Birch Polypore Strops, Trees & Plants To Learn, Axe Repairs | #AskPaulKirtley 61

Description

paulkirtley.co.uk Welcomes you to Episode 61 of #AskPaulKirtley, where I answer questions about birch polypore as a strop, importance of reading the weather, trees and plants to learn, my favourite wild edibles and running repairs on axes.

TIMESTAMPS:

03:31 Birch polypore as a strop

09:23 The importance of learning to read the weather

16:08 Trees and plants to learn; how to learn them

26:41 My favourite wild edibles (off the top of my head)

32:51 Making running repairs on axes while in the field

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Video Transcription

in this episode of a sport curtly we are going to talk about using birch polypore as a strop the importance of reading the weather what trees and plants should you learn what my favorite wild edibles are and what you need to do if you have to make running repairs on your axe while out in the field [Music]

welcome welcome to episode 61 of asked Paul curtly and we are into the 60s properly which is great it's cold today it's frosty I'm out I've got my coffee and my warm coffee while I'm sitting here I do have a duvet jacket in my bag if I need to put that on but I'm feeling quite cozy at the moment got a nice merino wool base layer on I've got a Buffalo special six shirt on over the top of that and then I've got a Neroni recon the old style one on top of that and I've got this lovely new thicker loop stitch woven merino hat that I bought in Canada when I was there in September it's way too warm then and when I was there it was high twenties thirty degrees Celsius I did that trip on the French River you if you haven't seen the video on my blog and there and the blog post around it check that out because it's it was a lovely trip and I'm sure if you're interested in that style of journeying you will learn something from that even little titbits and I've got those new campfire notes section in that journey blog as well so I'm going to try and do that when I do blogs of journeys I'm gonna try and draw out what I did around the campfire even if it's just how did I light the fire that day it might be the same everyday it might be different but it gives you an insight into how I'm applying my bushcraft skills on a day to day basis even in the most benign ways things that I might not consider to explain to people or even to relate to people I've had a few questions on that or quite a few questions over the last year or two and I came up with this idea of adding those in so check that out and the 18 mile island loop on my blog see what you think there and but anyway it's a lot cooler now than it was back a few months ago when I did that trip and I haven't done an a sport correctly for a little while I've been very busy with various projects and while I have been out and about I just haven't had the chance to sit down and record any of these to be honest I hadn't had the chance even to sit down and look through all the questions in the question Bank until yesterday and I have sorted some out for this episode and queued some up for episode 62 and 63 going forwards as well so I've got a bit more organized but a little bit more time now towards the end of the year and I can I can get through those questions for you okay well let's jump in the first one and there are two very very similar questions this is one of the benefits of waiting a little while to to look at the questions you start to see that there are some that are similar and I can answer both of them for you at the same time so the first one is from under broad leaf adventures and nice photo of a birch polypore there pepto porous but Gelinas is the latin name for that fungus is a bracket fungus which grows on birch and the question is hi Paul I know there are a number of uses of birch polypore picked a porous betcha Linus but at this time I'm particularly interested to know how you would go about processing it into a strop for example does it need drying out first what part of the fungus becomes the strop would you glue it to a piece of wood etc many thanks and thank you for all the free information you're putting out PS I'm loving the poor curtly podcasts all the best Nick peers well thanks Nick I'm glad you appreciate both a sport curtly and the poor Kirtley podcast and the other very similar question that I got Nick was from Andy similar question hi put misses by email hi Paul hope you well I have a query about birch polypore I've read that you can dry it out then trim it down and glue it to a wooden board and use it as a strop I was wondering if you have done this and how efficient it is as a strop compared to a leather strop thank you for taking the time to make these videos they have proved useful many times well I'm glad you also enjoy and find these useful and a very very similar questions from both of you there Nick and Andy using birch polypore as our strop so what you need is one like the one that was in the photo that it's a relatively decent size that's quite broad and that you're going to be able to take a flat section from a cross way so you've got that slightly Brown II gray out of dermis which you can peel away and makes very useful elastoplast coverings for cuts that type of thing you can use them for there's lots of other uses for a birch polyp or as you mentioned we won't get into that now but inside it's pure white it's white as the driven snow as they say for a fresh one when they get old they get they get sort of manky and and and Corky and dried up on the inside and that's not the condition you want you want anyway it's pure white on the inside and what you want is a nice flat slice of that so you will want to take a sharp knife perhaps and try and probably better to do it in a workshop than in the field or at least on a kitchen bench or kitchen table where you've got a solid surface to work on and you want to take a as flat a slice as you possibly can you can leave a bit thick to start off with but you want it as flat as possible on one side and of a minimum thickness of say at least five mil I would say don't go any thinner than that because it becomes a little bit fragile and I would say about five mil minimum thickness and which would be about quarter of an inch say and let me just make sure I got that right an inch is about two centimetres for an inch one centimeter half an inch five mil yeah it's about quarter of an inch thickness for those of you that are working in imperial and