Bushcraft Show 2018 Axe Demo | Paul Kirtley | Frontier Bushcraft

Description

This is a little different from my normal channel content in that it's a video filmed and edited by someone else (not necessarily a bad thing!). This is a video of my axe talk & demo at the 2018 Bushcraft Show in Derbyshire, U.K. It was kindly filmed and edited by Expedition Jack, who you can find on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/ExpeditionJack

Jack also made a good video about the Bushcraft Show as a whole, which you can find on his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpDnkS3JPa0

My company Frontier Bushcraft was a main sponsor of the Bushcraft Show again in 2018 and in addition to the above axe demo, I also undertook several tree and plant identification walks as well as a main stage talk.

You can get a recording of my main stage talk (titled Real World Expeditioning With Bushcraft Skills) along with a copy of my slide deck as well as a host of referenced material via this link: http://paulkirtley.co.uk/bushcraftshow2018

Tags: axe,ax,axe skills,ax skills,axe types,ax types,axe demo,ax demo,Bushcraft Show,Bushcraft Show UK,Bushcraft Show Derbyshire,Bushcraft Show 2018,Paul Kirtley Bushcraft Show Axe Demo,Paul Kirtley Axe Demo,Paul Kirtley Bushcraft Show,Paul Kirtley,Frontier Bushcraft,Woodcraft,campcraft,axecraft,axcraft

Video Transcription

[Music]

I'm quite good with an axe but you're still at risk missing it [Music]

there you go safely and AGA's techniques my colleague James bath is going to be helping me

hi James up until a few days ago I was on crutches that prints my my calf muscle is your recovery do you thing better the access and do as much as I can and then James good and demonstrate some of the techniques but we want to give you the full range show you first off let's have a look at a few active very popular size about these days this this is a grants for support Laura stack some other make sets a similar line from hultafors both of course one's got slightly heavier head this far very similar length we were generally refers to this one at the half mate comes about halfway from my fingertips to my sternum quite lightweight heads

it's not particularly heavy quite a portable and we'll go inside a daypack one of the reasons a lot of people like them it's quite portable not too heavy quite wieldy as well you can use it two-handed just a man about long enough for the two-handed years but also we can work with it one-handed we can come up strangle it here might prefer to it strangling the axe holding it around the throat and work doing some farming or what-have-you sits a versatile and very much a general-purpose axe you see that in the way that the hey it may it's not completely broad we'll look at some others in a minute but a different not particularly broad octavia compact they're pretty much a standard general permit and going up in size three-quarter length

drink water away from my fingertips to my sternum this is what grants for scholar scandinavian forest axe it's pretty much a scaled-up version of the one i just showed you it same sort of shape same to the shape and lore held very similar head profile quietly quite fine here very good general purpose tax for felling very good for limbing it's really what it's designed for taking branches not to Beltre it's very good at that job because these are the perfect height you've got a tree that's come down you want to take branches off really really good like that doing that with this is a good side acts for travel in the boreal forest as well where you need to be working more on tougher firewood wood in the boreal forest length between cover up in the north slower growing see the tougher world tighter grain a bit more powering your axe you're also gonna need a break there's more firewood in the winter so and slightly larger axe for that type of traveling is good but still you can put it on a toboggan you can put it on a snow machine you can put it on a pole and it's still eminently quality for not too heavy going the other way but inside yeah pretty much only a fourth of the way very light can only be used one hand there you can use this 200 really good first up is by splitting again very portable and some people prefer these are they be not quite so strongly built at the wrist and forearm can be quite nice particularly for younger people and people who have built bit smaller a nice one to start with Harvick perhaps and there are some advantages the heavier axes for carving ultimately start off with some people prefer this so they're nice little but there is a limitation not really much useful felling more limited good around camp for the small splitting and again a very general purpose head on it going up in scale you've got a full size out and this is what the grant was before the Americans felling axe but it's still of a similar nature to the others that we've looked at so if we compare this it's really just scaled up again women we get the same kind of shape handle head for bosses they're pretty much the same both in terms of a wave the depth as well as the weight of the front but it's a little bit big for splitting King Blake really really good for felling also for heavy sectioning when you're chopping logs up long waters and intersection it's got a good reach there is political stuff in terms of chopping stuff one thing I'd encourage you to do as an axe user he's trying to learn to use the axe of ambidextrous the impossible when you swim in Acts you tend to use the backpack there's a guide man do you swing and that's actually doing the guiding at the back now I'm right-handed but I'll use my left hand naturally an iPad so we actually all use typically all new dances wrong handed anyway in that sense that the one that's doing most of the work that one in terms of guiding it it's where it wants to be then but I'm lifting here so efficiency with the finger actually lifting up here if I lift from here with a lot of strain at my wrist let's slide my hand forward that's easy to live when we throw up in the air and then that guides with that hand so the combination is swag so actually given that that's not my dominant hand is quite easy for me to learn the other way as well because that's my dominant hand so I can lift here and I can swing that way she's good to learn how to use it both ways

