Bushcraft Philosophy, Smoky Firewood, Iodine, Leatherworking | #AskPaulkirtley 54

Description

Welcome to Episode 54 of #AskPaulKirtley, where I answer questions about surprisingly smoky firewood, clean clothes and hardened hands, water purification by evaporation, iodine for wounds and water, investing time in leatherworking skills, my philosophical starting point for bushcraft.

TIMESTAMPS:

02:30 Nova Scotia Bushcraft meet

03:38 Surprisingly smoky firewood

05:56 Clean clothes and hardened hands

13:00 Water purification by evaporation

19:11 Iodine for wounds and water

25:08 Investing time in leatherworking skills

27:50 Philosophical starting point for bushcraft?

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Ask Paul Kirtley is a regular Q&A show (also available as a podcast) with leading bushcraft instructor Paul Kirtley, founder of Frontier Bushcraft and author of Paul Kirtley's Blog.

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Tags: bushcraft,survival,wilderness,camping,hiking,outdoors,question and answer,advice,questions,answers,bushcrafting,nature,self reliance,self sufficiency,outdoor skills,outdoor knowledge,Paul Kirtley,askpaulkirtley,firewood,smoke,iodine,leatherwork,evaporation

Video Transcription

in this episode of a sport currently we are going to talk about surprisingly smoky firewood clean clothes and harden hands while in the woods water purification by evaporation iodine for wounds and water investing time in leather working skills is it worth it and what's my philosophical starting point for bushcraft with the door [Music]

welcome welcome to asphalt curtly episode 54 and I'm back in lovely sunny Sussex and it continues to be nice we've had very little rainfall still and things are greened up massively despite the lack of rainfall we've had some heavy showers some thundershowers but overall we've had one of the driest April's and Mays in a long long time so it's nice to be in the woods because we can actually sit on the floor without getting soaking wet we could you know move around without being splurging around in mud it's actually been a really nice spring and it's continuing to be a really nice start to the summer so back in the woods after being in Derbyshire on the last episode where I did the live a sport currently at the bushcraft show if you've not seen that one already check it out that was a lot of fun to do lots of questions from a live audience without any prep at all they just fired their questions at me and that was really really fun to do and frankly that's all I pretty much do on these shows anyway yes I kind of gather the questions together but you know I sort of throw a selection together and try to to choose some that are not all in the same vein or some representative one so if there were some repetetive ones I'll choose one but I don't really think about it too much I certainly don't go away and research my answers I just go right get those onto my phone next time in the woods I'll sit down and answer them and so here we are and let's get started and the first question very quick one is via Instagram and this is from bluefish 6900 and their question is will you be in Canada in August Nova Scotia's bushcraft gathering is 10 to the 13th would love you to join us by the way really enjoy your blog's so much of its common sense which isn't always common as it should be contact if you need more details well unfortunately I won't be in Canada in August I'm very busy here teaching courses through August I've got an intermediate typically in August and I've got one again this year we've got other courses around that so unfortunately I won't be in Canada or anywhere near Canada and but it sounds like maybe something I could look into in the future and classy way of advertising your event by the way and getting the details on my short show so well done hope it goes well for you and I look forward to maybe joining you at another point in the future next question surprisingly smoky firewood now this is from Peter and I'm not sure where Peter is and in terms of where in the world so I don't have a little context for this question but his question is hi I recently got some bone dry firewood

