A piece of screen in your char tin makes it windproof and virtually idiot-proof. If you have ever flipped over a char tin, or had the wind pick up and blow all of your embers away; you know how frustrating that can be.  A few years ago I got a great tip from a guy named Carl suggesting that I add a piece of metal window screen to the tin to contain the embers.

I thought that sounded like an interesting idea and filed it away thinking that I might stop at a hardware store to buy some eventually.  Then, less than a week later my eyes spotted some garbage sticking out from the forest floor that just happened to fit the bill perfectly.  This was a unique set of circumstances as a major flood happened here about fifteen years ago, and the river took some houses from upstream, smashed them up, and distributed them through the woods.

While you might not be lucky enough to run into this material in the woods, it is a cheap and very worthwhile upgrade to your char tin.  I opted to cut the corners for easy folding and set mine up as a cover that sits over the top of the char.  I imagine that you could cook the char with the screen, but that may put undue wear and tear on it, so I like the idea of adding after the charring process.

I didn’t have the luxury of a windy day for testing, so I recreated some seriously stormy conditions by fanning it with a kneeling pad.  Without the screen, the tin would have been empty by the second gust.

The real surprise was how well it protected and held the char during some simulated tin flips.  This might not be a traditional method, but it sure would be an asset if you were every counting on your char tin for fire.

I used a combination of western red cedar punk wood and black cottonwood punk wood.  The cottonwood tends to be more willing to take a spark, and the cedar is prone to flaming up, so this was a great combo to use to get flames up to ignite the tinder through the screen.  Of course you could always remove the screen, and put a piece of smoldering material into your bundle if you needed to be efficient with the material.

via NWPrimate

Ray Mears shows us how to bake bread in the outdoors over a campfire

Making a Resin Candle that burned for almost 1 Hour. Coniferous Tree Resin, Birch Bark and a short stick

So many of us look towards Roots, herbs and plants for natural organic healing, that often times Weeds are overlooked. Here are 10 Weeds That heal. These are some great ones & uses we had not seen or heard of before. Pass it along to your friends

1. Shepherd’s Purse
2. Cleavers
3. Chickweed
4. Dandelion
5. Groundsel
6. Mallows
7. St. John’s Wort
8. Self Heal
9. USNEA
10. Yarrow

When modern medicine is not available, or if you just choose to live a all natural self sufficient life style it’s important to know and understand what natural remedies out there can do for you.  Medicinal Herbs have been in use for thousand of years and are renowned for their effectiveness. This is just the tip of the iceberg, we plan on covering natural healing, herbs, and natural medicine extensively. So stay tuned and visit the site often.

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A traditional skills that can be of great use in a wilderness living or long term survival situation is the making of glue from naturally available resources. There are numerous methods that will produce different types of adhesives. In this article I would like to focus on one of those methods, the making of hide glue. The process is time consuming, but not difficult. The product is a fairly high quality glue, although it is water soluble.

The process starts by taking some raw hide. If you do not have access to raw hide, the easiest place to get it is at the pet supplies section of your store. Most dog bones are made of rolled up raw hide, just check the label. Here I am using beef hide dog bones.

The hide will probably be very hard, so you can put it in boiling water to soften it up.

When it is soft, take it out and cut it into small pieces.

Put the small pieces back in the water and continue boiling it. Make sure the hide is always covered with water. The boiling will take hours, so you will have to periodically add more water so that the hide stays covered. Here I boiled it for three hours. The substance that you see on the side of the pot is overflowed liquid. When it dries, it becomes the glue.

Then strain out the hide pieces, or remove them with a spoon. Continue to boil the remaining water to reduce it down. I boiled it for another twenty minutes. Make sure to stir the liquid so it does not burn. By this point it should be getting fairly thick.

There is no specific required thickness. The more water it has, the longer it will take to dry once applied, but if it gets the job done, it is thick enough.

To preserve the glue, pour it onto a flat surface. I used a plate.

After about an hour, you should get a product which feels like rubber.