and I know I was doing it towards my leg but I'm being careful yeah so if you imagine a pelvic intersections understanding behind it much better than doing this and then getting the other cut by twisting my back that's not going to my back see how awkward that looks compared to just swapping my hands and meanwhile straight on so they're they're ambidextrous that's something I would encourage you to learn how to do like suck

very good acts from those sorts of jobs but let's go and have a look at some of the smaller ones first before we pick up and act we want to think about safety and one of the reasons I've talked about different size axes is because the safety considerations are slightly different with the big axe I've just used if I miss something I'm working on the chopping block and I miss and I come towards the ground there's a chance it's gonna hit the ground before it when it comes anywhere near me whereas the very popular axis there probably most of our many of you have this precise if I miss something on a chopping block

he's coming straight to my kneecap so the safety consideration is different how might I make it a lot safer to you nail down exactly let's have a look on here I'm working on a stump I'm splitting something and I miss as I say kneecap

as soon as I kneel down if I miss I'm hitting the ground I don't want to hit the ground with my axe as bits of grit and stone and whatnot in there I'm going to blunt in it but it's better than lunching it on myself yeah also if I'm working on splitting something if I'm standing while I'm me standing a piece of wood here I'm better off putting it there because then if I miss it I'm gonna hit this bit first rather than standing it here trying to split it missing it and it coming towards me so we want to think about safety before we even start working on things where is the app going to go next if it doesn't hit the thing I want it to the answer to that always has to be not mean yeah when you're using it and the chances of you injuring yourself with an axe are no more than really the chances of you injuring yourself with your knife the problem is the severity of the injury tends to be much more there there's more weight behind it and these modern made axes are so well made in terms of the quality of the steel you can get an extremely sharp edge that's still very resilient just the steel it's so good so we tend to have very sharp axes and we need to be careful that we we don't impinge on ourselves with them so with these short path link that says one of the best safety considerations I can give you is if you're working on a low stock stump or working on a low piece of wood around camp kneel down rather than and it's better on your back as well rather than this kind of stuff that you see people doing that's really really important and you slip over your probably fill it in one of your buttocks if you land on that yeah which is not a good day out just be careful when you use that when you don't if I'm walking down a slope I'm going to take that out of there yes not to me I'm going to do I certainly don't want it in there without the mouth on I've seen people do that there was sharp action you you're at least gonna damage the clothing if not yourself basic basic safety stuff so now that we've got some safety principles in place we can have a look at splitting well look at splitting on the block first I will just stab they're small for it so this is not beyond the capability this small axe a lot you carry not doing that hey remember I can lift from there lifting from there very different

let me come here onto my shoulder drop there's the logs heavier than the axe so it's a like that [Music]

okay

[Music]

the your little axe you carry around with you a lot is very capable again put the thing they're not there [Music]

[Applause]