that's been in my dad's woodshed for ages then when we threw it on the fire I was surprised to see it generate an unexpectedly large amount of smoke this happened at the start of the fire and when it had been burning for some time I it was hotter what's going on here is it simply incomplete combustion well yes and is the short answer and but I would question the assumptions and I don't know if it was bone dry and I've only got your word for it and often if you have stuff left in wood sheds it can be still quite damp and outdoor storage is typically going to leave things relatively damp and so it's possible it could still have some moisture what you can do is get little moisture content testers for firewood it's got like two little prongs and they use conductivity and to gauge approximate the moisture content and that's something that you can get for for wood and before it goes into your into your but wood burning a log burn or whatever you're using it's a cheap little electronic instrument so maybe if you can get hold of one of those and you've still got some of the wood maybe you have a test and also one thing I would say is if it's still quite in the round in the woodshed it could feel very dry on the outside but it could hold a relatively large amount monster on the inside that's one thing I don't know what type of wood it was it could be quite resinous and pine even when it's dry will tend to give off quite a lot of black soot and can be a bit smoky so I don't really know the context I don't know the species and also I questioned the assumption maybe it wasn't as dry as you thought it was you can test for that but equally even if it feels dry on the outside if it hasn't been split it could still be quite wet on the inside so those are some things that I would maybe investigate clean clothes and harden hands and this is from the hood guy and he asks hi Paul and I live in the Netherlands I've been watching your show on YouTube from the start and find a lot of info very useful well I'm glad you do and my questions are about care the first one is about clothing when on a long trip you can only carry a finite set of socks and underwear etc how do I prevent from smelling too bad after a while I know wool is it takes a very long time before it starts smelling bad but is to warm during summer so only works for winter the second question is about skin care working in the woods with all the dirt and the rough surface on wood and such can be really demanding on the skin on my hands so I use a skin care cream to make a bit less so I don't like gloves in the summer because it gets hot and sweaty and hinders dexterity hope to hear from you soon ok well first part the question yet merino wool is good for not being itchy but also not smelling but you're right in the summer it can be a bit warm and if you work in and you're sweating and you might be wearing synthetics and they do get smelly quite quickly and or you may be wearing a cotton shirt or a cotton synthetic mix shirt or whatever that allows you to stay cool now a lot of people

I away from cotton in the outdoors because it's the death fabric and yet sure enough if it's raining if you're wet and cold and it's not going to help at all

having cotton next to your skin but on a hot day when you're working hard and a bit of sweat into a cotton t-shirt and that evaporating off from you actually helps you stay cool and so it's we it swings around about it's choosing the right clothing for the right environment and also quite thin synthetic hat trekking shirts are quite good for the summer but again they can start to smell a little while after a little while and the simple answer is you've got to stop and do some washing and particularly in the summer your feet get more sweaty you got to wash your socks and you got to a your feet out in the evenings and your socks and get crusty on the inside quite quickly you need to wash them but it's summer so you can dry them quite quickly same with underwear yes you can only take a small amount you can't take you know if you go for a two-week trip or a three-week trip or a four-week trick trip you can't take you know scores of pairs of underwear and socks you're going to have to stop and have a wash day or stop early one day when there's a warm afternoon wash your stuff leave it out to dry so it's good to go that's the simple answer and you can just you know carry a bit of soap with you that you can use for personal hygiene as well and just take the opportunity to get clean yourself wash your clothes so what you know you only really need a couple of pairs and if you're washing things on a regular basis so you stop a little bit early maybe have a wash yourself put on some clean clothes and wash your dirty clothes that is a simple routine that you can do and if you're doing that on a regular basis you can get away with kind of every three days but you know with the socks maybe on a more regular basis it depends on how hot it is and how sweaty your feet are getting and that type of thing on canoe trips as well it's very easy stop in the afternoon before the Sun Goes Down and before other insects come out maybe it does have a wash jump in the water have a swim and get freshened up get some clean clothes on in the evening click you know wash the clothing that you'd be wearing during the day that's full of sweat and get that dried before before nightfall

