Hello and welcome to Vinnies day off, our
topic for discussion today is Swiss Army Knives
over the last year or so I've
built a number of survival shelters
using various folding knives and the two
questions I have been asked very very often are
what is my opinion of Swiss
Army knives
and could you build a shelter using a Swiss Army knife
The first one I bought was this. I believe  it's a Camper
I carried this for many
many years going to work
and when it was legal to do so going out it's a very
useful little knife
and you have the two blades
but what is far more useful are
these two screwdrivers
especially this smaller one which which fits most 
Philips screw heads
This one is used more for prying and poking and twisting
and jamming things into
and Macgyvering if you will
I'm sure guys come up with many uses for these corkscrews
but it got very very little use with me
The next knife I got was this this one,
the Alpineer.
At that time I was a bit obsessed with razor sharpness
and I may
have ground blade very thin
but I got a lot of chipping that's why it's so worn
looking now
So my opinion of Swiss Army Knives
is that there are basically
decent knife maybe not the most
superb or greatest out there but
they're a good decent knife
One thing I've never had is a saw
so that led me to buy this one
This is the Victorinox  Ranger grip 78 and it has a fine
big saw a four-inch blade saw
Almost four inch blade knife
On the back of this one it has a proper Phillips screwdriver
I was very interested in
this as I say,
as I say the corkscrew is of no use to me
so that's why I wanted
this
I have been asked by people in the
comments to try out two specific knives
the first was the Farmer and the second
was the Trailmaster.
I was very very close to buying the Farmer
I like the
look of the Farmer a lot but I just
thought it was a little small for what I
would be doing
The Trailmaster likewise is a fine knife, the Trailmaster was very
very interesting
but those knives that were offered for
sale that were convenient for me to buy
had a partially serrated blade and this
is an abomination before me
I wouldn't have it. There was no plain blade
available so I went with this Rangergrip
like in many Swiss Army knives you
have the toothpick,
do or do not there is no try
and you have the tweezers
now I've watched many reviews on these and heard guys say
how useful these were for
taking taking out thorns and splinters and such
I must say I've found them
completely useless in my experience
they're good for nothing except the most
superficial thorn
Any thorn that has penetrated  well,
these aren't strong enough
They're too flimsy too pliable they won't grip
It's a superb idea but it's badly excuted
I believe these these tweezers are much
much too weak and pliable okay
One thing I very much enjoy on  YouTube is the
fact that I get to interact and chat
with many people from all over the world
One of the first people I came across was Ironhorse 19
isn't that a cool name,
and in the course of our chats
he offered to make me a strop and he sent
me to a web site showing various styles
and sizes of strops, what caught my eye
was a little pocket strop so I asked him
if he could make that one for me and he
did,and this is it I have it loaded with
green compound, I could do it a little
more actually,
Now I was thinking of making something like this myself
for a
long time but I never got around to it
this is smooth leather
and I'm contemplating getting some fine compound for this
but as you can see
it's it's ideal for the pocket
I'm really pleased with this and we're going
to try it out today
Thanks very much Iron Horse 19 much
appreciated and I really love this
Thank you very very much
So gentlemen, and ladies, my second most
asked the question, can you use a Swiss
Army knife as a survival knife
let's go find out
Okay, so our first order of business is to build a shelter
but today I'd like to discuss the amount
of time it takes to build one of these shelters
and also the problems of
logistics you may not have all your
resources in one area, I'm going to use
brambles for cordage again
and I need to collect them here
and there's a reason
for that I'll show you later
Where I plan to build the shelter is about a
mile that way okay
So, I'm going to move around
and collect some of these and
I'll get back to you okay
okay guys so we have collected our brambles
for cordage
Now we need to hike to our shelter location
a mile that way
this took us a half an hour okay
Okay guys, I plan to build my shelter here
it's taken is about an hour and 15
minutes to get here we had to move
through some fairly heavy brush and
there's no trail obviously up to this
place
There's not a great deal of flat dry ground around here
so this, this is about as good as we're going to get
so our next order of
business is gather some poles okay
Okay, let's see how the saw performs guys
this pole is fairly long and I can get two shelter poles out of it, okay
, so
let's have a go
okay I got a little bit hung up there
but I eventually got them down
So out of that I got two stout poles.
It's a little bit of work with the saw
little bit tedious but it's well capable
of cutting perfectly strong Timbers
that would make you a stout shelter
Lets try something else with the next pole
when I was a small boy my dad showed me
how to call it a pole with a knife
You bend the pole over and you cut across the
fibers
It doesn't matter how big the pole is
if you can bend us you can cut
it even with a tiny knife
What I'd like to find out now is can I do the same
with the saw okay,
So lets give this pole a bend over
I'm getting hung up
Now!