No

and then we're back to kind of normal technique

and still do that if you get stuck pretty handy you select like I'd recommend you try it just don't have anyone fix it but if you had a lot of a woodshed and a log burning stove that'd be a bit of a place for respect Rauf I love that pen it's like a wedge some of you have probably got these at home for log burning stoves or fun perhaps but it's much broader here that this one for example which has pretty much the same length handle the same length handle very different profile head specialist job big fat head that does two things one is it makes it more wedge-shaped the other is it gives it a lot more weight the way to struggle even with my sandy actors and probably struggle with that yep whereas if I'm doing that type of wood for my woodshed at home I want a specialist to the other thing that this acts as protection here think about the width of this edge versus the width of this you get fibers going from one side to the other which this handle will be going through and coming into contact with so this stops it getting worn here also sometimes if you get over strike it can prevent over straight Samish but it's mainly to protect it from the fibers in the word

so Jerry can have abilities always flies yourself up yet one of the things that people do is they go oh and I can take that and then they over strike and miss it so James is going to make sure that he sized it for his arms out that late that anything hit it hard [Music]

and it's a tough piece of words so what he's going to do that he's going to attack it on the same line if he can too heavy for that shoulder technique he's gonna struggle to lift it but maybe not but he's hitting it working along that line there you go a nice control there from Jase notice he didn't plow it into the chopping block hits it hard enough to splitter it's about safety it's also about longevity of your ax edge if you're hitting two pieces of woods for every split he's going to need sharpening in half the time isn't it that's always the sound that you want he's bending his knees he's going down vertically and he's doing it with one roll I might be wanted to make feather sticks but even standing that up is a bit of a pain it's not a very big target yeah I'm at risk of missing it I'm quite good with an axe but you're still at risk of missing it once they get to that stage it's not standing up it's too hard a target I need another technique this is a really good one

just take that piece in your hand take your small axe it's perfect for these small forest axes hold the axe over it bring the two up together really nice and controlled

also you don't get bits flying it's a pain cuz you've got to get up and down all the time also if you've got friends around camp they don't really appreciate bits that won't coming flying at them all you end up having to do it miles away from the fire and having to carry all the wood across so being able to do something a little smaller scale is quite quite good it's less less use of energy [Music]

you know James could be just here come and sit here James are you feeling comfortable there yes you are you're feeling comfortable here we could be having a chat it's not unsafe once it gets to the size where you can hold it with your hands two things happen one you can hold it with your hands the other one is it actually gets quite difficult to stand it up at that point so we can go to this technique so you might have somebody splitting the big stuff and somebody else can be doing the kindling the smaller axe has another option depends on what kind of setup you've got that's not a little brilliantly

you can actually split stuff down quite small

if it splits [Music]

couple of points on this one if I've got something that's triangular rather than trying to balance it there which is hard I work on the flat side one thing to remember the other thing you'll notice is what I'm doing with the action that would make that axis in the log there sometimes it will be sometimes it won't be as a kind of routine why don't want to be doing is stopping and thinking is that in there or not I just want a process that works every time if I try and split this piece of wood by turning the ax what's going to happen I'm going to try and turn the whole stump which a is going to be ineffective and B isn't going to be good for my axe yet putting a lot strain but a lot of leverage on where the handle meets the head what's much easier let's just do that that's what splits it even okay that's in doesn't matter that's that's not in but even so I'm just always going to move the wood and keep the axe till then regardless of whether it's embedded in everything or not I'm not going to be putting strain on the eye that's going to lengthen the life of your axe and it's also going to make you more efficient these are little things that make a big difference over time so it's quick and it's efficient you might be thinking well I don't always have a chopping block and we often don't think am i can use the same technique I might just have a bit of a log could be just kicking around the woods it might even be a bit of what you saw live off just something low noticed I'm striking directly under where that the cutting edge of the axes I'm not striking there - what could sometimes break but also it's not so efficient also the shape of these axes is great because you've got this bit of the of the knob or the swell or the thorns foot at the end here as we call it on there on the handle and I can put my hand in there and I'm not going to rap my knuckles if it's a shorter bit of wood just be careful you're not smacking your knuckles together you might want to hold your fingers around there and paint but by the way you're not intended directly over that it's not past it so set yourself up again it's the same technique

