Adventure Tip #3 Choosing Multi Tools

Frankly there is no such thing as best Multi-Tool, every tools suit every person differently. With more than 2 decades using Multi-tool experience, I have narrowed down to my needs.  

A breakdown on the Multi-Tools I have owned

• Swiss Army Issued SAK given  to me by a Swiss friend.
• Swiss Army Knife Mini
• Leatherman Wave 
• Modded Leatherman Super Wave Black Tactical 
• Leatherman Rebar
• Leatherman Juice Xe6
• Victorinox Farmer
• Leatherman Style PS
• Leatherman CS

Last couple of years of my usage there are 2 kind of Multi-tools, one for OUTDOOR / TRAVELING and the other for EDC URBAN SURVIVAL TOOL.

Vaseline for Outdoor

Vaseline aka Petroleum Jelly, to many novice campers they mostly think of only one usage, fire starter such as cotton ball coated Vaseline. Below I will cover on my usage, frankly there are tons of usage but these are some of it how I have used Vaseline.  

Ferrocerium Rods and Fire Starting Kit

If you have been surfing around the internet on this subject you will definitely find tons of info on it. Ferrocerium Rods aka Fire Steel. Some claimed the Chinese made Firesteels are crap while other champion the Swedish Fire Steel which I still own and now she is laying it my pile of outdoor scrap stuff.

Personally I have sold quite a few DIY Fire Starting Kit and also Chinese made Fire Steel. One factor I did not like in most Fire Steel is the fire steel handle and the striker. The handle simply takes up space and as for the striker, almost every outdoor adventurer, survivalist or prepper carries either a Multi-tool or a knife which can be used as a striker. So why carry a striker that only perform one function?

DIY from smallest Fire Steel 37mm in length dia 4mm

In my opinion, having a Fire Steel is good but if only using once in a while adventure or preparing a survival kit, I do not wish to carry a full size Fires Steel, instead that will be in our bug out bag checklists

Tinders: Cotton Straw, Magnesium, Twine, Tinder Quik (not my cup of tea)

The most important fire starting kit are the tinder no matter the size of Fire Steel. There are many kinds of tinder such as charcloth which I find a waste of time to make it, Vaseline coated cotton or from the nature. 

My main concern is tinder has to be lighted fast and at certain point it must be waterproof during wet or snowy seasons. Frankly why waste time searching for tinder in nature (well if you come across it, that is cool) but you if you are doing it, valuable time is wasted when you can to do something else. 

Spark-Lite

I have been preparing Survival Kit for 30 years, every year something new comes up and it goes into my kit. Recently I got the Spark-Lite, reason is if somehow one of my hand or arm is immobilise, I could still use the Spark-Lite with one hand. Some will tell me why not add a lighter in my kit, I do carry one since I am a smoker, always have a lighter with me all the time, it is when the lighter is out, Spark-Lite is next in line to assist. 

I try to keep my Survival Kit light and simple. I will try not to use my butane lighter during camping because I need it for my smoke.....LOL. So basically I have DIY smaller, light weight Ferrocerium Rods for survival kit, hiking and overseas backpacking. Will only use the modified bigger Ferrocerium Rods Dia8 x 80mm during car or bike camping.  

Cheap Tinder

My most favorite tinders are cheap twine and waterproof straw with Vaseline coated cotton aka Straw Tinder. 100 meters of twine cost less than USD1.50, what more can one ask for.

I keep my fire system simple, I have 2 Survival kit now, one for outdoor the other for oversea backapcking. Spark-Lite goes overseas, Mini Ferrocerium Rods goes outdoor and in Survival Kit but most important is still the tinder. No one is going to stop you carrying 100 metres of Twine through the Airport security....LOL (hope you get the drift) 

Well hope you guys have enjoyed reading the post and have an idea about fire starting and give you an ideal how to go about. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Emergency Kit

This kit is basically a First Aid, Repair and Survival Kit that I have put together. Every once in a while this kit will be revamp or improve. Those days I used to have 3 different kits in each pack, now I have all in one. I have used smaller Ziploc bags so that the items can be properly organised. 