you just have to do that and you know lots of people go out to the woods for the weekend or maybe three days or maybe even a week and you can get away with just letting yourself and letting your clothing deteriorate really by the end of a week you're going to start to be smelling quite bad you might start to get some soreness your feet might be starting to deteriorate you might be starting to get some soreness in the groin area if you're not washing and you can get away with that to the extent that if you're going home at the end of the week you can recover once you've got home but if you're out for any longer than five or six days you need to have a routine where you you're having a proper wash yourself and you're cleaning your clothes it's that simple onto the hands yep I mean it's more wear and tear on your on you and your hands in the woods than it is at home and but your hands do toughen up and for me at the beginning of the course season when I haven't been doing so much over the winter you know I've been out in the winter but you know in the summer I'm teaching a lot I'm doing things I'm doing a lot of techniques with roots and bark and carving and lots and lots of things in my hands all the time the skin toughen up the skin toughen up and it gets more leathery to the extent where things you know you can be moving things you know holding onto something hot in a hot mug that will burn you normally and but once your skins toughen up it can handle it and then you don't get the problems what I do is once the the problem I do have is once the skin starts to toughen up particularly on the tops of my fingers here if it's a bit dry so if my hands get dry if say on a canoe trip and it gets if it's hot sunny windy drying on the skin hands are getting wet hands are getting dry I do tend to get a few cracks in the skin and what I find then is yeah if you've got some some sort of skin cream or somebody's got something like Neutrogena with them that's fine you can use that I've got some Swedish lips I'll hood salva which is really good on crack lips and I tend to just put a bit of that and just to soften skin so it doesn't crack every time and epic time it bends and then it when I've had injuries to my hands and they're not healing properly I've documented this before you know I use things like balsam fir and there's saps of some of the the pine a CA you can use they've got healing properties and there are other plants which have got healing properties as well but I found particularly on my hands a bit of sap from balsam fir or something similar where you are helps as well and that and that's what I do the other thing that is important as well going back to the first part of the question is personal hygiene keeping your hands clean as well as important because you don't want to get infections if your hands do get cracked or you do get little cuts that lacerations little and puncture wounds from thorns and things you don't want really dirty hands and those conditions you want to try and keep as clean as possible and another bit of a bit of advice you can carry a tiny little nail brush as well and they're handy for getting nice and clean keep your nails short keep them clean keep your hands clean it's really important