[Music]

that we're using before I've used this technique in camp a lot for producing platforms to light fires on just splitting stuff to make feather sticks with four small fuel for slightly larger fuel and it's quick and efficient you can have your tarp up you can have your fire you can have a small space to work under even the falling rain you don't have to be out doing dynamic techniques on a stump somewhere you can be quite close to the fire just stacking the woods ready to go on the fire so I like it for that reason this is also good inflation when you might be working on snow game winter campaign D yeah you know in a tent TP or a snow tracker tank one of your options is to dig down to the ground to put the tent there but you never know what's gonna be underneath it tends to be uneven and I'll see you basically created a cold well what's better is to trample the snow with you say snowshoes on create a platform let it freeze it will do quite quickly in cold environments then you put your tent on top you did a cold well inside you have your stove in there and you're gonna need plenty of fuel also have an area on the platform outside the tent where you can process your your firewood close to the entrance so the entrance might be over there I can process the wood and I can take it over to the guys who detent and they can stack by the stone yet just one bit of log on some compacted snow works extremely well yeah I do use exactly the same nikka -20 with gloves on and again it's safe if I'm doing big dynamic techniques and I'm more likely to injure myself particularly if I'm wearing gloves you notice I don't work a lot of people who wear work gloves these days these days I would recommend refinishing your ax handle and I'll talk more about that towards the end of the talk and if I forget please remind me refinishing your ax handle so it's nice and smooth and also just late in your hands toughen up a little bit yeah because then you've got more sensitivity and using the axe and you're less likely to injure yourself again so this is good also on Rock a lot of canoe trips in Canada in the Canadian Shield which is classic canoe country the camping areas next to the river

there's no topsoil on them they're solid rock it's ancient bedrock that's the reason why you've got that undulating landscape where the dips are filled with rivers and lakes and then you've got the trees on your bumps but there is another topsoil this is all scoured off in the last ice age and you're very close to that edge of bedrock so you don't be smacking your axe down onto that rock because you're gonna have a long java re' sharpening it so just putting a log down so that you can split even if you'd normally stand it on end and think well I can split it you don't want to risk hitting onto the rock so you can directly down onto it and even working on rock he's a fantastic versatile technique the beaming ham and as I say always works well with small stuff that you can hold in your hands though

when it gets the biggest stuff that you can't hold in your hand we might do some more dynamic techniques if we got a chopping block we can chop down onto the block is you've seen even with big stuff but I'm gonna need to borrow James again for this one but if we don't have a chopping block we're going to need to work a little bit differently also if we're working on snow even if we've got a nice compacted area we don't have been knocking down into it because we'll just punch through that across and then we're down into soft snow so we want to be worked at horizontally we can rather put doors down if we're working on rock again we don't want to be working down onto the rock well here is the problem with our axe so again the horizontal technique we might be more appropriate so we're gonna attempt to illustrate that here on grass and we've got a couple of slightly larger bits a bit too big to hold in the hand one-handed and use that technique James is very stubborn as well I should warn you you've got homes to go to [Music]

they're not in the middle of that so Parviz about material creation isn't it there you could smash stuff with a big axe but maybe you need to be a little more careful with the material selection and even so we thought there's that sweet chestnut normally sweet chestnuts quite easy to split ash is normally quite explain we burnt Islamic is not to Nazis normally relatively sometimes it isn't and you've got this interplay between you're going to hit it hard and fast if you hit it too slow it doesn't shop the wood enough but if the wood slides it just moves off very quickly and you don't get the penetration into the wood so there's a kind of optimal size fit been doing it but then once you get it down to a size where you can hold it again you can go back to the previous technique you can hit stuff smaller with the technique the James that just showed but again you can increasingly hard target turn to strike so as I say some people for carving quite like this for painting it's for hands so we'll have a look at using this axe a couple of general points just if we're going to be working on this whether we're making a spatula or a spoon a big plate you're a larger tent or what have you same kind of rules apply keep your fingers out of the way it's an obvious point we kind of hold it down here here and also think about how are you raising the app if I'm raising the axe above my fingers the whole time I'm going to strike again I just left click sounds away or what have you increased the chances of hitting my own handlers if I'm working here and I never lived in the apps above his hands then I'm less likely to hurt myself also the actin actually want to take in that orientation because that's that's where the center of gravity takes it so if I'm constantly trying to chop in at an angle beginning to strain my rest natural / support the beginners but it's also important further more advanced people when they use with heavier axes so if I want to get an animal I'm better to move the piece around - rather than try to chop in my bass turn the words again obvious when you see it but I see a lot of people work with actors like this here

