50 Dollar Tool Kit for Green Woodworking

Description

http://www.thepathfinderstore.com

Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, 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

morning guys I'm Dave Canterbury with the Pathfinder school and what I wanted to do this morning was I want to talk a little bit about the basics of green woodworking the tools that you will need to start out green woodworking projects and how you can obtain those tools basically on the cheap what you see in front of you are all the tools that you really need to get started in green woodworking and everything combined on this table probably cost less than $50 a lot of had to be refurbished and we'll talk about that as we go but the total cost is still well within a reasonable budget of $50 now the thing to me with green woodworking is it has direct routes to bushcraft everything that you do in a bushcraft type environment you are building things that you need off the landscape while carrying only a few tools and for the most part as bush crafters we try to get away with a knife some type of an ax and a saw most of the time that's kind of a standard bushcraft type kit for guys to carry they have their knife their axe and their saw now there's a little bit of a compromise that you have to make with things depending on what you really want to do with those tools and my mind you can build about anything you need with those three tools given the proper resources around you depending on whether you have softwood trees or hardwood trees depending on what season these are in and depending on what your skill level is but if you want to really refine the things that you do make things neater looking projects work a little bit more diligently to build things that look good and have less stress on the tools that you have you need to spread down a little bit more and add a few tools to that kit now are you going to carry all of these tools with you into the woods every time you go absolutely you're not going to do that this would be more of a base camp

kid if you have some type of conveyance whether that conveyance was a sled a canoe horse some kind of a off-road vehicle that you were carrying these things in if you had the ability to carry a few extra tools with you this would be the base kit that I would recommend if you were setting up a base camp somewhere or you were on a homestead this would also be the basis of your toolkit and throughout the Appalachian Mountains this these items have always been the basis of the homestead toolkit for green woodworking so let's just talk about the basis real quick the base that's real quick we know that we have a soft an axe and a knife and those things can change depending on what you want to do with them if you're going to carry this axe is a four pound plum felling axe I paid two dollars for the head of this axe I scrapyard refurbished it we handle it so I probably have maybe maybe $20.00 in this axe top end I've got 20 bucks and a sax with a good Hickory handle this axe will take down any tree that I need to take down in the state of Ohio in any season of the year but it's a little bit heavy to do much fine work what can it be done it absolutely can and the more you work with any tool the more adaptable you're going to be with that tool if it's the only thing that you have a smaller axe than this may be preferable for you depending on the work you plan on doing but a large acts like this is definitely going to cut down trees big enough to build a cabin if you needed to it will is the workhorse axe something that's 4 to 5 pounds is going to be a workhorse felling axe anything smaller than that is going to be limited in its total capability but the lighter weight it is the easier is going to be to manipulate for you for woodworking and green woodworking tasks and remember we're talking about working green wood here not seasoned with the moment so you're going to want a decent axe a full-sized felling axe is not a bad thing to have around the homestead or around any I can and you don't have to spend a lot of money to buy a felling axe you just have to find a good head and then fix it yourself

so while we're on the subject of axes let's talk about hatchets real quick and this is a double bevel hewing hatchet and again this was a I think this one came from a sale and I think I paid $5.00 for it it's pretty rusted up when I got it I redid the head completely resharpen that rehomed and did all that stuff but this is a very good carving and shaping type axe that you can use on top of stump or a hacking stock to shape material whether you're making bowls or spoon blanks or chair rooms or bed rails or even beams you can hew very well with this axe it works very very well for that this is an indispensable item in the end if you're going to do a lot of green woodworking but if you didn't have the capability of carrying two different axes you can find a happy medium between the two but if you've got the capability of carrying two I would recommend some types of healing or carving type hatchet and a large felling axe again you could go with something else it wouldn't have to be this tight this is a Collins this is an old phone company hatchet is what this is but it does have a double bubble on it that is pretty much an even bubble it doesn't have that hewing bubble of being a lesser degree on one side more of a degree on the other side and it doesn't have a flat on one side and a chisel grind like a straight cuing axe with hat so this is my carving and hewing axe combination in one tool but it's a very very good heavy tools got a nice white bit so it takes off a lot of material again very very cheap but a very good tool now let's talk about saws real quick there's lots and lots of saws that you can carry and it could be any type of soft that suits your fancy what I find works really really well for me is just a takedown bucks off with a 20 I think this is a 22 inch blade maybe but this has got Baco dry wood blade on it and I know we're talking about green wood work

here but the difference is with a dry wood blade you have more teeth per inch so you can do finer cutting then you'll be able to do with a green woodworking saw blade a Greenwood or pruning type blade is going to leave a large kerf and it's going to make a deep wide gouge in your material and it's hard to get fun cuts with that so if you're only going to carry one saw and not carry some type of a finer cutting saw then I would recommend putting a Greenwood blade and possibly a dry wood blade both in your kit because you can always build this while you're out there and that's the beauty of a lot of stuff with woodworking is you can't refurbish it or make what you need on the fly if you break a wooden handle tool you can make a new handle for that tool on the fly and that's the importance of having wooden handles on your axe and things like that the importance of having wooden saws is that you can make those things on the farm the saw blade itself here brand-new cost about six or eight dollars I think so that's the investment in a good saw six to eight bucks let's talk real quick about I want to talk about knives last even though that's really the basis of the kit I want to talk about it last because of what we're talking about with green woodworkers the other three tools that you need are not a absolute necessity to start green woodworking but they will do a lot for you in a short amount of time the first one is a fro and a fro is basically an upside-down axe the handle goes in it up through the bottom this way the blade is on the bottom and what this is used for is it's used for the things that you would normally think about possibly but awning a larger blade through or using a hatchet for it will rib and split but it does a very good job because it has a wide blade it does a very good job of splitting larger planks so if you are making shingles or you're making backings for things or you want a large slat for the back of a pack frame or something like that a fro is an easy way to split those things