then yes stick it onto a board so you've got one solid side and then hopefully you've cut the other side relatively flat what you don't want is something really wavy because you need to get that side as flat as possible and again you need a really sharp tool to do that slightly ironic given that you're you're using it to drop something to get it sharp but you're basically making something that looks like a paddle strop so you might want to do that is a little carving project first to carve a little paddle like a elongated quite thin chopping board if you like with a little bit a little bit of a handle and then you can stick you can glue this strip and it again so the bigger the polypore that you can take a flat section out to have a crossways the longer strip you're going to get and then you can glue that onto the board and if there any undulations on the top then you need to carefully remove those to get it as flat as possible it is quite soft and at least it's malleable in and it will squeeze and it will comply to the shape of it of the knife so you know a little a few up and down any bits not the end of the world but get its flat as you can and then you can strop on that just as you would on a paddle strop that has leather on it and it works very well you can see why it gets its alternative name of razor strop fungus because they did use to make that type of strop for cutthroat razors at the old fashioned barbers and they use them to strop and amongst other things of course they use leather as well but it is something that was traditionally used and it does work well it just takes a little bit of preparation and do be careful of your fingers when you're cutting it is quite tough even though it's not a super tough material you can break it cutting it it cutting it straight is a bit fiddly and you'll end up needing to put a reason without a pressure on so do think about where your hands are when you cut them through it there's another reason I think you should do it at home on a bench where you can do it in controlled circumstances but have a go and you might mess it up the first one and but find another one and have another go there there are quite a frequently spotted fungus birch trees are common birch trees in a state of decay are quite common they're a short-lived tree birch poly pores are common fungus so you've likely to find it and it's not massive rarity so if you fluff one up you'll find some more and have another go and you'll get better at it and until you get a good strop and then they last for quite a long time so hopefully that helps both of you next question so this is another question from Instagram nice photo of a book called the cloud spotters guide that some mmm SJ outdoor guy has posted and with a discussion of this book he has asked the a sport curtly question so he's put hashtag a sport curtly and that's how I found it by searching on that hashtag by the way if you can use hashtag a sport curly spell my name correctly there's a few people who contacted me saying I asked a question and yeah I did I found them eventually but you've not spelled my name right so that's when I can't find them there's an e ey l ey common misspelling is just doing L y ya le y at the end otherwise I won't find him anyway I found this one because he spelt it right and he asks hi Paul after reading a couple of Tristan Goonies books after hearing them on your podcast I've decided to learn more about how to read the weather and understand signs of impending changes how important do you think this is as an outdoor skill should this be more widespread ability or is it something to move on to after acquiring other more basic skills I think its importance depends on parting you at the end of the day you learn all of these things largely because you want to you follow your interests whether that's whether natural navigation tree and plant identification craft work canoeing skiing what what all these things that we do in the outdoors we largely do by choice and so yes a lot of it is down to your personal interests and what you want to prioritize in terms of learning and what you find intellectually stimulating what you find interesting what you find rewarding but clearly there are some activities in the outdoors where the ability to understand the way there is important and there's some terrains where it's more important than others and I would say if you're in the mountains and you're in the hills you need to have a good understanding of the local weather conditions for where you're operating where you're hiking when you're climbing so that you can see what's going on with the weather of course you can use modern technology you can use weather forecasts and all of those things but still having an understanding of what different types of clouds do what types of weather come under certain circumstances and of course the weather can be highly changeable in the mountains and not always are the local factors and the local effects and the local conditions reflected in the more macro forecasts and so having an understanding of what's going on particularly the mountains I think is very important and rightly so other times when it's important if you're out in a canoe particularly if you're out in open water you need to have an understanding of the wind in particular and what might be changing in the distance you might be looking for thunderstorms you don't want to be out in a little of a big lake in a thunderstorm and because you're the highest thing on it so there are circumstances there where being able to read the weather is important of course if you're on a wilderness expedition you might not have all your electronic gadgets connected to the Internet in the way that we do on a day to day basis or closer to home and I think that will come eventually I think eventually we'll have more access to satellite connectivity when we're in wilderness places and certainly in terms of data and we'll probably end up having more data with us certainly as an option in the next decade or two than we've ever had before so that's something but now I think if you're on a trip out in the wilds where maybe you have got a satellite phone with you but that's just for emergencies or touching base occasionally you're not going to be necessarily calling in every day for the weather and even if you did get a macro a forecast for the area you are again micro conditions can very local conditions can vary so having an understanding of the weather conditions in

