Bushcraft Containers: Pot Hangers

Description

Constructing a pot hanging device and a bail for your pot or mug.

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Video Transcription

hi there guys been out practicing some bushcraft today and I thought I'd just talk about two items I have here in front of me I've got a guide designs 32 ounce stainless steel water bottle and a VAR --gaq 750 millimeter titanium mug and these are really the two main items that I take out with me when I'm cooking in the field or just carrying them around with me when I'm out practicing bushcraft and handling hot pots and pans on a fire can be a little bit tricky one thing I've been asked a number of times is how you attach these cables to each item this can be done with any pot and pan as a lip at the top but before I show you how you can actually attach these cables I'm just going to build a simple pot hanger it allows you to see how these actually function and what the benefit of them are so if we look at this tree here this is hazel and hazel is a very very popular tree and bushcraft and one you'll find all throughout the British Isles and certain parts of Europe a very very common tree and it's where hazelnuts come from kaalia Savile Anya is its scientific name and it's a member of the Silver Birch family if we look at some of the branches you'll see that some of them are very young they've got little new sort of saplings coming through just at the base here and some of them are actually dead as well and you can generally tell when they're dead because they have a lichen on them a spotted lichen and the bark starts to kind of flake off and if we just bend this branch you'll see it just sheared straight off and break and that doesn't damage the tree at all but it just sheds some dead weight and this is another useful reason why Hazel's so great is because when it's raining very heavily these branches will be standing there and it's basically just high and dry word for you to go and collect and break off break down and make a fire out of and they'll always be dry in the core if we look at the bark a little closer you'll see that there's these horizontally wrapped lines going all the way around them and they're everywhere and these are lenticels and this is something that's shared in all areas of flora really it's just a means at which gases can pass through but a great way of identifying the tree nonetheless if you get a close-up of the bark in the winter when there's no leaves but again the appearance of the tree alone should really give it away as it sprawls out the ground and all these thin limbs

unlike other trees that are generally a lot

the leaves alone are very easy to identify when the tree has leaves you can see it's oval-shaped with a point at the end almost a little bit like Elm and it has these severe veins running through them and you can sort of see that from the top of the leaf or the underside the undersides a bit clearer and at the end of each vein is kind of like a dominant tooth with smaller ones in between spc looks pretty good you can see there's lots of joints in it we've got a small joint just coming off there which should be pretty good as a pot hanger another bit further up which should even be the Y we've even got a Y here and there's a nice straight piece if we choose to use that so I think I probably will so we've got quite a lot of options so it's best to get everything out of one limb coppicing hazel isn't a bad thing it grows so quick it's just taking it the right way not taking too much I've got a hatchet on me today normally I use a saw and I'd recommend using a saw for this if you have one just because it makes it a lot cleaner and lot easier and you can do a bit of a cleaner joint an angle then then water will run off and it won't get rotted and infected and then new shoots can come out and it's just a healthy way of taking a limb off a hazel tree and encouraging a bit of growth in the meantime but obviously I need to be careful with the hatchet so I'm just going to take a stage back and support the branch just come in from the side here taking it down nice and low so now this is a I can just pull this backward and freeze up if you're a far away from camp and you have a saw it's best just to process it right there but because I've got a temp here

prefer working with the hatchet on the tongue gives me a cleaner cut it's a bit safer looking at this limb here I've got quite a few options but this is going to be my straight I'm going to get my pot hanger from this part here and take my Y from a little bit further up and I've plenty of spare wood to make a peg out of so I'm just going to start processing this thing

