Great video, thank you. This is one I learned as a teenager back in the 1980's. My high school ran a program where some of the students could go into the bush with some of the local (Australian) aboriginal elders and learn traditional bush-craft. The elders use the same technique for splitting rain forest vines such as lawyer cane etc. God bless my RU-vid friend.
Yessir Mr Dan is a treasure I really like this young man he reminds me of myself when I was his age but he's taught this codger alot of BC hacks God bless you Dan.
Dang, this 70 year old learned something. I can remember many things over my lifetime of ‘inconvenient camping’ but this trick is ‘new’ to me or maybe I’m forgetful. I will teach this to my 5 granddaughters and let them impress their parents,my 2 daughters. You can teach an old dog a new trick, thanks.
Dear George, this might be kind of a weird question but I’m having to wright a report as if I was living during WW2. Can you tell me how life was during it? Thank you!
Huh... I never knew you could redirect a split like that. I figured the only way you to do that would be to make a new angled cut with an axe or a knife. Good information, man. Thank you. 👍👍
This is how we split bamboo into very thin and long pieces/panels, regardless of how long the pole is. Same technique is also used when we have to make strings from tender bamboo to tie bunches of paddy, or other things. The blade just sort of helps in initiating the cut. Rest of the work is about how you use your hands. So one could just use a sharp stone to make the initial split and then the hand splitting takes over.
another way to do this is with your blade, you just twist your blade to spread the crack, but twist it in the direction of the thinner side. so the top of the blade leans into the thinner side and the bottom edge of the blade is leaned into the thicker side. does the same thing you're doing but saves your fingers. i haven't done this in a while so it maybe the opposite from what I remember....but it does work.
Old Times Myers can have the invaluable advice. There's so much you can do with natural stuff that modern for oaks think is debris. Foxfire series of bomb oaks about Appalachian lite and traditional techniques in Eastern Europe are valuable.
Thanks. This is also how old timers split out strips for chair bottoms and basket making. Respect your elders, they've already lived it and learned it the hard way.
My elders...your elders..how about anyone who knows and is kind enough to share( age and time and relationships not important)..many have never known ( my elders) or never cared to share.. or no one was interested in what they knew.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing: keeping the blade in the crack and twisting the spine in the direction you want the wood to split. Great video, Dan!
Its cool that dude is teaching people this but most of everthing ive seen him do is stuff I learn when I was a kid spend time n the woods but im sure he did to he just passing it on now
What happens if it starts to run out, but we turn the stick over and repeat the process from that end? Will the 2 splits not meet somewhere in the middle?
The physicist inside me is trying to figure out why this is... Is it because the side you're moving is mechanically softer due to it experiencing current elastic deformation, or is it some differential rotational torque thingy? Relatively speaking, there's no difference between the side you're holding still and the side you're moving. One is just moving relative to your eyes, and one relative to your hand, so there has to be something going on. I'll figure it out while I'm in the shower probably... EDIT: Left stick and Right stick both have the same side to side force on them. Left-stick=← Right-stick=→ But if you're trying to hold left still and pull right away, you're pulling down and right on Right-stick. Right-stick=→+↓ and since you're pulling down on right-stick-, you're pulling up on left-stick. Left-stick=←+↑ So they average out as... Right-stick →+↓=↘ Left-stick ←+↑=↖ So the forces are diagonal to the wood in the same exact direction it moves! Yay! I did it! :3
Interesting tip, I like it, thank you. Hum, I missed the memo stating "rather than utilize the correct word use, we will now utilize utilize." Using utilize comes across as pompous and self ingratiating. Use and utilize have different uses and meanings. Though many folks replace use with utilize 99.99% of them do not use a dictionary for the etymology of words.
I love all these Jeremiah Johnson "I'm out in the woods so I know what I'm talkin' about" videos done by someone with perfect....well...okay....good, teeth. You want true experiential believability? A few missing, and/or blackened mis-shapen, teeth are a must. 😉 Oh....and a banjo strumming as back-ground music would be a good plus, too! 🤣 John~ American Net'Zen
I decided to delete the facebook app from my phone last week, with the intent of improving my mental health... I have found so many awesome, wholesome, and just down right educational! So damn refreshing to see positivity out weigh the negativity
Good for you man. I deleted all social media years ago got into meditation working out listening to podcasts and reading I found any time I was board I would start scrolling so I found something else to fill my time. From a complete stranger I’m proud of you whoever you are
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Happines comes from happenings. True joy comes from knowing Jesus Christ! J-Jesus O-Others Y-Yourself
Good presentation. I guess it’s because I’m old but I “discovered” this splitting technique when I was in the woods as a child. I’m glad to see it was common knowledge once. It really is handy when making snowshoes or other things with long thin parts . Are you or have you shown making strip bark cordage?
splitting willow shoots and then peeling the bark to use for cordage is how i learned this technique. and can use the fresh peeled willow shoots for basketry or other projects. at first i peeled the bark and then split the shoots when i needed one but found its easier to just split then strip the bark and if it starts to leave some at the nodes just work up the edge and keep going.