or area looking to see what's going on can be important and again if you're out in really cold places in the winter having an understanding of what's going on with the weather and in particular having an understanding of what indicates it getting colder I've probably mentioned this before and I do keep meaning to write a blog on it cuz I do have some photos but one thing that you notice if you're say out living in a heated tent and the stoves just ticking away and a bit of smoke coming out the chimney one of the things you will have noticed I'm sure if you're if you're a regular winter camper is when it starts getting colder and you get cold air pushing down you'll see the smoke going across and up and then it will almost look like it's hits a glass ceiling and it will be going then across vertically almost have a straight line delineation at the top of it where you can see that layer of cold air coming down and that's often an indicator that it's going to get a lot colder and you often see that towards the end of the day as it starts to get colder but equally if you see it at any other time it's going to be an indication that things are getting colder and so again it's what's important in that environment if you're in a really cold environment to start off with and it's getting colder you you want to know that if you're out on a big lake and the winds getting up or there's a storm coming in you want to know that if you're in the hills and you've had good conditions but the winds getting up rains coming in visibility is going to go down thunderstorms again you want to be able to know that so I think being able to read the weather conditions is a valuable skill in many different aspects of being in the outdoors and then over and above that of course you've just got the the the pleasure if you like of knowing of being familiar with what's going on you're not wandering around nature like some little Robin flying around and you're not wandering around nature like some sort of confused child that doesn't know anything about it you under you can understand all nature signs including the weather then you feel much more comfortable and much more connected with it and so it's very valuable I think from that perspective as well the more you can know about the natural world around you and how you fit in with it and how you interact with it the better