Do not under estimate this setup and every outdoor person including parents with kids should have one, a must have item for any trip. Personally this kit have helped us many times, in India during black out, in an off-road training accident when pain killer was useful. Daughter MTB accident and the bandages came in handy. In Thailand when Son had a fever and the kit had assisted and many other more incidents before.

EDC Everyday Carry

I have been carrying EDC for awhile since back in 2000 due to my work. Even when I am travelling, MTB or hiking, I will have the EDC with me at all times. Hated the idea that I kept forgetting to carry item when needed it especially when you place items in pants pocket. Sometimes the items in the pocket simply feels too uncomfortable.  

These days I have narrowed down the EDC just to a simple pouches from Flyye and DIY nylon webbing. At times I would still use the MagForce OCTA Versipack. It rather a comfortable pack, the only problem I encountered using it when driving, I needed constantly remove it from my hip. Also on backpacking trips I cannot carry it on the hip, the fully loaded backpack is in the way. However for day hike or biking, this is the best. 

Fallkniven F1 VG10 Survival Knife

Fallkniven F1 knife is used by the Swedish Airforce as a survival tool. This is a Swedish knife but not made in Sweden. The metal used is a VG10 steel which stands for V Gold 10 or sometimes known as V-Kin-10(V金10号) that are used in Japanese cutlery mostly the Chefs' Knives. In another words the Fallkniven knife is made in Japan. 

Found a knock off sales below USD20 in China market and decided to get one and see for myself. The knife felt very good in my hand and the weight was just right to use for chopping. Did a search on the internet for the specification and surprising came across the Original and Copy specification.     

Cooking Rice Outdoor

Cooking rice might be a nightmare for many outdoor campers. Most of the time they would get the rice burn, this is because most of us failed to understand cooking timing of the rice. The method is rather simple but it is best you do you own trial at home first. 

Rice is best cook before any meals, the reason is that it takes time to cook. Normal cooking time for rice is around 30~45mins depending on grain type. I always use Thai grain as I grew up with it. I do not like starchy rice but rice with a bite and feel and that is why I choose only Thai grains.

Below is my method of cooking rice, you definitely have to do some trials before heading out the trails. Note my method below is for Thai long grains so it varies on different types of grain especially the shorter grains. The correct way would be soaking the grains with water for half hour  to get the fluffiness of the rice but for outdoor we do not have the time. 

High Calcium in Mountain Water

During the last Morakot Typhoon Disaster which me and my bike group gave a helping hand, I noticed there were handful of Aboriginal evacuees had kidney problems and mostly were related with kidney stones at first especially the elderly. 

Outdoor Fireplace

Camping outdoor is fun when you can build your own fireplace however in most camp sites here do not allow this and all National Parks are prohibited from making a fire. Creating a fireplace do give some senses of outdoor comfort, security and light. When there is no ready available light source, human tends to gather around a fireplace. That makes wild camping fun. 

There are few rules and tricks I would implored when making a fire. Normally I will make a fire pit or create a fire pit wall, this will prevent the fire from spreading to the surrounding and also assist to make the fire burn better. 

These are few things I would carried out when making a fire

• Gather wood of different sizes and sort them out
• Clear all dried leave or grass around the fire pit
• Dig a hole so that you can cover it with soil when it is over. This is a LNT (Leave No Trace) method.
• or create a fire pit wall, this method is the best. It makes the fire burns better and let other campers to reuse the same pit instead of burning elsewhere and everywhere. Best done at river camping so when the tides comes, it will wash off the ashes
• Never use wet rocks to make the wall, the wet rock will explode and hurt someone.
• If all burning is not possible, buy the kind of BBQ set on the pics below. One of the best portable BBQ set design

Survival Darts

After testing out few different kinds of DIY darts, finally settled for one simple method to make it. These darts are normally used with Blowpipe a native hunting tools which is still used around the world. The hunting gear is easy to fashion out, you can use a copper pipe, bamboo or anything that is straight and hollow. The pipe diameter should not be too wide. Blowpipe effectiveness should be at least 1.2m long. However you can try out different length to test it out. The current Blowpipe tested was using Bubble Tea straws, length 60 cm and effective range of 10 metres.

