and well in the countryside as we found out on arrival at tree 2! We found that there was something already living in it, a wasp nest deep in the tree had a continual stream of busy and threatening looking workers entering and leaving through a hole where a small branch had rotted off. None of us felt like sharing, so we found an alternative tree close by!

Always good to have a plan B! Whatever plan you’re on, enjoy it! 

Adapt and Improvise; The Combat Jacket.

Simple Survival Aids (although perhaps not those as bulky as a firesteel) can be secreted in clothing ready for an emergency

Thinking back over thirty years, I can recall spending hours making my clothes into a very basic survival kit. The reason will be obvious, it was all camouflaged clothing and my intention was to survive after being separated from my heavier kit. We called it E&E (escape and evasion) and some of us were good at it and others less so. For some it would be a miserable time, for some it was more about being a nuisance to the 'opposition', for me it was slipping away in to the woods and disappearing until I could get back to somewhere I could be useful, reunite myself with something more deadly than a rock in a sock or a club with some barbed wire wrapped around it and neutralise the enemy without getting up too close and personal.

I believed (and still do) in the 6 Ps, Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Pathetic Performance, there were 7 but these 6 publish better! Never go under-dressed, under-gunned or under-informed, never give a sucker an even break and do unto others before they do unto you, quite contrary to my Christian beliefs but back then I believed it and was ready to put it in to action if necessary.

So let's see if you've got the idea;

"what does a smart guy take to a knife fight?" 

"No, not a big knife, a 9mm pistol, an Uzi would be better! Now you get it? Good!"

Surviving for long periods in the most basic of circumstances will never be easy, POWs in a number of past conflicts have demonstrated the human body's resilience to abuse, neglect and deprivation but starvation is a poor companion, one to be avoided at all costs and my 'little kit' was designed to aid me in that goal. All my kit was very light and selected and secreted in such a manner as to be very hard to find even if searched. Below is a list of the things I had, the list is not exhaustive and should be modified based on likely local conditions in the area you are to survive in or transit through, most of this kit remained in place for years remember.

• Something to cut and skin which is basic. I had a 'key ring size' knife but also a scalpel blade carefully wrapped in foil so that it neither blunted in storage or burst through its containment and stuck in me, a short piece of scalpel handle is also useful and easily concealed in the heel of a boot for instance. 
• Fishing line, fairly light, with a couple of hooks and a few weights, 
• needle, 
• thread, 
• a couple of waterproof matches, 
• a couple of puritabs, 
• a miniature compass,
• para chord 
• snare wire. 

Many of these items were wrapped or sealed in tiny zip lock bags, the wire of course was designed to live unprotected. All of these items were then sewn into the jacket or trousers in a place where the material was double or treble, seams, buttons or zips, so their bulk was concealed by that particular feature in the garment.

I had rehearsed the likely scenarios and they were these.

1. If I was taken prisoner on my own or in a small group, I would take additional measures to prevent a thorough search, these included urinating on the garment or vomiting on it to discourage a thorough search of the portion containing something useful. I could also fein injury in that area again attempting to prevent a thorough search.
2. If we were taken en mass, I anticipated the processing being more cursory and it being unlikely to discover my stash, as the many hours of work had been successful in making these items near undetectable.

In addition to these few items, I had the lightest of all survival kit, knowledge, experience and the right attitude. I WAS going to survive and fight again, I WAS NOT going to starve in the wilderness and when I got fully kitted up again, I WAS going to be a real nuisance!

I strongly suggest that you put some really useful stuff into a favourite coat, a ruck sack or anything you have with you nearly all the time and forget it's there until you are in trouble. I carried a lifeboat ration pack for years at the bottom of my ruck sack, I only ate anything from it once as I recall, when I was really in need. It had a 5 year shelf life so I didn't have to swap or rotate it, it was just always there, just in case.

Now go and give some thought to what you may need sometime and put it somewhere that it will always be when you need it. Maybe the glovebox in your car, a credit card survival tool in your wallet (caution, airport metal,detectors will find it but the search won't,) just think through likely scenarios and mitigate the risk by stashing something somewhere you can find it when you need it most.