Just think about how much of these tricks primitive man came up with when everyone was doing this every day. Ever wonder how many tricks were lost due to modernizing civilization.
I have an old book, on old woodworking techniques and am surprised at how much has been lost. That example translates to so many things in modern life.
Great tip man. I remember Ray Mears showing something similar when he was splitting spruce roots for cordage. Glad to see this knowledge is still being shared.
We do this when we are splitting our materials when making baskets, then we smooth the splits with draw knives. Good tip, almost a lost practice that was well known and applied a few hundreds years back in this country. Had a lot that needed toting back in the day, vegetables from garden, eggs from the hen house, thus they wove tatter and egg baskets, if you needed a box or a basket then you made it. Also needed for weaving a certain type of chair bottoms
If you have ever tried to split spruce roots for other crafts this is the same principle, bend the heavier side, same for riving cedar, bend the the heavier side to balance. The pull term is a bit deceiving, I see it as bending.
Your comment is a bit deceiving, I see it more as knit picking about what you and everyone else already understood, than actually trying to be helpful in any way. See how easy that is?
Thanks for sharing! I grew up in Missouri Ozarks, as a kid I watched neighbors and family pull oak splits for baskets and I couldn't remember how they did it. This brought back some memories and some past skills learned. I really enjoy your videos, thanks again.
On bigger logs, I use a wedge. Get a piece of wood, make a long flat point on it with your knife. Then start off the split with your knife and a baton. Put in the wedge and hit that with the baton. Keeps your knife sharper and prevents breakage, gets a large bit of wood split in half with considerably less effort than banging a blade all the way down. A wedge is especially useful if you have a small knife.
If you keep gesturing with your right hand, explaining between bouts of batoning - eventually you'll cut yourself on that protruding blade. Goes to show that even in the woods - youtubing can be a hazardous venture =.O
I've used this to evenly split spruce roots for cordage with great results, but I hadn't though to use it on larger material like sticks. Thanks for the heads up.
I had the chance to work on a birch bark canoe with penobscot friends. The split out is the way they treat their spruce root for stitching the canoe. Cool tip, thank you and merry christmas.
You use this same technique for splitting tree roots down for cordage. I also will use a knife as leverage instead of my hands. with the blade of your knife pointing down into the crack, twist the backside of the blade towards the thicker side of the wood, It's doing exactly what you have demonstrated. Good video though! I enjoyed it!
We use this in traditional birch bark canoe building to make tonnes of cordage from spruce roots. Its not just pulling more, if you find it breaks on that thin side, press into the thick side and then pull a bit harder, its a mix of both. Cool to see, i forget about things like this
I just keep the knife in the split but angle the stick from vertical while I twist the knife it in the direction I want the split to while I'm batoning. Usually works and may save some splintered fingers.
Dan keepin' the Wow in Wowak! This is great! The only other info I ever found on "steering" a split was an Englishman demonstrating how to make wooden shingles with a froe. It wasn't made clear whether you pushed the handle towards the direction you want to steer the split, or away from it. Given what Dan demonstrated with his hands, it seems most likely to push towards the desired direction. Nice tip dan, this is the sort of thing that can save a bushcraft project when using uncooperative wood!
True. However I was not hating. I love these vids... it just struck me as funny that I was wasting 6 minutes at work while on time and a half to watch a guy break sticks lol
"The Old-time Woodsmen Never Told You About this One!" smh I HATE clickkbait titles that purport to know how much you know about a subject, or how many things you've seen, or that THEY (the poster) is going to share womething with you that has been DELIBVERATELY WITHHELD...lol... yeah, all those times as a kid, after I'd milked the chickens and threw in some hay for the pigs, I sat around the fire as a kid, listening to all those "old-time woodsmen" and you're right!! They never told me this... I am abourt 30 years older than this guy, which means I reached Eagle Scout about 15 years before he was born. Splitting a stick with (what we always called ) a "sheath-knife"...this is what...advanced..??? lol "... pull the thicker side..." OR you could lift the knife and re-start it into the wood a few inches before the grain took that turn...
Notched sticks - tally sticks - were important devices in medieval times, wherein split-tally-sticks, a medieval update, were prevalent and also much used. Tally sticks were used to record transactions, e.g. Tax payments. On the medieval device, ways of cutting the split-tally stick provided for a "counterfoil" (a receipt) - i.e. the shorter off cut provided the receipt while the longer piece was called the stock. Around 100 A.D King Henry declared Tally Sticks could be used as proof of paying Taxes - their use one way or another lasted until 1837.
