In what may turn out to be a regular feature I thought I’d add a few links to some interesting bushcraft and wilderness skills articles and videos I’ve found lately.
Rebecca Lerner writes some great stuff about wild food and medicinal plant uses. She just used hawthorn to treat a heart arrhythmia in her dog Petunia
Robin at Eat Weeds brought us his rather delicious looking alexanders chutney
A little ago back Bryan at PaddlingLight recommended 5 Canoe and Kayak Books to Read in 2012
Paul Kirtley at Frontier Bushcraft showed us his Wilderness Canoeing: Personal Bushcraft & Survival Kit
Gary at Bearclaw/Survivall/Nordmarken Canoe UK/Weiss (Gary’s a busy man these days!) is thinking along good lines with his back to basics One blanket and a frosty weekend
Another great video from WinterTrekker on YouTube. Here he shows us the key points of his ski-hauled toboggan setup. As ever he’s got some good ice safety tips.
[Invalid Link] http://youtu.be/tX5C9VT5–0
John Mac’s been busy with spoon carving and making charcloth and trying his hand at flint and steel firelighting
Francois at Francois’ Birchbark canoes doesn’t say much but he’s still making birch bark canoes like this 14 foot Algonquin. Nice.
If you follow Skills For Wild Lives on Google Plus you’ll have already seen this video. A tour round the Gränsfors Bruks factory. Interesting. Even though alot of the factory’s rather quiet.
[Invalid Link] http://youtu.be/E89nlVmPeeU
Nice article Nick – some good links. Thanks.
Cheers Gary. Have a few more up my sleeve. Coming soon
I have searched to find a way to WATERPROOF my canvas tipi (that I sewed on my treadle sewing machine) so that it won’t be flammable, and a way of keeping it from mildewing. I do not want any “store-bought” solutions. I want to be able to find a way from the wild. Several times I’ve read that “some tipis were good in heavy rains” but they never described how in those articles. I’ve seen rain ‘domes’ for at the top but that wouldn’t cut it for the rains here on the West Coast. I’ve seen ropes tied to the top/inside of the tipi to wick the rain drips down to a water catching basin. None of that fills the criteria. People say tallow, pitch, beeswax….. but they never say how someone out in the middle of nowhere would apply that heated mixture onto the tipi. I have a hollow log that I was eye-balling …thinking I could make a trough out of it to dip the tipi in the trough of melted tallow etc. but I want to have a fire inside the tipi and that sounds like a big candle to me …..
I read in the middle east that tents made from goat (skins?felted goat hair?) were waterproof.
My son said that they probably had smaller lighter tipis if they had no horses and moved from place to place, so last year I made a travois last year to carry my basic camp on, and made a small easy to carry canvas shelter. I painted it with linseed and turpentine and it shed the water really well and didn’t mildew but I wanted something I could make myself not BUY OUT OF A STORE …and I didn’t know if it was going to catch fire with a spark, and tho it is an old, authentic method alright,noone grows and makes linseed around here (tho some day I may figure out how to make turpentine).
So…. I have a collection of rain-shelter facts but it isn’t coming together ….any body have ideas on this ?