there's my straight piece there's the why this part here can make quite useful peg so we've got most of the components we need I've got the Y we've got the Straight component and obviously most of that will be pushed in the grain say do a live for quite a bit of it to be pushed in the ground you need to judge the soil as well and we assemble this things will sort of become a bit clearer and we've got the pot hang apart that goes on the end there say we've pretty much got all the components I did manage to salvage a peg all day I mean it would be ok but before we want to find something a little bit more substantial out of the wood I just put behind me there but we can always do that at the end obviously once we start to put it together so the first thing I'm going to do with this is pop a point on the end you can use a knife for this but this is a small piece of wood and I've got the hatchet so won't take very long something like that will be absolutely fine doesn't need to be the best point in the world or a work of art it's going to be stabbed in the ground and if you make it too sharp it'll just blunt anyway if you want a point to last a long time for example on reusable tent pegs if you're making them out of hazel make a bullet shape and that'd be very very strong then and it won't kind of fray when it goes in the ground and to make it even stronger you can do it used to do with arrows and push it in the ashes of a fire so there's no oxygen and it can't burn it would just cure and all the SAP will come out and it would be rock-hard but something like this will be absolutely fine the next thing we want to do is just take our knife there and bevel the top and beveling is way just take the edge of the grain off and often you do this with pegs and things you'd hammer in the ground you see it on fence posts then it just stops the mushrooming out stops the grain fraying away around the edge where you're hitting it and just makes it a bit neater you can use your thumb to just push against the knife just nip the edge of the grain off it just makes it a little bit tougher you can always round it off a little bit as well I'll make it even stronger you can always use this method as well you don't want to get your knuckles and your thumbs too close if you're not comfortable of that but I don't really mind it so there you go notice I'm not doing the other one because I'm not going to be hitting that if I hit that to put this in the ground it would split straight off but this is the main line there which is why you don't want to why there's almost too pronounced you don't want it like this because if you hit the middle you'll split it if you help either one you'll split it you almost want to main trunk with a little sapling coming off of it it's much easier to put in the ground that way you know put it just here with the Y hammered securely in the ground there's a few things you want to consider before you move on you want to take your straight and place it in the Y a determine where you want it to go I generally make sure one third of its hanging over the edge and two thirds are hanging back the straight I've gotten the demo is a little bit too short but it would be alright in this case just for show if the straight has any bends in it and at this moment you don't check where its positioning is in the Y you may make your carving sitted in there and it will then start to shift and move around to try and find its natural center of gravity so place the straight in the white mark out where you want it to go and make sure the fire will be further enough away from the actual Y itself as not to burn it I've got a piece of wood in my left hand here cuz obviously I'm using the ax with my dominant hand my right hand and I've got the mark I've made facing outward to my right hand side there so it's facing the cut I'm cutting in to where I've put that mark and what we're going to make is a flathead screwdriver and I'll quickly make mine and you'll see what I mean

what we can do now is sit it on our why it's like this decide whether it's at the right angle you really want it to be quite flat towards the end so we'll just turn this round which is actually slightly better and you can just kind of finish it off just move any material that you need see that should be absolutely fine

I'm just move it out to about there there we go we can actually peg the back down now making the peg shouldn't be difficult given its size and but what you want to do is just bevel the top again I mean this is a fairly rubbishy peg but it'll do the job because you're going to be hitting this part of it so you can just round that off very slightly

and just put a point on it it's one thing you can do this post here let's just put a nick in it like that and it just helps the peg bite in you don't want the peg to be here or here you want the peg to be as low down as possible so we're going to pop it just here make sure it sits in if you feel like the pegs in the ground think sort of hammer it or you'll just split it an alternative is just placing a big stone just on the end which works too so now it's time to make the pot hanger and this is probably by far one of the most important parts most of this bit here is just about it being structurally sound this bit here though you need to do some decent carving nothing too fancy but just enough to keep it biting onto that screwdriver like you're at the end but what I might do first is just tidy up the edges with a bit of beveling because by using the axe are a little bit chewed up

