Ottomani Sun Compass

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

morning folks I'm Dave Canterbury with self-reliance Outfitters in the Pathfinder school what I want to show you today is a technique that was developed or used and taught by Ron hood called the autumn on or out of money Sun compass to calibrate this compass or create the device we need to first set up a typical shadow stick and track the sun's movements over time I've set a main shadow stick up over here and I've tracked the sun's movement over the last four hours it's important to understand that if you want a good accurate east-west line you're going to need to track the Sun for several hours it's not good enough just to put a stick in the ground every 15 minutes you'll get an east-west line that way but it won't be very accurate if we want to take a device that we are going to create to carry over distance to use we want this device to be as accurate as we can make it so what I've done is I tracked from early morning when the Sun came up till close to the noontime hour here and I've got four stakes in the ground and my shadow stick and you can see that the shadows moved slightly off with elastic that I placed in now so what that gives us is if we take a straightedge and put it across here it should give us a pretty accurate east-west line now they're not exactly in a line but they're close there is some curvature of the Sun because the Sun moves in an arc so a straight line is not going to be the most accurate but it will be close and that's part of the issue with the out of Monte Sun compass is based on a straight line and not an arc which makes it a little less accurate but for quick down and dirty it works great so that's why I'm going to show it to you today so we're going to take this east-west stick and we're gonna lay it in between two of these stakes that are about an hour hour and a half apart and we're going to check to see where we're at as far as accuracy goes on an east-west line using a compass just for verification now I've turned the compass or excuse me the camera

around 180 degrees here so that you could get a better visual without the shadows being in your way if we lay this compass at the apex of this east-west line and one of our steaks so we've got a right angle there we should have our compass needle facing fairly north which we do it is very few degrees off of north and remember that this is a magnetic azimuth and this is a solar azimuth so there's a difference there and we are probably that much off of what the compass says is magnetic north so that's really really close now that we've got this dialed in we can create the autumn on Sun compass okay to make our autumn on Sun compass we just need a piece of wood and we can cut that with our axe and our saw from any piece of wood that we can find then we'll need to drill a hole in that piece of wood for an omen

which is just a short stick that's going to cast a line to make a shadow on this board what we're going to do is we're going to take this board first of all before we do anything else and we're going to calibrate it by laying it across this line this linear line and this shadow is going to be touching the board depending on what hour of the day you're setting this up it's going to be touching the board somewhere and you're going to make a mark at that point and then draw a line across the board in a straight line direction so you've got an equal distance here and here to ensure you have a straight line what that's going to do is it's going to give you a line that you're going to want to line that shadow up with and you can see it's lined up with it right now and I put a month on here I put April on that line and I put an end for North at the front of this board you're going to need to recalibrate this probably every week or two because the Sun will change its altitude in the sky throughout the season

so the shadow length is going to vary depending on time of day throughout the season as well you'll need to recalibrate this the same way we're doing it today a week or two weeks from now but for something you're only going to use for one day to try to walk a straight line this is definitely the ticket it doesn't take very long to make this object now the next important thing to do is to either drill four holes in this board four to put four saw kerfs in there something that you can suspend this board by four strings like this to keep it level and the reason you want this board to be level is so that when you move it you are dialing in your bearing so that you know when that shadow is touching that line you can see here it's not here it's not and as I move it forward the shadow touches a line we are lined up with basically our east-west line here if I get off the grass get on a flat spot and that gives us a northern direction on the front of this board and that's important to understand as well I've got it a little bit off level here and you can level it really easy if you use a set of strings that are a loop like this you'll be able to level this really easy after you've made it just by holding it up and letting it float naturally and then getting that move this way or this way on those strings to make sure that that line is touching in exactly the same place that was here if you've got that then you've got it level out and you're gonna be accurate with it now you can walk with this thing and move with this thing and when you change directions the shadow is going to move off of the line and as the hours pass through the day your shadow will get longer and it will touch the line in a different place or shorter and it will touch the line in a different place but always touching the line should make the compass front point north and I've got an end marked on the board for that okay so now that we have our autumn on a Sun compass calibrated we can actually put this thing in our pocket and walk to a desired object that we're not going to lose sight of and again things like this are only to really help us walk a straight line and find a general cardinal direction once we get to the location that we want to take another reading or another bearing off of we pull out our Ottoman compass and facing our direction of travel whichever that is that we wish to go obviously if we want to go this way we're going west east south and north and we as long as we hold this compass up to where that line it's touched by the shadow on the board just like we did in the ground a minute ago then we have those cardinal directions identified we can lay this thing on the ground or we can shoot a bearing off the front of this board as long as the shadows touching that line we've got our four cardinal directions and we can navigate in one of those four directions using this board so looking at this board from the top again get it in the camera for you guys all we're doing is if we're facing this way when we stop all we're doing is moving our body or moving the board and tell that shadows touching the line not crossing the line but touching the line and that should be in northern direction and then we can get right behind that board and know that we're facing north so at this point I would take this board and just set it straight on the ground and then figure out where my cardinal directions are and what my decks direction of travel is going to be and I can use this board to identify those four cardinal directions fairly easily over distance leapfrogging as I go just like I would if I had a compass again this is a very easy object to construct it's a little bush crafty project just any veneer of wood that you can slice off of a log and then four slits in it for your saw with your saw blade to be able to put the string in two and one hole you've got to drill into it to put an omen in other than that you just need a marking device to get that thing marked up so that you know where your line is that your shadows supposed to touch and you're good to go okay guys well this is a really simple bushcraft project that you can make with simple tools if you need to on-the-fly to either verify that your compass is working properly or in lieu of a compass if you've lost or damaged it I learned this from Ron hood many years ago and he kind of pioneered this theory on video and things like that so I thought I would pass it on to you today because I use this as a baseline for teaching more complicated shadow board methods that I have taught in other videos and we teach this in a lot of our classes as well so I hope you enjoyed it today and I hope it was a simple enough explanation for you I appreciate your support I appreciate everything you do for our school for our family our business for all of our sponsor instructors affiliates and friends and I'll be back with another video as soon as I can thanks guys