and they also make really really short work of kindling and fuel was that our four inch diameter and things like that up to 8 inch diameter easy enough and camp because they're easy to use and they're very very durable so you're not going to tear up your axe or dull your axe or take a chance on breaking a knife that you're trying to baton to rip things out with that's what afro is the workhorse for it's a pretty heavy tool again really requires conveyance to carry something this large you can scale this down a lot smaller than this and get a lot out of it I carry a fro with me a lot of times that's made out of an old horseshoe rasp that's about 10 inches long maybe in about a quarter of this weight but a good heavy throw like this again will process any size would you want a process so the green woodworking is a necessity to have that tool because number one it saves on other tools number two it's the right tool for the right job if you're ribbing the splitting the next tool that you want is a draw knife and this drawing I may go backwards real quick this is the only tool that I purchased new and I purchased it new but I purchased it from a flea market and it was only $15 so this is the most expensive tool pretty much of a lot as far as what I paid for it but it's also probably the one of the most heavy-duty next to an axe you're never going to tear this thing up and again wouldn't handle very easy enough to replace my draw knife is another tool that you're going to want for debarking and shaping wood quickly this thing will shape wood very very quickly to the round from a square this draw knife was ten dollars at a flea market it's a it's in real good shape the handles are in good shape it's got metal but caps over the top and it's pinned over so it is a very heavy duty knife it's got a little bit of a belly to it but not too much it's got a little bit of a curve to it but not too much so it's a very versatile tool because it can do slight hollowing but it can also do find carving on the edge of things for rounding purpose

you can get no problem finding draw knives like this in the $10 range at flea markets estate sales and things like that you just need to be able to refurbish and resharpen them but that is a total that you're definitely going to want if you can find a folding model which I have a couple of how-to sale somewhere

those are great kit items because you can stuff those into a pocket and carry a draw knife as an optional tool with you even in your normal bus crafting kit now the other two tools that we need to talk about that are what's considered kind of vital to green woodworking the first one is a spokeshave and this is an old iron spokeshave that was gifted to me so it didn't cost me anything a spokeshave is a good tool for fine carving yes you can use your knife for a lot of things that you can use a spokeshave for but a spokeshave is very very good for fine finishing work on green wood whether it's the back of a spoon the back of a bowl the leg of a stool or chair or something like that all of those things a tool like this will make very short work up and you can find spoke shapes very very reasonable at sales and flea markets I've seen lots and lots of them in the ten dollar range or one that's in a really really decent shape the only thing you might have to do is clean it up a little bit pull a plain iron out of it and sharpen it up and you'll be ready to go it doesn't really weigh a whole lot this one's heavier than a lot of them because this one is like a cast iron body on this one but I wanted something that was going to be really really heavy-duty and I think this is alright so now let's talk about knives the Green was working you really want a fine carving tool and this is not the tool that you're necessarily going to carry on your hip as you're you know if all else fails this is the tool I've got you know I would carry something like my Pathfinder scorpion from the Pathfinder nut shop or something like that which has the Scandinavian style design in the blade it has the nice long Scandinavian grind on it

you know somewhere between 22 and 26 degrees on the bevel so it does really get fine carving work but it's also a full tang knife so I know I can abuse a little bit

if I have to I'm not going to hurt it does that mean I have to have that four dream woodworking absolutely not my favorite green wood working on just these cheap old fluid style more knives and these things you know are in the ten to twenty dollar range at the most expensive for the most part and they are a very very fine knife this one's high carbon steel and they'll also make them in laminated there are some big advantages to laminated steel when it comes to woodworking in general because they have more flexibility then the carbon steel does and they also hold an edge for a long time but the carbon steel has the advantage of being a longevity tool where I can sharpen this thing by not so specific means and get a good edge on it pretty quickly whereas with the the laminated steel knives I really need the right sharpening helping us to get that thing to a razor edge I don't necessarily have to have that with the high carbon but it may not hold an edge as long this one I've had since 2007 it has never failed me and I really have abused this night pretty bad but it's got a good fine working I'd Johnny for carving wood those are the basic tools that you need you need a felling axe you need some type of a shaping hatchet or carving hatchet you need a saw a draw knife a fro a spokeshave and some type of carving knife and again this is the basic tools that any homestead in the Appalachian Mountains would have had from probably the late 1700s through you know the turn of the last century these tools would have been standard kit in a homestead green woodworking is an important part of bushcraft it's an important part of the history of wood crafting in the United States and green woodworking and green woodworking is a skill that can do nothing but enhance your experience in the woods as a bush crafter because all the things that you're going to do as a bushcrafter most of them are going to involve wood in one way shape or form understanding wood understanding how to work would remove the resources from wood whether it be bark the inner bark the SAP wood the heartwood how to carve it how to shave it how to season it and how

Bendis are all important aspects when it comes to bushcraft green woodworking will teach you how to do all of those things I'm Dave Canterbury with Pathfinder school I appreciate joining for this video I thank you for everything you do for our school for our family for our business and we will talk more about the reading wood crafting or green woodworking in the very near future thanks guys