so Elise is tidied up a little bit but now we need to do some notches just along this neck here I've got on/off cut of wood here that's going to act as a little baton for me but what we want to do is just inspect the piece of wood we've got see how straight it is if it's got a huge curving kink in it it will affect the center of gravity and it can then hang in and sort of peculiar fashion I always make the notches along the inside because I just find it hangs a lot better and we're going to make three and bear in mind where these knots are because I'm going to be avoiding those so my first one will go here and we're going to make an X then again too far that's probably far enough to be quite honest that should do and then we'll do another reckon about here so you can see I'm going in quite far but not all the way to the pith if you go through to the pith you've really gone too far wants to be just before the pith is the core of the wood and it's brown on hazel it's quite distinct really going to make one at the top as well that's for the full boil also make the beaks quite steep

he's probably aren't quite steep enough but I generally finish them off in a second

and I'll show you how to do that so that's it

so you've got three notches even make one more there you'd make another there you can make as many as you like three is just a kind of standard really so you can see I've just turned my side to it I've generally work away from my inner leg it's definitely a safe practice to do that as I'm sure many nee and the reason I'm doing that is because I just want to work in a bit closer to myself because you get a little bit more control than being all the way over there so I'm just going to use something called a power cut where you just rotate your wrist just take away the bottom of the V you can work up the sides as well and drop the blade down a bit more take away that excess wood and you want it to be fairly long see we've got a little knot there so you know you've got quite a lot of clearance you not save on this one but

don't worry about these shavings because what you can do is just take the knife and press it down just free them up and it just cleans up the carving quite a lot you know two-stage cut is absolutely fine on that so you can see the beak isn't quite steep enough that's what I'm going to do is just take my knife just carve away the edges keep making sure my hands and legs are quite clear and that's probably how steep it should be a little bit like that but you can see there that's not too bad but a lot of clearance there as you take away the bark gives you a false sense of security because it's a soft or you doesn't mean anything it looks a bit like a tooth and it's kind of like a beak but you can see it's flat there we want it to be kind of cutting in a bit to actually points down so what you can do is just take your knife and press underneath it not all the way at the edge so you've got a tiny little point there about tml down just free up the sides as well try and cut away those pieces of wood and I don't have to put too much pressure down anymore consistent very light work and we can try that on our tooth on the end of our long stick and see how that holds up so when we place this on the end of here you can see it sits quite well and it sits quite comfortably there and you know you can knock it about but it will eventually come off because there's one more thing we need to do so what you want to do is when you've made your beak just place it just there take your knife and place it just at the point of the bee take the beak away make sure your hands and legs free and don't press too hard you really don't need to just scooping away that's I any bit of that hazel there just literally spooning it out with the knife supposed to drilling the point in if you push too hard you'll just split straight through sits Greenwood if your legs are there you'll you'll go into them so we've made a little indentation though and the beak can just slot in and rock like a pendulum almost so in your pots are on the end and they've got weight on them they're really going to pull it down into that notch and it will stay in there even if you knock it just like this my only tip really would be after watching all of that is that you need to go out and do it like everything really once you've gone out there and actually done it you'll see all the variables and all the things that you need to do it's just it's just very basic it's just one of those practical things that make sense when you do it almost like all bushcraft tasks but a little tip would be that the underside of this screwdriver needs to be flat it can't be sticking out too much or else what you'll find will happen is it'll push the site further and then you'll put your indentation really close to the edge the grain will split and the whole thing will come out especially when you've got your food on there so you want it to be fairly deep for really so it's got that bite and don't go too deep onto this so you can see the pith again or things are just going to start to fall apart really you need the integrity of the wood there especially when you're working with green wood it's not so bad when you know it's been cured but we'll make the rest of the indentation sorry the notches and then we can put our pots on and see how it works so I've made the rest of the notches and they all match up pretty well so that notch there you can see we've got various adjustments going on and what we can actually do and with the weight of the pot it keeps it Central every time the more weight that the pot has in it obviously the better this thing will function you can see there we could have some food in that have a fairly small fire just the residual heat of the fire keeping our food warm we actually want to then heat it up a bit drop it down a little bit further you can heat your food up and maybe you want to sterilize some water you want right in the embers cooking away boiling away they're nice and hot so it gives you a variety of things that you can do with it obviously when you want to take your pots off the fire you can just pick it off like this and then you have a hundred and eighty degrees all the way around your camp that you can move around and be very comfortable with it also means that when you're pouring a drink you can do it in a sort of controlled manner just by keeping the pot levered on the pot hanger like that it means you're not sort of burning yourself well you're minimizing the risk of burning yourself basically which is the most important thing but let's have a look at how these wires are attached so I have some steel wire here and this is six twist steel wire and I just bought this from a hardware store with something like 45 P for a couple of metres worth but it's absolutely perfect and there's no plastic lining on the inside sometimes with these steel wires or cables you have a plastic film on the inside this can be removed with heat or just by pulling it out in a certain way but best to get yourself some stuff that doesn't have that in and save yourself the hassle but it's fairly flexible stuff so you just want to test it before you buy make sure it's steel so it can hold up in any kind of temperature really but what I've got threaded onto them is some electrical connectors and these are the brass blocks you get out of those white figure-of-eight electrical connectors that you buy and I'll put a link in the description if you're unsure about what I mean you can have a look at an image but you just cut them out cut the brass block out they have two screws and all you're doing to thread them around the lip of the pot for example you're just making

