In this week’s Fundamental Friday, Chris demonstrates practical ways to pre-filter nasty, stagnant water before boiling or running it through a commercial filter. Learn how to stretch the life of your gear with simple bushcraft hacks using a filter bag, a handkerchief, a coffee filter, or even a K-cup.
Clean water is one of the most important needs in the outdoors — but not every source is safe to drink straight from. In this episode of the Primitive Camping and Bushcraft Podcast, Chris takes you step by step through pre-filtering methods that remove grit, grime, and debris before you boil or use a commercial filter.
You’ll see how a Campcraft Outdoors filter bag works, why a handkerchief or even a cheap coffee filter can extend the life of your gear, and how a simple K-cup can double as a quick bushcraft water filter. Each method buys you more time, saves money, and keeps your main filter from clogging too soon.
Key takeaways:
Always pre-filter to save your commercial filter’s lifespan
Use what you have — handkerchiefs, coffee filters, even a K-cup work in a pinch
Clear water doesn’t always mean safe water — boil or filter before drinking
Improvisation in the field matters more than perfect gear
Whether you’re new to bushcraft or brushing up on survival skills, this episode will help you stay prepared when water is scarce and the source is nasty.
Water Filter Bag | Pre-Filter System
Alright, so right over here we have some of the nastiest water that we're gonna find. There is, there ain't no telling how much Giardia and e coli and garbage that's in this water. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna demonstrate how to get all the grit and grime out with this little filter bag. So first of all, what you want to do is just go ahead and, you know, try to make it as clean as you can.
Fill this dude up, just like that. All right. There's a fill line on this side. Let's see if I can find a fill line right there. Then, oh, I'm gonna lose the boot.
I'm gonna come back up here to Civilization and get right here in this area where we can see. All right, here we go. So, technically what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to soak this bag inside this water for, you know, a little bit two minutes later. Alright, so now that we've let this bag soak inside this water, you see how it's all wet?
Some of that water is inside that bag. All this is doing is getting rid of the nasty. So we're gonna open this up and we're gonna pour that water inside this bag. Then we're gonna collect that water back. In here.
Now this. What it's doing is it's just getting all the grit and the grime, the tadpoles, the slime, the leaves, uh, some of the tea stain and everything out of it. And all this is, is a camp Craft outdoors, uh, water filter bag. They're like 19 bucks. 17, 19 bucks online. And I'll leave a link in the description, uh, of the YouTube video.
But this thing is great for doing this, like filtering this nasty water out. Getting all the grime out of it. So we got a little bit less than the 24 ounces or whatever, where that fill line is on this side. So the fill line's right here and the water level's right there. A lot of that was just because it's spilled out.
Some of it's still dripping. So let's see. This is what it looks like now. It is still nasty. It's still yellow, it's still full of all the microbes and all the garbage. So now what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our filter and set it inside. Oh or something, piece of something right there. Leaf set it inside the cup.
Open this up a little bit on the top. And.
They got little thumb or palm presses right here. You just push down. And what this is doing is filtering all that nasty water through a charcoal ca uh, cartridge.
Now this water inside this container is crystal clear. Ready to drink, safe to drink. This water is safe. To drink
it is 100% clear if I had a bottle or a glass or something to put it in. Let me open this up.
Now you can see that water inside that canister in there. That was all of what we filtered. That's what's left over, and that is the safe to drink stuff. And then what this bag is doing is this bag is just saving your filter because you could have just went out there, scooped it up and filtered it in an emergency.
You needed some water right then and there. You could have done that. But what that bag does is it gets all the nasty, the leaves, the tadpoles, all the extracurricular activities out of the water. And it allows you to save that filter 'cause that filter's only good for 250 presses. One of the most important things you can always take with you in the woods is a metal container next to a knife, or, you know, uh, a good sheath or belt knife is, is.
Paramount in the woods, but a metal container will ensure that you can drink this nasty, nasty, stagnant water. I mean, this thing is full of all kinds of extracurricular activities. Now this dude is serving two fun functions. Is orange for signaling or for, you know, calling for help or anything like that, or visibility needs.
But it's also going to filter out these nasties out. Of this water and allow you to boil this water or to put this into a water filter. We're gonna take our little container here, fill it up, and just pour it in here. This is self-explanatory, water 1 0 1, and it's gonna take a couple seconds for it to filter in.
Once I filter this water, I'll show you what it looks like. Now it's not gonna be perfect by no means because the, the weave on this filter is a lot, uh, wider, a lot of course. So just try to get as much of the stuff off the surface as you can. And the wetter this is the faster it will filter. So this should be pretty much full by the time.
We're done with here. There we go. It's pretty much full. Now let me show you what we filtered out. So all this stuff right here is what we filtered out of that water. Now there's going to be some in there. Lemme show you. But that's cleaner than it was. And so you could run your water, filter your life straw, or you could boil the contents of this cup and you could just go ahead and bottles up that thing at that point.
I'm not gonna drink it now, and I've already filled up my life straw or my, uh, grail. Now let me show you another option that you could use to filter your water. So we just filtered this water with the handkerchief. Let me show you another way to actually filter it down even more, and that is using one of these 99 cent coffee filters.
I got these at the salvage store and uh, so it'll be cheaper that way. Yeah, you could get the regular just cheap coffee filters if you want or whatnot. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hold my thumb right here to keep it from actually sinking down in there so much, because it's going to sink in there as soon as the water hits it, but this will actually help filter the water.
And here we go. I'll have to hold it up. Now, this is one of the problems that I mentioned in the book, is that once you get this wet, you have to have like a rubber band or something to hold it on the outside. And so I'm just holding this up so you can see, but this is gonna take a lot longer than the handkerchief.
But you can hear it in there. It is filtering and it's gonna get a lot more of that grime outta there. Now a lot of you is like, Chris, why are we doing this? And, and it's just to get your grime and grit outta your water in order to save your commercial water filter and prolong the life of your water filter.
Sometimes you want to go through an extra step or two just to save a little bit of money in the long run, but uh, some people don't. They're like, Hey, I'll just buy another one and it don't matter. You know, but me pre preferably, I like to save the life of my water filter. So you can see all the nasties floating around in there and you can see all the grit and the grime floating around.
And this is actually taking that away. Now lemme show you what it looks like without it.
It has really taken out all the grit and the grime and the nasty. All right, so we used the handkerchief and we filtered our pre-filtered our water. Then we broke that down and we did the coffee filter and it, that water when we got done with the coffee filter was kind of clear and uh, it actually surprised me and Dave with how clear it was.
Now, I wanna show you one more step that you could take. There is some little item that you could bring with you, is a cure egg, K-cup coffee filter. Now this little dude, you just stick it in there like this. And, uh, it's got some coffee grinds in there, left over, but it's still gonna do the job. And you can just slowly pour your water in here and it's going to get out all that grit and nice as well.
Now you just saved,
you just saved your filter. Your commercial water filter, um, you're, you're actually prolonging the life of your commercial water filter and what you're doing is you're, you're just filtering out all those extracurricular activities in there. So that's, that does a real good job with it. Now it does have some coffee grounds in there, so this is gonna be, uh, coffee flavored now whenever I put it in my filter.
But I just saved the life on that filter a little bit more. Made some cleaner water, and you could boil this and. Then drink it or you can put it in a commercial filter. Don't drink this water. It's not safe to drink this water even though you ran it through all these filters because that stagnant pool right there that we just took this out of is disgusting.
There's like tadpoles fish, dead turtles. We just saw some dead turtles over there. Like this is disgusting. So, but you can drink this water after you put it through a filter or bowl it. Hey, I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time. God bless you.