water purification by evaporation and this is from Brett and his question is hi Paul I'm from Australia enjoy your shows and the information and advice that you give in regards to water purification something that seems to be missing is evaporation technique whereby simply boiling water over fire and something as simple as placing it a rag or a cloth over it to catch the steam rising this method would it work for seawater and processing dirty and contaminated water keep up the good work Brett and so I'll approach that in a couple of ways Brett because the answer is slightly different whether you talking about freshwater or saltwater at freshwater and you can just boil it you don't need to evaporate it off and then collect it and the issue that you might be concerned with is you mentioned dirty water contaminated and if it's visibly dirty you need to put it through some sort of crude filter and by crude I mean something that isn't necessarily going to filter out pathogenic organisms like microscopic organisms but will filter out floating dirt floating organic matter floating silt that type stuff and you can buy the old Milbank bags for that or the new Brown bags and easy to get hold of the brown bags - these days it's just like an old Milbank bag and I can link to that in the show notes oh I'll do it I've done a link on youtube for a while but I'll link on YouTube through to the brown bags you can get those and they're very very good and they will remove sediment so if the water is visibly dirty if it's turbid put it through something like a Milbank bag like a brown bag first okay and that's to remove the sediment you then still need to boil it to kill the pathogenic organisms protozoa bacteria and maybe viruses neutralize all of those by boiling and then you can drink the water you don't need to evaporate it and reflect it or anything like that if you didn't have a coarse filter I would use something like a trouser leg or a few layers of a few layers of t-shirts or something like that to try and get as much out as possible a few layers of bandana that type of thing is it's easy enough to get a lot of material out something that's going to get the particulate matter away from the water separate them out and then boil that's that with saltwater the issue is the salt and that's where maybe you're thinking about distillation processes and yeah I mean a way of doing it is to boil off the water and for them to recollect the water somehow afterwards without the salt in it because if you have a per 8 the water off you tend to leave the salt behind I don't know how much you're going to end up with salt in a cloth if you put it over the top and you can try it it's not something I've tried the methodology generally if you're going to try that at all is to evaporate the water off collect it into maybe put a funnel over the top of something into a tube and then the tube you get the steam going into the tube and then you cool down the steam at some point and then it drips out is water and you tend to leave the salt behind that's a simple distillate distillation process and that can work if you're on there on a seashore and you don't have any water coming onto the seashore and or there is a high water table with a lot of salty water even if you're inland sometimes you can't get freshwater northern Australia for example and in some places so that's a technique the other technique you talked about evaporation the other technique that works really well in your part of the world because of the sunshine a transpiration bags so a tree or a bush or a shrub is going to be getting water out of the ground even if there's no visible water it's going to have roots in the ground and it's going to be sucking up water at the ground and the way that it sucks water at the ground is kind of by creating a vacuum in the plant water evaporates off from the leaves of the plant and then that evaporation the water going out then sucks up effectively water through the plant up through the roots so you can collect that water from the plant that's evaporating off if you have some polythene bags preferably clear policy vac so you kind of like creating a small greenhouse around the foliage now it's important that the foliage isn't toxic you don't want to do on toxic plants but if you could get a big sort of bin liner sized transparent bag over a good amount of foliage tie it off at the branch and then have it weighted so that the water evaporates and off from because you're still getting the Sun onto the leaves because it's that's why it needs to be clear onto the leaves that evaporates off but then it hits the polythene and then it wants to run down the inside so you want to have it so that the bottom is weighted to maybe put a little pebble in the bottom to hold it down you can even you can also tie the branch down so it's a bit more bent over but basically you want there the little bit like if you leave a bottle of water that's half-full in the Sun you'll notice that you get condensation on the inside above where the where the water is you have that same effect the water evaporates off the leaves condenses on the inside of the plastic and then you want to encourage it to run down into one spot pool at the bottom and you can collect quite a lot of water that way in an otherwise difficult environment in terms of water so you know in your environment a few big transparent plastic bags will be part of my survival kit for sure trans-fat transpiration bags OOTS transpiration which is that evaporation and pull in the plan so that's another use of evaporation in terms of getting water iodine for wounds and water this is from Jamie Dakota and Jamie says he really enjoyed the Kevin trip on the spare Kevin Cullen trip and his question is iodine is a wound treatment when in the outdoors I really like to hear your thoughts on its use for cuts and abrasions before closing and dressing a wound I haven't felt like I've needed to carry it before but as hopefully I'll be traveling for

the field in future and perhaps canoeing in waters with Giardia etc I wonder whether having a small measure of poverty on iodine and my cuts kick would be sensible

I could also double as a water treat it could also double as a water treatment as a backup should I be separated from my main rucksack I suppose the heart of my question is I know I Dean isn't generally using New Year anymore for water purification and I have been taught that it is recommended typical first day situations is it considered an outdated method oh it's still a valid option thanks again for all that you do in the field of bushcraft and yeah I think carrying some idea in your first-aid kit is a good thing and it's the sort of povidone-iodine treatments and I carry a little vial of betadine and I tend to pick that up when I'm outside of areas where you can't buy it anymore so Australia is somewhere where I get a hold of it and I keep it in in my first-aid kit just a little brown vial and it's good for putting on and I don't tend to put it on cuts so much and but I put it on bites particularly warm at warmer climates and I've also found it's effective at getting leeches off you just put some betadine around where the leech is attached and it just attaches itself and then you got soon as it detach is you've got that better than going into the bite area straightaway so I found it useful for that and you can put a splurge on when you if you've had a tick bite and I think it's good just to get something that's quite pathogenic if you like to to the pathogens and so something that is going to kill any bacteria that's in there in particular as a result of the bite that's generally a good thing so I tend to use it for that and the issue with iodine sometimes is that it can with any antiseptic that's going to kill cells that's going to kill living cells living organisms is that if you put it on a wound it can damage the cells on the edge of the wound