good question I like that and cloud spotters guide is a nice book to read trees and plants to learn another Instagram question you can see I hit the Instagram hashtag search hard in putting these questions together this is from HF survival school and posted a nice picture of a water-filled gorge in his part of the world and this question is I have watched your recent video about how to get better in bushcraft quickly a very interesting video I think that was my bushcraft show 2017 presentation you're talking about I can link to that here and also link to it in the show notes at poor curly code UK and I've noticed a few people coming to my blog and searching for show notes yeah it's not something that is separate to the podcast if you just come to my blog and find the episode what I mean by the show notes are all the notes that are there with the podcast on my blog so you'd the player there's a podcast player there where you can listen straight off my podcast you can download the mp3 straight off my blog or you can click through to iTunes stitcher etc and find it there and but all the links and information and also some links to related material on my site and they could be articles there could be videos that link into what we talked about on this episode for example or they could be on a poker a podcast it could be links to other interviews or discussions with that same guest they could be links to their social media platform so you can say hi to them all of those things are always under that episode on my blog it's not a separate thing somewhere else so if you just go and search on again top menu you'll find podcast and you'll find a sport curtly all the episodes are listed there or you can just go and find search on that individual episode and you'll find all the notes there just for all of you that might need to know that so when I talk about show notes that I'm talking about and so I will link to that presentation that he's referring to here in the show notes he's a very interesting video being the first so-called bushcrafter in this country it's quite difficult to learn much without visiting particular places and talking to local elders I saw the demographics on maps in your video where you showed what plant grows where can you please help me out and put me on a path tell me what plants and trees I should learn first and what uses do they have knowing what is available in my area what are the main species I need to know and practice on also what skills are the most important to work on I'm interested in general bushcraft and well camping my lifelong dream is to be on a level where I'd be able to live in the woods for at least a month better and yet so that that's the question is covered there so that's a big question and it's not one that I'm going to have a complete answer to in this session there's a lot of learning you want there it sounds to me like you're being a little bit impatient and you're calling yourself a survival school and I'm being blunt here you if you don't know your basic tree and plant identification and what the uses are where you are you need to learn that first before teaching other people but some that's a good goal to have a lot of people are interested in knives and fire and don't really go beyond that for me as I've said before but I'll keep banging this drum because eventually it will go in bushcraft is a practical study of nature and natural resources that we can use yeah and then you can overlay ethics onto that how you use them responsibly in a way that conserves the resources all of those things but fundamentally it is not a glass window between us and nature we are studying it and we are studying how to use it in a practical fashion how do we make fire how do we find food how do we make cordage how do we find our way using natural signs all of those things quiet and interaction with the environment and I think one of the core things is tree and plant identification and so you know best what's in your area and you know best what's in your area because you can go out and see it yeah I can come here and I'm in the northeast of England near to where I spent all of my teenage years growing up and I'm very familiar with the trees and the plants that appear here and that then leads you on via curiosity to ask the question what's this tree what's this tree here with the spines on it in the red berries what's this tree with a flaky bark and the fat green buds what's this tree here with the funny alien-looking buds on it and a straight secondary growth on it what's this tree over here with the evergreen shiny green leaves on it and you start looking at what's there what are the common species where you are work out what they are a lot of them will have uses and then you can cross-reference and find out what the uses are and then you can apply the skill so like I know this here is a sycamore yeah and I know that the dead wood if there are any dead branches on it are good for friction fire lighting it's also really nice the green wood you can carve spoons with it that end up being pretty tough but lightweight it's a nice carving wood and doesn't split off the grain like birch does we've got Hawthorn here with edible berries spines that can be used for fish hooks pretty good small sticks for kindling although it's quite spiky you've got Bracken here which is a good tinder material so I've got my friction fire lighting wood here with my with my Sycamore I've got some small sticks dry sticks there that I can start to use and I can see and there's some more over there and there's some honeysuckle over there as well which has a bark which will come off and I can bus up into a nice tinder bundle and I can probably use that in conjunction with some

