Thanks to a few pretty simple changes to the sheath of this Mora knife you will be able to use it as a “bow drill booster” and light a fire even if you’ve lost the attached ferrocerium rod. All you need to survive the critical 72 hours is your modified Mora knife.
The first thing to do is to remove the stud that all the old Robusts have. I didn’t use it anyway. Then, you’ll need to hammer a small dent in a little coin, heat it up over a gas stove and press it in to the sheath where the clip used to be. Needless to say, your knife should be out of the sheath as you’re doing this and you shouldn’t be handling the hot coin with bare hands. Use a pair of pliers. Make sure the coin is rather thick and on the heavy side. Otherwise, it will quickly overheat and melt both the sheath and your knife’s handle. You may also reinforce it with glue if it doesn’t feel too robust. That’s your bearing block ready.
Now, we move to the para cord wrap. Not much to explain here. Just wrap four – five feet of para cord around the sheath and secure it with two pieces of bicycle inner tube as shown in the picture above. These will serve three purposes. First, they secure the para cord, which I’ve already mentioned. They will also hold your fire steel pretty firmly – that’s another important survival feature added at a very low cost and with very little effort. They can also be used as a fire starer as they’ll burn for quite some time even if you’ve just pulled yourself and the knife out of a river.
And that is pretty much it. Doesn’t take that long but adds a great deal to the overall functionality of your inexpensive knife. You may wish to watch the video to see how it works in practice. Have fun.
