Simple Camping Improved Pot Crane System

Description

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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

afternoon folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school what I'd like to do this afternoon is I'd like to show you a very simplistic pot suspension system that is mentioned in my newest book on gathering food and trapping animals and then I would also like to show you an improvement to that system that's not in the book stay with me and we'll get started ok we can make a very simple pot suspension system by cutting three main components the first one is a Wye and we're going to cut it and use it upside down because we're going to make a stick point on one end and just something that we can pound on on this top side which means really just need to crown it over so we're not mushroom it out with our axe or a baton or whatever we're going to pound this into the ground with so we'll just crown the top of it and that is going to be driven into the ground and then we're going to need a fork and this fork is not where the trunk splits that's not what we want for a fork what we want is an area where a branch is growing out of the main trunk so that we're pounding straight down in line with the trunk and not splitting it out over pounding on it so again we're just going to come up here we're going to crown this off to keep it for mushrooming out and then on the other side or the bottom side of this it just needs to be a stick point that we can drive into the ground so we'll crown this over it's not even necessary to crown this side that's just doing extra work for cosmetics we're going to come in here we're going to stake point this side so that it can be driven into the ground we can do this with a knife or we could do it with our axe either one and just like our tent stakes it doesn't really have to be real real sharp it just needs to be taken down to a point that will drive into the dirt we can do that fairly quickly here offhand especially if we're using green wood I'm using what's called arrow wood and arrow wood is a shrub like tree that grows in the eastern

woodlands and it was called Arrowwood because the Native Americans or the natives used to use it to make arrow shafts it grows lots and lots of shoots from the main trunk itself very much like willow and things like that do so it can be used to make anything that you need straight branches for from arrow shafts to cooking components and it's one of my favorite trees to use for any component type parts I need from traps to furniture anything like that because it's very very prolific in Eastern woodlands and again I don't need this thing to be some razor blade point it just needs to be able to be driven into the ground so I'm just taking it down to fairly sharp but blunt so it's not going to mushroom out either the third component that I need yes what I'm going to use to hang my pot that's just going to be a stick and I'm going to notch it for my pot and this notch is going to be a reverse seven notch and when I say a reverse seven notch I mean that in a steak or not would come in here and the seven will be cut out here at an angle we're going to do it just the opposite we want the notch here when with the angle cut here so that when it holds in position like this our pot holds against it in this direction and that's very very simple we just take our saw and put a saw kerf where we want it and then back cut it into that seven notch and depending on the bail of your pot this really doesn't have to be real deep a third of the way through the material will do just fine for this and then turn it back away from you this direction and cut into that knot just like this and very much like a stake notch I like to give it a little bit of a rounding just to stabilize things and that's a pretty good knot for that right there nothing else needs to be done to the rest of this stick for this initial setup now this first system is really simple you've got three simple components you have a Y an upside down for corn upside down y