I have other intention that is to construct a compress air gun that can have a range 40 to 50 metres. Still on the drawing board. 

In my survival kit, I have a roll of duct tape and some nails. I carry nails just in case needed to peg the tent down on a tent wooden platform. I can use the nails to make a hunting tool. Now I found that I can make darts with it in matter of seconds.

I first started out making the dart using bamboo skewer and cigarette bud. It did take quite sometime to make one dart. Next I tried using Post-it and nail, it too took sometime but much faster than the bamboo dart. Finally duct tape and nail, it took seconds to have one ready. View the photos below how it was done.  

After testing out all the darts, the Post-it and Duct tape nail darts were more accurate and it sank into the carton box deeper. Maybe is because of the cone shape design which have lesser drag.

These Boots are Made for Walkin'

How we choose our footwear and lacing for comfort.

Got a pair of shoe or boot, tried in the shoe shop it fits just perfect but when hiking uphill and downhill it was not so perfect after all. 

Many failed to realize the comfort of the shoe when walking depends in how we buy the right size shoes / boots and how we lace them. 

First Aid Kit

This is one kit many campers or outdoor hikers choose to ignore. Being a first aider trained by the Red Cross, I can tell you honestly you will tend to forget what you have trained unless you put into practise or keep yourself in track. My whole life I have gone through CPR training atleast 6 times and at times I still forget. However there is one item in my camping list I will not forget.... First Aid kit.

Toiletry Kit

Many of us over packed our toiletry kit, bring alot of unnecessary stuff and carrying alot of oversize items. 

After investing in many different kind of toiletry bags, our best option is to use a sandwich Ziploc bag. The clear bag helps to see the items clearly  making much easier to remove the content needed. I have decided to repacked my toiletry kit into 3 days and 7 days kit for all kinds of camping.

Sunglasses

Sight is one of our most important senses, without sight our world will be in darkness. So proper eye protection is very important during outdoor. It helps you to protect from dust, objects hitting your eye and most important is the UV rays from the Sun. Did you know in Australia almost 90% of the people wears a sunglasses when they are outdoor. However in Taiwan very few people have it on. 

Fire Steel Modification

Here are some examples you can modified the Fire-Steel to more practical use.

550 Paracord The Guts

Inside the 550 Paracord there are 7x1mm nylon yarns aka "the guts" and each yarn there is another smaller 3 ply yarns which provide strength to the Paracord. Some survivalist would suggest taking a 30ft (9.1mtrs) or 100ft (30.48mtrs) of  Paracord with you for survival or camping. I never had a chance of fully utilising the 550 Paracord, so one day I decided to simulate a condition where I need to access the Paracord inner strands from a 10mtrs 550 Paracord. 

Commando Wire Saw

I have the BCB version for many years and found it was effective. There are many types of wire saw but I wanted to get the same as the BCB. Found a supplier and order a few to try it out. Below are some info how to improve the wire saw and a demo I put on YouTube.

P-38 Can Opener

It survives World War II, sees action in Korean and Vietnam War today it still serves the Army. The US Army P-38 can opener is every Marine survival tool. Those days, most of the combat ration comes in can and without this little tool, it will prove a hard time opening the cans. It is called P-38 for 2 reasons, the size of the can opener is 38mm and it takes 38 times to open the can. 

Dog Tag SOS Signal Mirror

Signal Mirror was first introduced to me when I attended a course Survival At Sea that thought us the importance of a Signal Mirror. Surprisingly the only place you can find Signal Mirror on a Ship is in the Rescue Life Raft. 

72 Hour Bug Out

photo by Japanese Red Cross

Disaster can happen anytime, if you are the lucky and have time to escape, you should pack along some important stuff with you. Do not panic but focus, you must be physically and mentally prepared. Help yourself before you help others.