If you want to carve a feather
stick with a Swiss Army Knife or another knife, the most challenging
step is to keep the "angle of attack" as precise as possible while carving
the curls. With "angle of attack" i mean the angle between the surface of your stick
and your knife blade. So if you have problems to carve well working super fine feathers,
this is probably an interesting video for you! Hello YouTube. Welcome to another Swiss Army
Knife project video. Today i want to show you how i craft a feather stick with just a Swiss Army
knife if you want to craft a project with just a small swiss army Knife instead a super stable
fixed blade.
It's often the same… we have to work with less strength but more brain power. That
means we have to use the best technique possible. So in this case, if you want to make a feather
stick from a branch with this diameter it's a hard task to shorten it and to split it, that we have
access to the dry wood in the center. So we have to work with smaller diameters. But hey… doesn't
matter because a small stick is often easier to find and with this technique i show you today you
are able to craft such fine curls, that they burn more or less direct from a green stick.
First of
all i want to tell you some basics, regardless if you work with such a piece of wood or with
such a small branch or if you work with a swiss army knife or a fixed blade. What you need is a
super sharp knife and you need a stick which is straight grain with outside branches. That you are
able to craft long fine curls you need sensitivity for the wood for the knife. It's all about
precision and keeping the right angle of attack. If you change this angle just a little bit, the
curl will break off too early or the knife will bite deeper into the wood and you will end up
with coarse curls. In the most of the videos and posts i have seen to this topic the people guide
stick and knife by hand so they work like this or like this or they anchor the knife with
the front of the knee like this please don't understand me wrong.
I like these techniques too and a lot of people are super happy with
these techniques and they get super results.
But if you work like this you have two sources of
inaccuracy. First is the position of the stick. Second is the position of your
knife… or the angle of your knife. And even if you hold your knife in front of the
knee, this is not hundred percent anchored. or if you put your stick on the trunk this is not really
stable you can still move it with your hand. And that's why i think these techniques
use a lot of practice and use a lot of sensitivity for the wood and
for the knife. To be honest for such a high precision task i prefer
to guide just one thing instead of two. Especially if you are a beginner you make yourself
a favor, if you fix the knife tip in a trunk.
I show you now how this works. so for the technique
i want to show you today you have to insert the tip of your knife into a trunk. And please
be careful because Swiss Army Knife can fold in. like this the knife blade is 100 anchored
in this direction or this direction. The only thing you can do to change the angle
of attack is to move the stick like this or like this. And now we have already reduced one
source of inaccuracy. It makes absolutely sense if you put your knife blade not
in a 90 degree angle in the trunk. Because if you put it in a 45 degree angle you
can reduce the penetration angle. I'll show you what i mean.
If this is the knife blade and this
is the stick, the knife blade in the 90 degree angle to the trunk and now i pull back. The stick
like this i have a big penetration angle….. if you put your knife blade in a 45
degree angle and you pull back, your stick you get a much smaller penetration angle. So now a second little trick how
you can increase the accuracy. If you work with just a short stick like this,
you hold it at the very end and i move my hand one centimeter to the left and to the right
side, the angle of attack change a lot.
If you work with a long stick
and you hold it at the very end and you move your hand one centimeter
to the left or to the right side. The Angle change almost nothing. So what i
want to say is, if you work with a long stick, this forgives you more angle errors than a
short stick. Oh i forgot to tell you which wood sords are the best for making feather
stick. To be honest i don't want to pay too much attention on this question, because
in a survival or bushcraft situation you have any way to work with the material
you find in the specific situation. But of course i would say fir, spruces,
birch, maple, hazel and all these kind of woods works well. But at the end of the
day you have to try out if it works or not. But now i want to show you how to craft the
feather stick.
In this case with a hazel branch. So the first thing i do is i'm looking for a
straight part of the branch and then i remove the bark. Like this…. Next step is to flatten the area
where i want to make the curls. I would say this is done and now
you can start to make the curls. So normally at the beginning of the process you
need a little be patient until it works well. And if the first curls fall off doesn't matter In my opinion this is the easiest way to craft a
well-working feature stick with just a Swiss Army Knife.
Especially for beginners! And yes, such
fine curls burn down very fast but they ignite also very easy. Ad if you want to
make a long burning fire starter i recommend, to put some resin on it and this
will increase the burning time significantly. So now you're ready to start the fire.. so my friends as you could see these feather
sticks worked perfect and please keep in mind: i used total green hazel. I cut this hazel maybe
two hours before and i needed maybe 10 minutes for making these three feather sticks.
So the first
two feather sticks had a little bit time to dry. But believe me if you make such fine curls
they burn more or less direct. So my friends… i hope this was interesting for
you, thanks a lot for watching, don't forget to subscribe to my
channel and see you next friday.Ciao.