I can drive back and round the outside so I've got everything here literally within spitting distance of where I'm sat that I can light a fire with there's loads of things I could make a bow with here I've got cordage I've got cut got a bootlace I've got cordage in my in my in my pack there I've got a knife and a saw and so I can go get the materials I could make a fire by friction with bow drill here just within with the materials that I've got within 10 meters of where I'm sitting but that's because I know what these species are I've looked at them I've worked out what they are and then I've also looked at bushcraft on the other perspective of what do I need to be able to do what are the important skills to have I need to be able to light fire I need to have protection from the environment part of that's fire part of its shelter building part of its an understanding of my clothing I need to be able to find water I need to make it safe I need to be able to find food eventually and then you've got all the craft things as well in terms of making cordage in terms of making implements in terms of making camp crafts gadgets for suspending pots all those things are basics yeah basic basic basic stuff then you've got natural navigation you've got many different aspects we've talked about whether there's lots of different aspects you can go down but in terms of the tree and plant identification what's in your area and what do you want to be able to do and then cross-reference those there isn't really any single resource that does that for you as I say the queue for you should be what's in my area and then also you know those common things that we all need to be able to do and there will be something where you are in central to Eastern Europe that terrain there's loads and loads and loads of big crossover with where we are in Britain there's a big crossover with some of the things that are further east of you there's lots and lots of resources there and if you want some formal instruction in tree and plant identification I do have an online tree and plant identification master class which opens at the beginning of every year you can go pull curly coat at UK forward slash tree plant ID and you will find a page where you can pop your mellow dressing and I'll send you more information about that even if you are on my normal email list for my blog I won't send you all the information it's a little bit like that mail that you get in your mailbox for something that you don't want yeah if it's something you want ask for it go to the page leave me our email it's a separate email distribution I will send you the information about that online course if you're on my if you're on my blog mail I might occasionally send out an email to say it's opening again soon if you're interested go and put your email but I'm not going to send detailed information to the thousands and thousands of people that are on my blog distribution because they might not be interested in tree and plant ID it might be interested in clouds they might be interested in hunting might be interested in canoeing they might be interested in winter camping and so I try and send information that's relevant so if you're interested in the tree implant ID you specifically need to go and ask for that and you can do that by going to Paul Kirtley code at UK forward slash tree plant I D okay and that will redirect you to where you can put your email in alright so that's for you and it's also for anybody else and in terms of basic bushcraft skills there's lots and lots of stuff on my blog for a syllabus just go to go to my company frontier bushcraft comm find the elementary wilderness bushcraft course look at the syllabus of that course use that as a as a guideline for for what to learn first in terms of skills and then also look at what trees and plants you've got in your locality and put the two together favorite wild edibles this is for Wells B roots Dave Wells B is back Wells B's back in the house his question is hey brother was wondering what your favorite wild edibles are why and how you prepare them thanks for everything you do favorite wild edibles well that's that's an interesting one well okay thanks our defining favorite but cattails some people don't like the taste of cattails I quite like the taste of cattail rhizomes the ropey roots that you get growing in the silt and underwater roast them on the fire they've got a pretty good flavor compared to a lot of wild foods the energy you get from them they make you feel good and they don't taste that bad and taste somewhere between a roasted chestnut and a potato and they're pretty good and so I quite like those simple to collect although you generally need to get wet in at this time of year you're gonna get cold and so think about you're having a fire at first if you're actually out properly foraging for them like that and living out in the woods but it's good energy good carbohydrate a lot of return for your investment so that's kind of a favorite from that perspective I also really like burdock and Actium lapper in the Thistle family in the Asteraceae that has an edible tap root that looks a little bit like a parsnip that's a good solid underground storage organ that's a good solid root vegetable it's tasty and it's not great boiled and but what's really good if you cut it into little battens so cut it into sections that are maybe a couple of inches long and then cut it crossways like you make battens out of carrots or parsnips and then shallow fry them and really really good and again yes you need a little bit of oil but otherwise it's just something that's come straight at the ground straight at the wild and its really super tasty and it's a good solid accompaniment to other foods it's not a while food you know there's a lot of wild food instruction and foraging instruction which goes on which is all about greens and tastes and flavors and that's fine I've got nothing against flavors I'm a big fan of varied flavors but there's no calories there in a lot of wild food foraging instruction it all looks nice it tastes nice but if we're really interested in living from the land bushcraft and survival in the proper sense of the word not just making a tasty salad we need to know where we can get the calories so those two are really good for getting some carbohydrate calories in and I don't subscribe to this thing that carbs are bad either if you are out working traveling moving chopping wood building shelters checking traps whatever you're doing you need the energy you need the carbohydrate energy your brain needs the carbohydrate energy to think straight and make good decisions you need to be able to get that type of food from the wilds and they both taste pretty good so their favorites top of my list both in terms of utility if you like but also I think the flavor is pretty good I've mentioned chestnuts already I think it's hard to beat if you take a sweet chestnut whether it's a European sweet chestnut or an american sweet chestnut and roast that on the fire in the fire however you do it on a on a on a griddle and it's hard to beat the taste of it of a roast chestnut and again it's not processed you're not doing anything to it other than heating it great flavor good energy and good nutrition that's a favorite wild mints I like wild mints for flavoring and I like them for a tea for a nice mint tea what else do I particularly like berries of course there's some great berries out there everything from the ubiquitous blackberry through to blade berries or blueberries I'm a big fan of those arecaceae berries I like the Ling on berries or the cow berries as they're known in to make a cordial they're they're good and I like an elderberry cordial homemade L very cordial is good and I like a lot of the berry fruit flavors and

good nutrition antioxidants sugars lots of micronutrients there as well so yeah I like those a lot and then things like fact hen one of the one of the leaves good flavor there the goose foots in general nice flavors in there some of the brass acacia a the mustards the wild mustard and cress --is got some good flavors there I like those a lot as well like wood bitter cress lady smoked Cod amine pratensis nice hot mustardy flavor in the leaves and I'm just kind of off the top of my head here but they're there what they're ones that spring to mind that I really look forward to finding I really like the flavors from and yeah that that's probably good enough list for now I'll probably think of more after I finished recording but they're all firm favorites definitely last question running repairs on ax and I apologize to you John for taking so long to answer this I for some reason missed the question at the time I think I possibly just saw the photograph there were a lot of photographs from the bush craft show posted at the time of me of Dave Canterbury of other people things that people had been to our display on the frontier bushcraft stool my live a sport currently that I did on the stage and I just didn't register there was a question attached to this apologies John and but the question here is thank you Paul currently for the great act safety display today at the bushcraft show 2017 so this is from late May this is from six months ago from quality's John I have an a sport currently I'd like to ask on the back of it if I may what would you recommend as a way of performing running repairs if your ax head becomes loose while out in the wilderness