depending on how you want to look at it and then you have a knotch stick that you hang your pot on here over the fire and this allows you to rotate it off the fire by using a stick and gives you a place to lock the stick into and you have a little bit of lateral movement back and forth that will raise the pot up and down slightly due to this angle that you've created between you're holding fork here and your support fork here but optimally we'd like to be able to adjust this pot maybe even raise this stake up a little bit and adjust this pot this way as well as this way to give ourselves adjustment for cooking temperature within this pot and I'm going to show you how to modify this system to do that now okay so now to make this new system when you have four cats just a little bit longer this branch that we had that we used here would probably work just fine but a little bit smaller diameter one will be better in the long run because I have a little narrower fork here anyway and instead of cutting a seven notch here we're actually going to put a log-cabin notch in and then we have a long stake here and these will be this will be notched and carved so that we can go at different positions and levels over the fire here here and here so we have at least three adjustment levels for a pot it's just a simple improvement but it works very very well to be able to adjust the height of your food over the fire without having to fiddle with one stick or several notches in it like I've made in past videos where you have a teetering stick basically it holds on here and you lift it up to adjust your pot height with this you can do it without ever getting close to the fire and you can't bring it up or down to three different levels or for however many notches you put in this stick so let me get the notches carved in this in this and we'll just card a log-cabin notch in this one just a little ways back from here and then we're going to carve a little bit of this stick and I'll show you that in a minute and we're going to put at least three notches in the side of this stick I'll show you that as well so let's start just by making a simple log-cabin notch in the front of this branch and a log-cabin notch is basically just we'll see how it's going to lay the best on here a log-cabin notch is just two straight cuts into the material and we pop the center out so they come in here and make it just a little bit wider than the bail obviously a couple times wider than the bail so it's comfortable in there if you get those notches cut right you should be able to just drop your saw in and pop that knot should come right out of there pretty clean you shouldn't have to do much carving or adjusting after that at all and you should have a viable notch that's going to hold that pot no matter what position it's in within that notch just like this so that's all we need there okay so now let's talk about what we're going to do here as far as marking this stick that's going to go in the ground understanding first of all it's going to have to go in the ground a little ways I'm going to raise it up a little bit more drastic here that I want and I'm going to come in here and Mark that just on the edge of the bark describe the bark with my saw then I'm going to come down to about level just a little bit off level and do the same thing to exaggerate that a little bit and then I'm going to come down a little bit less than what I want because it'll be more when it's pounded in the ground and I'm gonna make another mark with my saw and so now I've got three marks in this piece of wood with my saw and I'm just going to come in there and carve those out in a basic seven notch just like we've been doing all along so I'm going to cut about a third of the way through the material on each of those marks

with my saw just like that keep them all nice and straight on the piece so that our notches will all be in the same spot as far as our plane goes and then just come back in and carve those out with our knife pretty pretty simple stuff really now would you want a good deep seven notch in here just like this and it's important that we get at least one third of the way through the material if not a little bit deeper on this piece when we're making these notches we don't have to worry about curving anything we just need a nice straight edge right there that we're gonna match up in a minute but this notch needs to be deep enough or long enough I should say as far as the angle goes that most of our support stick for a pot will sit inside that notch okay

and you understand more about what I'm talking about with that once we get this done so there's one come in here and cut the other one out just look everything over and make sure that you're like I said on the same plane with everything not really this is a 10-15 minute job tops and you can use this the whole time you're in that campsite you can use this so it's a good piece of gear to create off the landscape so that you don't have to carry any excess stuff with you all right that gives us three notches now what we're going to need to do is we're gonna have to match this stick to those notches and what we're gonna do to do that is I'm going to kind of see where this thing's gonna lay on this stick and we're going to cut a flat on two sides of the stick here and here so we're gonna come in here and our notches here we're going to hold this out and we're going to cut a flat across here like this not a third of the way through the material but enough to give us a good flat side then we're going to flip the piece over so that this notch is on the top and we're going to put another flat side right up against that to create that 90-degree corner right here we need that 90 degrees right there just look it over it should be pretty close now we can drive other stake in by eyeballing this coming in here and setting this hero by the fire eyeballing this to our fire pit scene about where this is going to set in relation to everything make sure that we can hit all of our adjustment points easy enough okay and then we can drive this stake into the ground with our axe okay so now we should be able to come in here and lay this stick here and put our pot you know not just like that and if we've got this cut correctly it should sit in each of these notches with our pot over the fire just like this we should be able to come in here to just this just like this to give us a lowest point the middle point and the highest point for our cooking that is a slight improvement over just having that fork stake in the ground holding stuff in one place it works very very well and it works great for bush pots like this 2 quart Bush pot and it works for bigger pots as well buckets things like that but this system is not complicated it just requires some very simple notches to get it done and it has it's very secure it holds very very well in place as long as you're not just are cut deep enough and you've got a good 90 degree on this stick all right folks one Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school I appreciate you joining me today for this quick video on an improved pot crane system using simple notches

I appreciate your views I appreciate your support I thank you for anything you do for school for family and for business

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you