and we can work or vertically this act is a bit like for me but you can you can strangle it you can do it quite nice buying work I can hold it best phones around

we can chop notice also the position of my leg

I miss

and going through that way this sort of thing where if I miss I'm into mineka I do it naturally now but to start off with you need to be conscious about these things also you get more efficient movement you know all bunched up in here to stand to the side and look like what they're doing we can work on whatever you doing for carving though he if you get into your carving the tend to have a longer blade basically those that are designed to breathe with a Barbie and more cars than you general-purpose a sincere thanks it's a longer blade or cap and it's also a heavy attack we still got good contacts between there to the handle and the hedge absorber meet the person here so I could strangle a right to Paris by watching [Music]

again of the work on this here this game placing a piece I'm working on the far side block [Music]

we've live it's like one I'm just gonna get the back off man [Music]

[Music]

the heavier heavier rats got more weight behind it now [Music]

the peaks around again I've got that follow-through not lifting it above my hand no to some slicing meat well that's why we've got this nice curved blade we slice with that [Music]

the zombie thing going on so I thought like that myself up I'll show the backs of vampires around so where do you find this stuff I can strangle it up [Music]

[Music]

those are very good at going across the grain I can't make the touch like that on the end of these logs with an app a million years if I want to cut to a log like I would say before it's one a section of tree I've got to open up a because normally about the width of the diameter of the tree I'm wasting a lot of wood and they end up with some rings at the end of looks like a beavers chewed it down the chopping block very well it's gonna be on the end it won't sit on here and even if he's got me on one end you saw that James was struggling this one that's not sawn struggling but it's just harder if something's not square on the front it's harder to hit to get the action going through so he likes where it off don't you

it's listing after various jobs now having a saw makes a huge difference if you're carrying an axe you want a larger saw the black banner off a lot of the time

that's great for having around camp we've always thought one of those around camp

very inexpensive and robust the dg2 get replacement late model but then off with the Pratt not so bad in a Land Rover awkward in your backpack awkward in a core tight pant on a new trip awkward in a toboggan even on a snowshoeing trip where you're hauling in here

most men holding and there are some nice folding metal frame Shores I'd have like freezing cold because they're metal steel is about a thousand times more conductive than air aluminium is about six thousand times more conductive than air pump out of Steel if we gloves on your hands are gonna get colder this is a Swedish sort leaves they have some sensibility about using this at the coal it's not a bad thing a little really wise thing is more injury different

and it's also got a nice fun card on it but it still made it back over no further planning it [Music]

so the traditional wooden sword nice for a number of reasons one is they pack down quite fall and secondly is that they're made of wood and what is in particular so on expeditions I like to take something like this this is one that's one of the idea to the Maine made a number of us number of then four rows and socrates trench so some of you might have used these before and you can buy signal on display by just a windless at the top blades in the orange barcode saw so for me that's kind of like the axe and saw wavelength of my belt knife of mind in my plan [Music]

these are on my person leave the great job I can now do much before build a cabin if I wanted to I can process a lot more firewood and I can spell trees I can sort things off the length of my stove and section 10 inspector associate all of our cutting tools are primary cutting tools and more powerful if you pair that with the azure so I'd recommend that generally and in terms of looking after these reshape cable family grants bodysurfing into them and so how do we look after them I'll tell you a funny story