A bit of a bend
it's not quite as we planned but
seemingly you can do the same with the saw
it's also convenient to crush make
cuts around a pole with the knife and
break it off so let's see if we can make
a little cut with the saw all around
and break it off as well
let's try that
I'm a bit tight for space here, where are we? here
that works fine
for a small saw  it can do a lot of work,
I'll tell you that, right let's crack on guys
here we have a pole that's somewhat
thicker than I would I would try with the knife
to be honest, and I'd just like
to see how the saw,
how the saw works with this one
timber
binding a little
oops a daisy
as I say, a little tedious but you can
cut quite respectable poles,
quite a solid pole with this little saw,
very useful and definitely I suppose what you call a force multiplier, eh?
the reason I had to gather brambles back
at the other area is because the
brambles here have been pretty much
hammered by the deer they're being
nipping them off as they grow nipping
the tops off so they're much more
they're much shorter and more stunted
there's another example here let's find
you some more this one is the same and
that's what I mean you may not have all
the resources you need in one area you
may have to travel quite a distance to
find what you need so that's logistics for you
and this is the reason why we
travel so far up here guys this is one
of the very few places Believe It or Not
left
locally where I can get a plentiful
supply of field rushes and these are
the only shelter material I would trust
at this time of year apart from sod
which would be a nightmare to cut
without a spade so I'm going to gather some of this
a little technique I came
up with for cutting this is to grab
your bunch at the top, generally there's
a lot of grass and crap growing through it
it so if you grab your bundle up here
and cut, you can pull it up and leave
all the crap behind. this, cutting these
is also very hard on edge you have a lot
of,there's  clay and there's old rotten rushes
growing there and just tough grass growing
as well at roots this is very hard on
edge so the Iron Horse strop will come
in very useful here I'm going to cut
away, and I'll keep stropping as I cut, okay?
I actually cut the rushes the next day
so I've got a couple of hours work here
at least just to get the roof
It rained the whole time so I took no footage
Dice come up, come up or you'll get the snout cut off yourself. Come on, good boy
Dyson thinks we are after field mice
see you in a while guys
it's three days later, life got away
again. I finished cutting the poles today
searching for the poles, selecting them,
cutting them trimming them getting them
back here took about an hour and a half.
yesterday I came up and I cut the
rushes that took about two and a half
hours
it was raining away fairly steadily so I
didn't get any footage of that it was
pretty miserable let me tell you so
hopefully we have enough I'm going to
build a shelter using tripods again
using saplings to support your shelter
is is excellent but it's very difficult
to find two saplings in a level dry
place that doesn't have a Widowmaker
hanging over it. a Widowmaker being a big
tree or a large branch that could
possibly fall on you. you know it's a
very real danger so that's what I've
taken to making these shelters with two
tripods for support. so I better get
cracking or this video is going to take
half the year. see in a while guys.
Here we have the finished shelter
I meant to show more of the construction,
but things
went against me, the brambles this time of
year are not as flexible I had a good deal
of trouble with them
My intention was to do the whole thing with natural
materials throughout
I used twine, excuse my fingers now they're quite dirty, I
used twine to finish the very top row
here, and put the rushes on the side
here as well, also the tripods at both
sides I reinforced with a little bit of
binder twine just because it's holding
the weight I've got some spruce boughs laid
down just to sit on, this is about the
best use for spruce boughs in my opinion
let's see if we can get a little fire
going, have a little twig bundle here
so can you use a Swiss Army knife as a
survival knife, well we've got a shelter
sorted, a good waterproof shelter we've
got fire sorted, what's left cleaning
some fish are cleaning game, I think it's
a bloody good survival knife, and this
little saw is a game changer, this is one
of the easiest shelters I built now it
takes a little bit of time but with a
bit of patience and just let the saw do
the work it's quite an effective little
saw
Now there are many on YouTube
who seem to believe that splitting wood is
is vital for survival
splitting logs of firewood with their
knife, now I searched throughout the
woods and I could find no logs the
firewood lying around, so I had to cut
this one. so we're going to see if we can
split this using this little little
little knife
SAW
okay let's see how we get on
I've created a kind of a knife wedge
type implement here so you've got our
little cut started there
so if you really want to split wood it's
very possible so how long did this
So, how long did this little shelter take to build guys?
it
took a half an hour to gather brambles
It took an hour to hike in here, it took
about an hour and a half to gather the wood
it took two and a half hours
to gather to rushes, it took about another
two and a half hours to build this, I
could have done it faster but it went
against me because the brambles were
difficult to work with,
This will tell you a couple of things, it'll show you
for instance why I'm not throwing out two
videos a week, it'll also  show you how
absolutely vital and precious something
like a tarp or even a sheet of plastic
or a small tent would be if you were
traveling somewhere where there was a
risk of being lost
so much effort is that I now have a very
waterproof, and a very strong, and
windproof shelter it's an effective
shelter
anyway guys that's the end of my video, I really hope you enjoyed it and
thanks very much for watching indeed, can
you use a Swiss Army knife as a
survival knife I think so,
Bye bye
 