Plan ahead, live long and prosper

MG

Adapt and improvise; Kydex belt loop

I hate having to take my belt off to hang or remove my knife from it, and if you've seen my previous post about knives and the law you will know why I think it's important that you are able to easily remove your knife from your belt and store it when you are not using it.  And while some knives come in sheaths that allow them to be easily clipped on and off of a belt not all do, so I made something that solves the issue. 

A sheet of 3mm thick kydex was easy enough to cut to shape and after a bit of heating in the oven was pliable enough to fold into the shape below. One 'roll' to the left now houses my firesteel with it's home made laburnam wood handle, the whole thing then wraps around a belt and is secured at the bottom with a carabiner. It will fix securely to a belt without the carabiner but it's that that allows me to then hang my knife from it. The knife can then be easily removed and stowed in a rucksac and re-attached whenever necessary. The clip it'sef can be left on the belt once the knife is removed without causing offence or alarm to anybody or equally it can be removed as well without the need to take your belt off.  

Adapt and Improvise; Shotgun Shell matchbox

These matchboxes are really simple to make and are great for keeping small items safe and if you can get a tight enough fit between the lid and the container they are waterproof too.

First select some cartridges which have a high brass base, these make better lids. You will need to heat them until you can pull the base off. Make sure you don't allow the plastic case to actually begin to melt away or burn as that will make the next step harder. 

Now pull the base off, use pliers so you don't burn your fingers you need to aim for a result like the one on the right in the picture below.

If there is plastic left in the brass base it wont fit tightly as the lid of the matchbox and it will be very tricky to remove the remaining plastic. 

Next select a cartridge that will form the body of the matchbox, it's not as important that the brass base is as high on this part of the matchbox. Cut the crimped portion from the top of the cartridge so that the lid you have just made will fit tightly. 

 

The last thing you need to do is fill it with matches, fish hooks, potassium permangenate or whatever other survival gizmo you want to keep safe and dry.

Geoff

Survival Philosophy; A Prepared Mind

Many a trip to the high seat has long pauses when you can contemplate the state of the nation or a million and one other subjects. My mental calisthenics today had me weighing up the immeasurable value of an agile mind and the ability to improvise in a survival situation.

The circumstances of your arrival in the wilderness will have a lot to do with it but even then, the unexpected can always play a part, together with a generous helping of Murphy's law, in turning the best planned and most thoroughly equipped expedition, into a living nightmare which could be life changing or life threatening.

Imagine a well planned hunting trip in New Zealand, the right kit and the right people, with the right attitude and preparation, all in a spectacularly beautiful place. The light is fading in the high country and the last rays of sun glint on the snow. Time for camp, time for food and time for rest, so you set down the rucksack and start to trample the snow flat and hard for your camp and turn around just in time to see your rucksack with all of your kit tobogganing down the glacier to a place where time and daylight will prevent it's recovery before a long cold night on the hill with your wits and the contents of your pockets to survive on!

Geoffs rucksack at Sealy Tarns in New Zealands Southern Alps. The landscape is beautiful, but stark, without that rucksack what kind of night would you have ? 

Now that is right up there with the 'worse case scenarios' but that kind of thing can happen and there are documented cases of hunters faced with a bleak or even hypothermic night on a mountain, shooting something (like a cattle beast) and sleeping in the body cavity after removing the guts. Now that couldn't happen to me where I shoot, because if I could find cattle, I could find the gate! Furthermore, I don't shoot anything that's big enough to crawl inside of and I'd need 3 or 4 to get enough hide for a bivi and by the time I did all that the sun would be coming up anyway!

But the cases where someone may be dumped in the wilderness by tragic circumstance are somewhat different, here, improvisation may start even before you reach the ground, let me explain.

For many years I worked as a flying instructor and of course, part of that process involved teaching fledgling pilots how to land if the engine quits and of course where! Murphy and his gremlin accomplices have dictated your next few priorities, they passed the baton to gravity and you are headed down, hopefully with enough height and therefore time to plan a reasonable approach and get the aircraft down in as few pieces as possible.

A Robin DR400; one of the types aircraft I used to instruct on.
"G-CEKO Robin DR.400-100 Cadet (9667957152)" by aeroprints.com. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The common response from a newish pilot was, "there aren't any spaces big enough!" My response was, "it's because you're looking for one the same size as the one you took off from" Improvise! If push comes to shove, a football pitch will do, you won't be able to stop but you can use the goal posts as a brake, put the fuselage between the posts and let the wings and the goal posts work out the rest, simples!