and therefore slowdown wound-healing so you've got to sort of measure that up which is why I don't have a you know antiseptic creams not great and also they are not sealed once you open them so those issues there with smearing on savile on and that type of thing but better than I like and particularly the puncture wound aside thorns and or splinters and that type of thing it's useful for that anything where I fear it might be infected as a direct impact of the actual mechanism of the wound then I will I'll use it was if I cut myself with a knife for example I'm not going to put loads of betadine in there because as long as my hands are relatively clean in the first place and it bleeds I flushes it out and there's a there's not a lot of chance I've introduced bacteria in there unless maybe I'm preparing gain or something so I tend to tend to keep it for that and what's also good and bigger kit although you can get small sheets if you've got a more serious wound and you've got a burn and be concerned about something getting infected in a Dean gauze is good so it's basically a gauze that's impregnated with it with a gel and it's also got iodine in there so having some inner dean in your first-aid kit is good as well and i like that and using the betadine as a water purification treatment i wouldn't do that you'd be better off actually using a water treatment specific dosage and delivery mechanism than dripping an antiseptic lotion and antiseptic treatment into into your drinking water because you also don't know what else is in there and in that mixture so get some portable aqua are other iodine tablets if you want to use ID or use chlorine dioxide flying oxide works well in applications where you might be using iodine anyway in terms of your question about Giardia the the mechanism of entry of Giardia into the body is orally so you don't really need you're not going to get Giardia from paddling with a cut on your hand in areas where there's Giada in the water you're going to get it from drinking water without purifying it first that said the thing you need to worry about in some places is vials disease and that can get into the body through cuts and abrasion so again you want good waterproof plasters and maybe there again the use of betadine would be would be good to try and keep the wound of sterilized sterile as possible so and it horses for courses slightly different techniques or different environments whether it's tropical whether it's warm whether you getting bites whether you're getting cut but I definitely think a little thing of that betadine in your first aid kit generally is a good thing get some intervene as well and if you need water purification stuff get that separate and and that that will be my advice investing time in leather working skills as a few little midges on that's coming out now getting me in there getting my hair and this is from Lewis or Lily forgive the pronunciation one of those will be right Lois pious and the question is hi Paul myself and a good friend of mine are going into making bushcraft knives and we are troubled with the sheath neither of us have experience with leather working so is it worth investing time and money into developing leather skills or look for alternatives if so what could some of these be Cheers Paul Lewis and well if you're going to if you want leather shoes to your knives you're either going to have to make them yourself or you gonna have to get somebody else to make them for you and either a valid option and I don't have a lot of leather working skills you know I'm not well practiced in it but I think it is nice to do a bit of work with leather if you have anything that's made of leather because then you've got her idea of how to fix it if stitching comes undone while you're on a journey whether it's on your sheath whether it's on your boots and I think it's a good thing to know how to do a bit of you know stitching leather working leather and it's not that difficult really to do it really well and to make it everything look perfect and fantastic straight stitching really clean lines on the leather really nicely formed of course as a real art to that but just in terms of turning out something functional it's not that difficult to do so it's worth having a play around with and then deciding whether or not you want to go further with the skill set or whether or not you're just happy with turning out something functional pens whether you just make a nice for yourself or whether you're making knives for the sale commercially you know what standard you want to work to I guess to an extent or you could find somebody else who really wants to do a lot of leather work and can make not a knife sheath for your knives that's another option and then I guess if you're looking for alternatives completely and the other alternative course a lot of people use is Kydex and you know to make plastic sheath so that's actually really option really and again there's some skill in in producing Kydex shoes it's a different skill to the leather sheath but it's something that you could look into those would be my my my recommendations I can't really think of much more to say other than that okay here's a question from Robin Robin and you asked the question at the live session that we put out last week as well so two questions in a row but this is from a little while ago and this question is I recently read a bushcraft blog where the bloggers seemed to be more interested in discrediting other bushcraft folk he was particularly disparaging as Dave Canterbury and his heavy kit I realized that Dave comes from a background of historical recreational ISM or historical recreational ISM or I'm not sure whether you mean recreational ISM like like old-fashioned rhetoric