and I went back to kill an engineer and to thank him for his hospitality I took him around and he gratefully received I went back falling in with in Egypt that number of days after his wilderness camp and the answer I give within Islam outside and this all the varnish or not the varnish but the beeswax healed it linseed oil they posting it come with had lon it was fair word hijab the rain right and that was that was a year yeah I put my attention more than ten years older than multiple trips to be - 13 - 14 new capsizing still in pristine condition in fact the handle because what I like to do with the axes is I just rip them completely off so if I pass that I'm not I'm not picking on whole two floors but if I pass that around please please give me it back and pass around it's quite rough then by comparison I'll pass that one around and they'll say that they'd be similar to that if you didn't refinish boiled linseed oil Russia art let it dry a spoiled them rolling seed oil just over the existing finish that it comes with it you want to do a real proper job scrape off any remnants of the linseed oil at these one finish to become friends back down to the raw wood grain will swell like it will be with its wet your pants no brain start that raised in places you then try that off you could do it over a flame just gently dries off then you take my furnitures paper or the edge of an edge of a razor a stunning like blade scrape off that raised gray do it again please wave off the legs away then you take some boiled linseed oil take some really fine why it was 5:02 raw would you wipe off the excess put some more I rub it in with it why well to take off take off let it dry overnight then you put some more on the next day he wiped it off next day then the next day you put some more on how do I do that for a week the building of these layers of finish renders the finish Mike

that's more than ten years old I got that accent 2003 15 years old and I just give it a pose and it's lasted so much longer so I thoroughly recommend refinishing your car I'd also recommend getting a better mask in the one the ones that come from beneath the stars menu bar really top-notch packaging really good axe head granny well finish handle really good all the components in terms of sharpening for our knives at home we might have all sorts of water stones and four different great really just use max know the brands for good at anything or you could take a combination officers store that is part lose that the reason you want to restore the throne on your axe I will show you that is all gravely [Music]

quite flat

say I want to sharpen my axe if I use a fiendish tone between my pound I want to shove my axe I've got a bench stone and oil stone or I can have it on my mansion I can work the AXI from there that's one option there is a limitation equally I can take the stone particularly with the bigger axes of easier I can take the stone and work the stone onto the axe but there's still a limitation the limitation is this has a horn back bevel which means that you can't just keep the bevel angle the sharpening angle the same at the end because otherwise you put a tape method off the whole thing the curved surface which means you need to change the angle is working out so they come to different point

the problem with longest islands is that you can't get beyond that angle where it comes into contact with the side so you end up having to use only part of it anyway so that you get the full range of angles so why I have all the rest of this you just have a short stone so either a normal bench stone sawed in half or just use a small stone and then you can work on the bevels and get all the angles you want without the hinge by the cheek so you do that at home anyway and that's great for the trail so people ask me about what do I do to sharpen my axe

I just largely use an axe stone course on one side final on the other if you want to get fancy you can make a paddle stroke and buy a paddle strop with a leather on a piece of MDF or board with a bit of metal polish like he does or also solve something like that anything you can hold it drop it rather with that sometimes I just give it a little tickle on the edge with a ceramic rod just to give it a bit more bite depending on what I'm doing with a general-purpose axe very very tiny secondary bevel just gives it a bit more than curtains it isn't working and then I'll put some foil on the outside after I've finished sharpening so that it's perfectly for my surgery before condensation then the match goes back on and that's all I really do to sharpen and look after the answer a bit of oil on the head general purpose like three and one is fine and but list all the Wu's ballista on your tools that's good stuff and if you want to get fancy again and so on samurai samurai you can use a bit of camellia oil but in the fields just a bit of general perfect oil for list or something like that every now and again a bit more linseed oil on the handle and in terms of looking after the Hat a little bit of shoe polish that's all you need something that doesn't soften the only putting dubbing and and saddle impregnation stuff on their own [Music]

and that will so that brings me to the end I've been our application turning Pepe yeah if you don't do the first date anybody spending time well dude first date balls for your own sake have something

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]