5 Essential Knife Skills

5 Essential Knife Skills to Learn before Going Camping [GUEST BLOG]

This is the first in a series of guest blogs. The author of this first guest blog is from Billy at Perkin Knives (https://perkinknives.com), custom knife makers based in the UK. Read on to see what Perkins Knives has to say.

We all love to be outdoors! But being outdoor enthusiasts or adventure lovers, we need to develop a certain set of skills. Of all the varied skills that the outdoor enthusiast needs, knowing how to make the best use of a knife is possibly one of the most important.

A knife is an irreplaceable part of your outdoor kit, and knowing how to use it makes your time in the outdoors much easier and enjoyable. Knowing how to use a knife for bushcraft and camping though first relies on having chosen the right type of camping/bushcraft knife. Perkin Knives are one of the best custom knife makers in all of UK. They sell a wide range of premium quality knives from Bowie to hunting to camping to bushcraft to a hatchet to axes and even choppers.

Important knife skills that you need to have before going camping

You may bring home a brand-new premium quality camping knife for your upcoming camping trip. But, the story doesn’t just end there. The bottom line is that you need to learn how to use it in a smart and efficient manner. This is the only way you can ensure that the knife is useful when it’s actually needed, or else it gets reduced to just a worthless piece of sharp metal. So, on that note, let’s take a look at some of the most essential knife skills:

Fire Starting
Knowing how to start a fire is totally crucial in every sense of the word. You need to use your knife to ignite a Ferro rod as it’s one of the most convenient ways to start a fire. Ferro rods can be used thousands of times, so you don’t want to skip this part of learning. You should practice with both dry and wet materials, maybe at your own backyard, before trying to use this skill for real.
Chopping:
This skill can be best honed at home, before you set out camping. You just need to have a firm grip on the knife at all times. You can chop up branches and wooden sticks to collect all the firewood you need to start a fire.
Feather sticks:
This is one of the most important knife skills to learn. By knowing this, you can light up a fire even when it’s damp, or all when other methods have failed. This skill is not rocket science, but it’s not a piece of cake either! Practice makes perfect, right?
Carving:
Carving helps you to construct super useful tools like spoons, bowl. etc., when you are out in the wild. This process is both fun and also helps to make use of whatever’s lying around you. So, basically you could carve anything and everything starting from weapons to utensils to baskets, cooking tripods etc.
Food preparation:

You could use a knife to prepare your food when you are out camping. From preparing vegetables to small game butchery, a knife is an essential tool for wilderness food preparation.

These are just a few of the basic knife skills that you will need for bushcraft and camping adventures. Remember, practice makes perfect and it all starts with choosing the right tool for the job.

Learn more about knife and axe skills in these blogs from Wildway Bushcraft:

How to sharpen your bushcraft knife
https://www.wildwaybushcraft.co.uk/how-to-sharpen-your-bushcraft-knife/

How to choose a bushcraft axe
https://www.wildwaybushcraft.co.uk/choose-bushcraft-axe/

How to sharpen your bushcraft axe
https://www.wildwaybushcraft.co.uk/sharpen-axe/