thanks for all your great content you're a fantastic help to all who listen and I for one appreciate greatly and well thank you John hopefully you're not you haven't been turned off by my apparent ignoring of your question I hope hopefully you're still listening and appreciating what I'm putting out right axe heads I talked about axes a little while ago it wasn't the same question but it was a similar question and the question was along the lines of what would you do if you needed to replace the handle of your axe out in the field and my answer to that was along the lines of you shouldn't need to generally with a modern axe that's got a hickory handle because I've never seen one break and so okay I'm not the be-all and end-all I'm not omnipresent I don't see everything that goes on but I've taught a lot of people to use axes I've seen a lot of people using axes have used axes a lot on summer trips and in particular winter camping trips and they've had hard use I've used them for felling trees for lemming sectioning trees for splitting and I've never seen something like a grants falls Brook handle break I've had them that have been a bit subpar when they've arrived like it looks like there's a bit of a crack in them and I've either replaced the whole axe sent it back and got another one or I've replaced the handle but I've not had a good handle that's been inspected you know you do you should check your axe you know when you come back from a trip check it's good check there isn't a split check there the heads not loose and clearly you know that should be something that you check as you go along as well the heads not loose but if there's anything wrong with it then do do the repairs do the maintenance at home in your workshop in your shed and your living room wherever you do these things and make sure it's in good condition as as it can be before you go out again and again you know you don't just buy an axe and do nothing to it you're going to maintain it you're gonna sharpen it you're gonna oil the head

you're gonna maybe refinish the handle you're at least gonna occasionally put some linseed oil or onto the handle just to help protect the wood and so while you're doing those things you can be inspecting it quite closely and checking to see that it's okay when you come back from a trip before you know you might want to clean it up sharpen it or you let give it a clean and put some more oil on it out on the handle check look for any signs of cracks and he signs of looseness any signs of movement in the head any signs of that type of thing and then I think you're going to catch any issues then so with hickory handles you're highly unlikely if it's in good condition before you go out for a two-week canoe trip or two it winds camera trip you're highly unlikely to break it so that's that that's that that's just a recap of my thinking with a handle and so equally when you're looking at the at the the axe if there's any looseness or sign of movement in their head deal with that at home before you head out now if you're in the field of course that the head might become loose now my experience is that the thing that again with well-made modern axes even if they're made in the traditional sense of wooden handle and a metal head with no kind of paint on or fiberglass or any of that sort of plastic coverings it's just a metal hand forged head wooden handle that we all like to use in in bushcraft and traditional camping these days and and a lot of the manufacturers are Scandinavian there's a number of them grands fours vetterling halter force all those axes it's fairly easy to see if the heads moving and that that's why I kind of talked about plastic coverings and pains and things with those things it's hard to see if things are moving but if if if where the head has been for some time becomes open to the air there will be a different and color difference in color in the wood and you can see that the axe is starting to to move the ax head start to move now in my experiences that are about to say the thing that causes axe heads tempted to become loose typically is miss use of the axe and people using an axe on other axes on splitting wedges when the axe isn't tempered to be hitting onto metal hitting heavy metal implements hammering metal posts metal stakes big tent tent poles tent pegs the metal ones that you use for staking out the marquees and big tents those type of things what damage your axe and hitting Rock possibly I've not seen that but I guess in theory that could happen heating something that's too hard to hit with the ax now the bit of the axe is tempered to be quite durable the head as a whole is relatively soft and if you hit other bits of metal with it you'll get mushrooming on the top of the pole on the back of the axe it will start to fold over its relatively soft and what can happen is the eye of the head which is the bit that they have the hell with a handle goes through can become distorted and if the shape of that eye changes then that can change the area of contact between the head and the handle and the in the head can become loose so you for that reason you do not want to be hitting your general purpose bushcraft axe your Scandinavian forest axe yours it was small forest axe or whatever whatever it's called on two other axes for splitting logs splitting wedges that type of thing you need to use a specialist you either need to use a hammer a lump hammer for that type of thing or you want to be using a specialist splitting wall that has a hammer head on the back of it on the pole where it's tempered correctly so it doesn't damage the axe that you're using and some of the specialist splitting walls have that and that's what you should be using on metal ware particularly where you're splitting that's where most people damage their axe head if they're going to misuse and I've seen plenty in cabins as I've been traveling around the world you go into the woodshed people have been smacking two axes together and they're in really bad shape that the head is loose so as long as you don't do that it's unlikely getting the thing wet is more likely to cause the the wood to swell and therefore make it tighter so that wouldn't cause it to come to come off and if you do have a little bit of looseness the old trick it's not a long-term solution but the old trick was to soak put the axe in some water so that the wood would swell and that would hold the head on a little bit better and that can be a short-term remedy but it's not one that I would I'd recommend now if you look at the end of an axe and this is the end of the question here under the answer to the question you look at the end of the axe as I said you've got the eye where the handle comes through the head and then you've got the handle of the hell whichever word you want to use and there's normally a split in that and in that excuse me in that split it's driven a wedge and if the worst comes to the word worse if there's nothing wrong with a handle but the but the head is is loose if it's so loose that it's going to come off then take it off knock out push out the wedge sideways the old wedge is harder with some of them because they've got that metal staple in in the modern axes but that should help keep the thing on in the first place because what can make the axe a bit loose is if it's just got a wedge if the wedge starts moving the wedge comes out a bit then that splaying of the handle comes in a bit and then the head can start moving so the harder is to get the wedge to move the less likely you're going to need to do this anyway but if you can get the wedge out or get the head off and then get the wedge out make another wedge and knock it back in that would be a another remedy that's that's easier said than done that process that I've just talked about which is why re handling axes sometimes requires you to saw the health below the head some people even burn them off but there are issues with tempering and things potentially there but yeah generally you're not going to need to do it old old quick fix was to soak it in a bucket of water and but equally if the issue is that is the wedge coming loose there are things you can do about that if you've got a knife you can find some hard wood you can make another wedge you can knock it in you can you can do that as long as the handle is fine and as I say with the modern hickory handles you're highly unlikely to to break the handle that's just a realist realist view of what are you likely

