Hickory Resources

Description

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The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

afternoon guys I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance out there in the Pathfinder school when I'm out here at a site where we built the Eastern woodland wigwam style shelter at the last bushcraft 101 class and what I want to show you today is a couple of things you might not know about the hickory tree and both of these pieces of wood here are Hickory one of them was collected three days ago this one was collected about five minutes ago and two things that people don't realize about Hickory besides everyone knows that axe handles tool handles those things like that are great when you're made of Hickory most axe handles that you buy are either made from Hickory or ash what a lot of people don't realize is that Hickory inner bark makes one of the strongest cordage materials in the Eastern woodlands much stronger than poplar much stronger than bass wood and if you have to make a bow-drill fire with natural cordage Hickory would be what I would seek out if I were trying to make widdy's to tie things off with you can use poplar bark for those things but Hickory will be much stronger the other thing about Hickory is because it has to take fine tight grain and it's a longer green wood you can shave it very good with the back of your knife to create tender resources or starting fires so let's talk about those two things today and once you've stripped a piece of bark off of here if you take an anvil log like this and just get it in a stationary position and lay your knife on the log and basically hold the knife in a stationary angle almost like a cheese grater you can come in here and adjust your angle downward if you pull the inner bark away from the outer bark so you're stripping out outer bark off the outside leaving yourself with only the inner bark and if you've got a little stuff left on the outside you can just come in and find shave that off that's not a big deal and then at that point you can break this down even further with your knife depending on how you want to do this you can break it down further and further and further to get down to fire and cordage is a very simple simple concept to make cordage all you're going to do is twist the fibers in one direction so you would twist it in this case away from you like this and then you would take both fibers and if you're twisting away you would take both fibers reach down just like this and twist the whole bundle toward you which puts the untwisted one of the one you didn't twist on top twist a couple times and go twist a couple times and go and like this over and over again and you're just going to build up muscle memory again you can twist multiple times to get the cordage tighter or you can just twist it over once and bring it around away and toward me away and toward me I've got a two part video on this on my channel already but this stuff makes them very very strong cordage and even just without even tying it together it's very very strong stuff you can tie this stuff in knots and once you make cordage out it's going to be even stronger you can tie it in a knot and you can even break a knot so this stuff makes really really good cordage so that's the first thing we want to know about the Hickory ok on to step two here just wet bark off our knife blade here all right I've got two pieces of Hickory here I've got the one that was cut go and I've got the one that was cut just now either one of these will shave very finely with the spine of my knife I can come in here and I can get fine shavings off of this very very easy with my knife to create a tender type material now here's a caveat to this stuff even though this is wet and green as it comes off of here it will dry very very quickly if you have a sunny day you can dry this out and hit this with a Ferro rod very very quickly and it will still take the spark from a Ferro rod or open flame for matches or lighter or something like that and catch fire and you can see this thing is still soaking what I can feel the wetness on my hand or might just peel the bark off of this piece but I can get some really nice pine shavings on that thing and this is much faster and easier than messing with feather sticks to get that stuff and then I can just collect all of that stuff up pull it off of there I can already feel it drying as I'm pulling it off of there it's starting to already feel dry I could just about be willing to bet without much of an effort I could probably get this to go up with a feral rod as it is right off the tree even being green in fact I'll put it down here in this cut just the camera so we know there's no shenanigans going on and we'll give it a shot here grab some of this stuff that's on the ground around it you can see those fine curls that that sharp spine of that garber it makes with that material fluff it up a little bit right there's where the greens coming up at a knot so I just turned the piece around and go the other way on that you can see the mud on from work sweat from we're stuck in the ground let me grab a Ferro rod here and see if we can get this to go up get the oxidization off our Ferro rod ourselves up there close okay there's some trying to go right there

we had some flame by the probably tipped it well still going if I would have took the time to manipulate that tender bundle I'm sure I should have made a fire on top there it goes again again right off the tree dead green and wet and there we go that green stuff to the bottom of the firepit think it's going out now let's get the one is drying you can tell there's a little bit of a sheen on this wet one this is the one that's been drying for a couple days and this stuff will be completely different the shavings won't be much different as far as the consistency of the shavings you'll be able to get those same fine shavings off this thing you're flying everywhere because they're so light and fluffy when this is dry the difference will be with these because they're bone-dry they're going to go up a lot quicker if we can even collect them going all over the place but you can see how fine those bugles are right there I'll try to collect them all into this pit a little bit here get the leaf matter out of the way a couple leaves in there no one in there will shave a little bit more in there while we're at it much faster then messing with other sticks okay

that should be more than enough to show you what it can do so now I've got this a little bit forward in the pit here but we'll get the leaves and contamination out of it so we've just got the shavings in here get the camera adjust it again over here we can all see what's going on okay

still got some smoke on the bottom of this pit all right get to a clean spot on rod here okay take three or four strikes there may be five but again a very viable source of tender there and it does go up faster and burns quicker than the wet stuff I'd have to manipulate that at all to get it to burn it's just going to burn up so Hickory is a very very viable tinder source as well okay guys one Dave Camry with self-reliance offers in the Pathfinder school and I appreciate join me for this just quick video out here by the fire pit on some of the uses of Hickory other than the common use is like making bows and making tool handles I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I thank you for everything you do for our school for family for business all of our sponsor instructors Leeson ferns and i'll be back with another video as soon as I can thanks guys

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wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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