How To Use A Bushcraft Knife

I'm going to show you how to use a Bushcraft knife. Safety is paramount with these because they are really sharp. So, one of the best places to do your carving techniques is actually out behind you here.

This way, you're avoiding the core of your body, you're avoiding the inside of your leg where your femur arteries are and it's a nice strong powerful cut. You're bringing all your strong powerful back muscles into it. So, I've got a nice piece of green hazel here.

I'm going to cut a point into here, just going to cut back in a way like this, turn it and carve like that. That's one of the strongest carves we have for using a Bushcraft knife. Another technique is what we call the chest cut, where you place the cutting edge of your knife in line with your knuckles.

You turn it backwards like this and you pull apart like that using your back muscles to open up your arms. That's quite a good one. I tend to carve a lot using this.

There's actually less impact on your elbow joints, always being aware, not getting too close to your face with your knife. And you get lots of control. You can take big cuts or really fine little shaving like this.

So, another technique you can use is the reinforced cut. Where if you need to cut into a piece of wood, you place the blade on, make sure your finger isn't behind where you're cutting, like that needs to be out of the way, but you push on the back, on the spine of the knife with your thumb and you can push down on the knife like that, we call that stop cut, which cuts the fibres of the wood there and then you can carve up to it like that again, pushing with the thumb. I'd say about 60 to 70 percent of the pressure is actually coming from my thumb.

It's a nice controlled cut. And that's how to use a Bushcraft knife. .