creationism or whether you mean historic recreations so historical reenactment I'm not quite sure which you mean there and that helps to create his philosophical view of bushcraft my question is what is your philosophical starting point with bushcraft and well it's quite simple really my philosophical starting point with bushcraft is that at the heart of the study of bushcraft is a study of nature and a practical study of nature a study of practical uses of the natural materials that are around you in an environment whether that's trees plants fungi animals and further the celestial world what their Sun Moon stars using those the sea fish etc so all those natural resources that are available to you how do you practically make use of them so that you can be at home in the wild now that's the core that's the core that's at the heart of it now whether or not you use modern lightweight equipment all the fashions leather canvas stainless steel copper pots whatever you want to do is it to an extent is an equipment choice it's an aesthetic and it is also about what you're trying to do are you going for durability are you going for ultimate lightweight you know does it just need to last the trip does it need to last a lifetime and there's something there how critical is weight some some applications weight is super critical other applications weight is not super critical I don't think there's anything

mutually-exclusive about being a lightweight hiker on a long-distance trail subscribing to the philosophies of say Ray Jardine and some of the ultra lightweight hiking stuff you know rucksacks without lids and all that kind of stuff because that's separate from bushcraft it doesn't change how you might like to fire it does change your understanding of natural navigation doesn't understand change your understanding of tracking doesn't understand your it doesn't change your understanding of foraging and it's the same skillset and equally if you're doing a canoe trip and you've got a traditional canvas portage pack and stainless your cooking pots and an axe and those things with you the skill sets the same the context is different the equipment choice for similars context can be varied from one person to the next depending on their personal preference depending on their personal aesthetic and and so for me the core of it is about nature and nature's resources so that's my philosophical starting point and that allows me a huge amount flexibility of then how I apply it which is what you want at the end of the day and that is it that brings us to the end of episode 54 so we've got to be quite a lot there and appreciate the questions and it's a lovely evening here in Sussex and the birds are singing and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of a sport currently now if I could ask a favor of you if you are watching this on youtube please like the video please subscribe to my channel that makes the videos more visible to other people who might also benefit from them it really benefits me as well so you'll get to know about the next video when it comes out and other people will get to know as well so please like and subscribe if you don't already that super super super important if you're listening to this as an audio podcast please could you subscribe by some means and iTunes or some other podcast platform that it's distributed to so you might be listening to this on my blog which is great but if you've got access to iTunes or some other podcast platform that you you also listen to podcasts on please subscribe to these podcasts via those means again it raises the profile of this series of podcasts if you're in the audio world and that then means that other people have it as a suggested podcast in their feeds etc that benefits me of course because I get more listeners and it also benefits the right people because they get to benefit from the content and this is what this show in particular is all about it's about people sending in questions and rather than me answering that one person via email or a tweet or a Facebook message nobody else really getting the benefit it's about those questions coming in and me broadcasting the answers so that as many people as possible can get they get the benefit so the more we can share the love is it where the better it is for everyone in that respect so if you value these shows then other people that are like you will value them as well so if you can subscribe on your preferred platform then that would be much appreciated and also again I bang on about Instagram from time to time still loving Instagram still sharing almost like little mini blog post on Instagram I put my little tag there Paul curtly on Instagram quick flash of my feed there you can see the sort of photos that I put there I try and do those on a regular basis certainly more regularly than I can put things on my longer form stuff on my blog so if you if you're missing out if you're not getting as much as you need for my blog and follow me on Instagram as well be much appreciated and again the more followers I have there the more I get shown and suggested to other people who might benefit as well so you benefit and other people do too so I really appreciate you following the podcast and me on Instagram it'd be much much appreciated and that's it for this week I will see you on episode 55 of a sport curtly enjoy your week enjoy the summer in the Northern Hemisphere and hopefully it's not too harsh for you if you're in the southern hemisphere see you soon take care bye [Music]