Cut it into smaller pieces and put it into a container. They should last quite a while, but since they are an animal product, eventually it will go bad. If you want to preserve it longer, spread out the liquid even thinner (less than 1/16th of an inch) and let it dry completely. The dried glue should be completely hard rather than rubbery. That way it should preserve longer.

To use the dried glue, just heat it up. You may want to add some water when heating it so it doesn’t burn.

That’s all there is to it. The glue will hold very securely when dry. Its most prominent historical use has been in the making of composite bows.

This is a great old Native American fish trapping technique. It’s best used in tidal waters rivers or creeks.

The concept is to funnel finish into an area where it’s hard for them to find the way back out, it’s the same concept behind a minnow trap or soda bottle funnel trap

Drive stakes side by side into the bottom in shallow water to create a square or fenced in area of sorts in the water. Make sure the open end of the funnel is on the downstream side where the water is being forced into the opening. Other materials can be used to construct this trap such as rocks, but this is the most effective and allows for building it in slightly deeper water. One trick is to build it starting at one side of the bank and extending out using trhe side of the bank as a barrier and forcing fish towards your trap

It’s a great and simple trap that allows you to catch the fish by hand or spear them once they are in your trap. You’ll be amazed at how effective this survival fish trap really is, even small ones work pretty well.

A mud-brick oven, or horno, is a great way to bake things while in a primitive living situation. It also offers a nice solution for bringing fire into the shelter. A fire is built withing the oven. The bricks or rocks heat up and retain the heat for hours. A few pies or two pizzas can be made in a properly heated horno (in this hungry camper’s experience). By heating the oven, the shelter may be heated for quite a while without the risk of smoke exposure through the night. Just heat the oven and let it burn out.

First, lay the foundation with scavenged bricks or stone

Leaving space for a door, start building the horno up in beehive shape.

Create the doorway

Build the rocks up

And leave a hole in the top for the fire to breathe and to feed fuel through.

Fit the door onto the opening

Fill in all the spaces with mud and clay. This will seal the oven and prevent heat from escaping

Firing the oven will help the mud and clay dry faster and allow the finding of any holes in the mud layer as smoke will billow out.

Get a roaring fire going for about forty-five minutes to an hour and the oven will be ready to bake a few items at least. Covering the smoke hole with a rock after firing will allow retention of more heat. Be sure to seal up the door when cooking.

Any number of methods are employed to cook with this oven. Some cultures scrape out the coals and cook with the radiating heat, other cultures will cook using both the coals and the radiant heat.

The birch basket is an expedient way to make a water-tight container. One may never need take the bark from a living tree except in dire circumstances for often times birch is available on the ground with the wood rotted out. The birch basket, or any other type of bark that you may find capable of folding such as cedar, will provide excellent containers to carry water, supplies, collect maple syrup, or boil water in with rocks.

First, find a down birch log and score a cylinder out on the log. Cut the scoring through and remove a cylinder.

Next is to remove any wood that has managed to stick to the bark to fully reveal its pretty pink-red color.

Cut a diagonal slice from each of the corners. This will all the bark to be folded.

Begin to slowly fold the sides upwards to meet with a second side.

Wrap the edges and punch a whole with either an awl or a knife when the two sides are joined.

Fit a twig through to secure the folded bark together.

Proceed to do the same with all sides.

From here, any tears or holes in the bark may be mended with pine pitch. To further add stability and shape to the basket, a rim may be sewn on. This basket is simple to make and is a quick solution to not having a container to boil water in during a survival situation.

A hoko is a simple yet practical knife being easily made in the bush. The first one was found in an archaeological dig near the Hoko river in Washington.

A green stick is used so that the sharp stone flake may be hafted easier. Here, a live branch from a Northern White Cedar is used.

The bark is removed as it makes excellent cordage and will be used to hold the hafted rock flake in place.

Split the stick halfway down

The sharp rock flake is placed between the split portion of the stick

The outer bark is then used as cordage to tie above, below, and across the stick so that the rock flake is held securely.

The hoko is now made and is a great tool for adding control over rock flakes for skinning or wood working with larger flakes.