a loop like that and then fastening the screws on and doing exactly the same the other side so you do this when it's on the pot we'll do it in a sec so those two wraps round and then this bit here is free on the top here so you've got like a portion that's accessed I actually hang on the pot hanger so if we just assemble that now you'll see how easy it actually is we just want to put that round like that pop that in there can undo the screws a bit so it's just literally like that you sometimes need to pull the main length as line through just to tighten it up a bit and that can cause a few problems but got away with it there might need a little screwdriver or multi-tool just to do it up you can do it up nice and tight you can see that's one of them done and it's just on there and then we do the other one so that comes around here just goes underneath reading through bikes since they can come around just go underneath you're just putting it back in it's a lot easier if you've got fresh wire because it doesn't fray so much obviously I've taken this out a few times lost one of the screws there it's okay and then we'll just can see obviously the loops too big so we'll just pull on the mainline it's going to actually be our pot hanger just to tighten it up and you can sometimes put your thumb 'la you know just to stop the piece you've pushed in and coming out like that just put that screw back in so what you should be left with is something like this and these bolts will move around freely and you can loosen them up to get the pot hang apart I like that and just brush it over the top and if you bend these slightly and have some water in it the center of gravity will actually make it a bit more true instead of you having to kind of adjust the bolts that find the right drop on it but when you're finished with it you just pull the bolts back and it tucks away underneath the lip and you know you can just obviously put that in your pack anyway interfere with anything so you can see once it's finished it tucks nicely under the lip of the mug and you can do this on most mugs with a lip you just push on those two little bolts there it frees up the wire and you just pop that on your pot hanger and you can sterilize your water and do your cooking and you know then take it off and actually handle it by putting a twig through the back of the handle and pouring and it just basically minimizes the chance of you burning yourself which is what it's all about and just makes cooking a lot easier in the field and it's exactly the same on the guys designs Bowl I've made my one quite long but you can shorten it very easily by just doing a figure of eight and then dropping the top loop down and it just makes it a lot smaller so when you put it on the pot hanger yeah you know you're bringing it up a little bit more if you didn't kind of make the design properly but normally I just sterilize water in this pot so I have it as low down in the fire as possible really right in the embers with the flame surrounding it getting a really quick boil on the go but there's this one's a bit smaller because I need it to be a bit more kind of sensitive in terms of cooking food because I want to control the heat a bit more so guys I hope that video helped out with putting the pot hanger on the got designs bottle and the mug you can do it with any number of different things even on a titanium plate well that might be a bit iffy probably have to do kind of three pieces of cord instead of the two but you know might be worth a go if you really want to do something like that but thanks again for watching and really appreciate you you know watching the videos and hope you enjoy what's the common thanks again and I'll see you in the next vid take care