In this simple, well fairly simple, example, you have the benefit of having someone look for you almost immediately, being shot down of course, is quite a different matter, you may not want to be found (certainly not by the guys who shot you down as we already established that they hate you!)

For some years my training and determination to live undetected, escape, evade and fight on, led me to have useful but very difficult to locate stuff sown into my combat jackets, normally around seams and buttons to make them harder to feel if searched and they were only the very most basic items, it certainly wasn't going to turn the experience in to a vacation, just gave me a few things that I wouldn't have to find, make or improvise (snare wire, fishing line and hooks, compass and blade). I was till going to have to improvise A LOT!

I think the real skill of improvisation is to see things differently and flexibly, compared with the daily norm, let's make a short list of examples so as not to turn this article in to war and peace.

Airfield could be anywhere from a football pitch to a lake bed to a patch of trees with tops at the same height to a piece of open water, some of these options are clearly better than others!

Car wreck could be source of shelter, battery power, fuel, wire for cordage, glass for cutting and signalling, seat belts for splints or strapping, seat fabric for water filters, windscreen washer bottle for fuel can, washer pipes for a siphon etc etc.

Light aircraft similar range of resources.

Parachute, miles of cordage, hammock, bivi, signal panels, water filter, fishing net, strapping, bandages, clothing, stretcher.

Skinning knife may have to look like glass, bone fragment or flint.

Dinner may have to look like a scrawny dead animal or a handful of berries or grubs.

You have the general idea now, so do some mental exercise a of your own and see what you can come up with.

There was a case of a young man lost in the snow on an immobilised snow mobile and probably going to freeze to death, he dropped a match in the fuel tank of the machine and lit up the area, he was soon found by the search party and he's alive. This was a pretty expensive rescue flare but what price do we put on life? When your options are limited, explore them all!

Be safe in the wild!

MG

Adapt and Improvise; Drinks Can Stove

This is by no means a new idea, but it is a good one. A really simple meths burner, similar to the style you would get in a trangia stove, can be made from two drinks cans. 

You will need two drinks cans, it doesn't matter what type as long as they are the same diameter.  

Cut both cans, if they average size cans then cut them in half, if they are taller like the can on the left in the first picture cut the bottom third off. You can easily do this with a Stanley knife rather than wrecking your decent bushcrafting knife.

You will now need to fit the two pieces together and poke some wholes in the rim of the uppermost can. 

Now use some aluminium tape to seal up the joins to stop the meths escaping. 

Finally remove the centre of the uppermost can, you could do this sooner but I found it makes the can fairly 'wobbly' and herder to work with. Now fill it with methylated spirits and light it. It's now ready to use 

Adapt and Improvise; Super light weight bivi kit

It's easy to spend an awful lot on light weight shelter solutions, light weight tents are an option and it seems that nowadays the bushcrafters staple shelter option is the tarp and hammock combination, and the army surplus 58 pattern poncho doesn't seem to cut it any more everyone want's supper light weight nylon branded tarps. That's taking things a long way from the original meaning of the work tarpaulin; which was basically a tarred pall (or cloth, normally made of canvas) used to cover things you wanted to keep dry.   

My solution to a light weight shelter solution is this;

This light weight set up all fits in the bottom compartment of a 65 litre rucksac, this means I can carry all sorts of other kit as well, this was important while I was in Italy recently as I had to carry a weeks worth of clothes and all the material for the workshops I ran at the eee conference. 

In fact this set up takes up so little space that I could carry a jumper and flight bag in the same compartment.  

From left to right; three quarter length inflatable sleeping pad, fly sheet from a £8 dome tent from Tesco, walking pole from Aldi, home made bivi bag, sleeping bag in a dry bag.  

That set up can be erected like this using the walking pole as a central pole and arranging the fly sheet around it tipi style, a few tent pegs are required here as well. 

Home Sweet Home, it may not be true improvisation as all the stuff I show here was originally designed with shelter in mind but perhaps not in quite the same way I use it.