to have to be able to do while you're out and about that brings us to the end of episode 61 and it is chilling off here the Sun is starting to go a bit it's chilling off and I'm gonna get a move on I can feel my feet start to get a little bit cold which is always a sign not just that your feet are cold but the whole body is cooling down your body is not sending as much warm blood to your extremities and your muscles are not pumping blood around into the into the through the feet and everything starting to close down your body's keeping the the blood close to the core and that's a sign that it's not just my feet that need warming up it's me as a whole that needs warming up and I will do that by carrying on with my hike so thanks for listening do check out the tree plants ID link if you are interested in my tree and plant identification masterclass which will be open into the new year and for a little while and then we go through the course of the year it closes and it doesn't open again until the end of the year the beginning of the year and we have a new enrollment of people coming in and then we all go through the year together that cohort of people so if you're interested in me sending information no obligation of course and but I will send you full information background information and why the course is structured the way it is how the course is structured what my approach is and I'll send you all of those things if you go to pull curly coat UK forward slash tree plans I D and links will be in the show notes links there on YouTube and if you're listening continue with what you're doing your drive your hike your gym session whatever you're doing enjoy that and if you're watching enjoy see you on the next video don't get stuck on YouTube for too long if you're on YouTube there are more things to do even then what's YouTube all day but anyway I will get on and rambling and I'll have another hot cup of coffee and get on my way with the rest of my walk take care thanks for listening and I will hope to see you on another a sport curtly before too long and it's been too long since the last one and part the part of what I've been working on are some online projects and also working on putting together some trips for next year blood vein trip and coming up again next year and various of the things that are new new programs at frontier bushcraft of course I'm not here to sell things I'm just here to make things available to people you know about frontier bushcraft if you're interested in any of the courses any of the trips you go to frontier bushcraft comm and find them there if you've got any questions drop me an e-mail or tweet tweets quite good for questions if you want an immediate answer as opposed to an a sport kerlick anyway that's it yep few calls to action there at the end and a few offerings and I will see you again soon lots going on take care of Cheers [Music]

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