One of the smaller craft projects I´ve been working on while being in the woods lately is a fat container. I´ve mostly used canning jars for rendered fat, mainly because they work and are easily available. Fat gets rancid through exposure to sunlight, heat and/or oxygen, so a tight fitting container is preferred for that purpose. The one shown here is a design made of birch bark.

Materials used from left to right: Split cedar pieces (for lid and bottom), birch bark and spruce/balsam fir root.

The finished container. To the right is some basswood fiber which was used to make the piece of cordage on top of the lid. An excellent tutorial for a similar style of container (along with other tutorials) can be found at Jon´s Bushcraft site

I may also experiment with rawhide containers for fat storage in the near future and post about it here.

Inspired by Owen’s post on the ice man sheath I decided to make one for myself. I did this a while ago, but I forgot to post it on the blog. The technique is a type of knotless netting, not totally dissimilar from what Kevin is showing on his blog. I used elm bark exclusively and it is worth mentioning that it works like a charm. The knife needs to be rehafted so I’ll have to post a picture of them both at a later time.  As you can see on the photo, the lower binding has slipped off, but hasn’t lost any of it’s usefulness. I’ll probably tie it back on though, as an extra security measure.

Lately I have started thinking about this again. There arn’t many suitable pieces of blowgun material in Norway, most are too short. I decided to go for red elder (Sambucus racemosa), though I guess that several roses (Rosa sp.) and common reed (Phragmites australis) and Cattail (Typha latifolia) could be used too. I drilled out the soft pith of a dead piece. It cracked one place, but I wrapped it with sinew so then it was fine. I made a quick dart out of an elm splintre and wrapped small feathers around to fletch it. the feathers were secured with sinew

Since it’s very short it isn’t accurate nor powerful, Accuracy suffers badly on distances over 3-4 metres and it could only kill the smallest of birds and maybe mice. But for a first try, it’s fair enough.

Common plantain is very frequently found on roads or well used paths. The leaves are thin and have small threads in them. Don’t wash it, but place it directly on the wound. The leaves don’t soak up blood, so you need a piece of buckskin or similar with binding around to hold it in place. Sorry about the lack of photos on this one. Thanks for the photo Kevin.

Razorstrap fungus is a hoof fungus that grows most commonly on birch. To process it, take a fresh piece (they dry slowly, so you can keep one with you at all time) and make cuts around the piece you need. What you are to be cutting out is the underside, also called the pores. Stick a knife underneath and skin the flake off. As Kevin shows in his blog you can use it as a self adhesive plaster. If the adhesion isn’t strong enough, just use a binding around it. While on the trip I used it on a infected wound, it seemed to work, but it burned like hell! I advise that you use the inside of the strap, since it is likely to be most sterile.

When you have found appropriate roots, start following the root in both directions. Chances are it will go underneath other roots, so first free it as far as you feel useful in either direction, then rip it off in one side and start taking it out from underneath the other roots. You’ll probably discover a bunch of other useful roots in the process, so one starting point can be the base of a whole day of harvesting.

Here is a coil of roots, useful for static binding tasks. Basket rims will not be in much motion, so it is excellent for that task. You can easily scrape off the bark with a sharp piece of bone (like a bone knife) and they can be split in 2 in the common way for wood as shown in my article on primitive ways. Dry the roots at any stage of the process and reconstitute them in water over night before use.

First, cut and clean the bark. Cleaning is done by removing the loose pieces on the exterior. I usually turn the exterior in, but both is good. You can either cut the corners or fold them, the first method isn’t waterproof, while the last one can be if done carefully. When folding, always do it over a fire. Heat will make it go pliable in an instant. It can be heated any number of times, but don’t hold it over the fire for very long. The bark on the photo has been crudely pegged, due to lack of time to construct proper clamps. The other photo displays a small eating bowl only kept together by simple pegs.

Digging and preparing roots will be covered in a seperate post. Use the roots well soaked and pliable.

For the sewing you need a bone or antler awl, the roots and a preferably some clamps. Clamp it together and start sewing. There are several types of sewing, depending on if you are sewing along or across the grain. Here I’m only demonstrating how to sew along the grain or overhandstitching as I believe it’s commonly called. If you are just making a quicky basket, a kettle or some other consumption utility, just stitch on one split root on either side with long stitches. This is safe, since the bark will not so readily split from the holes when they are far apart. On sides where you are stitching through only one single piece of bark, stitch on sidepanels, with grain running in the opposite direction of the one of the main basket wall. This is of the stiching of a kettle and the kettle in use.

A related stitch is the layered one. This one is stronger due to covering the rim entirely and having lots of connection points at different grain runs of the bark. I stitched this one with three alternate depths, but you can use any number. Here you are: A new basket, with a quite fancy rim.

Now being extinct over much of Europe, the beaver is one of the most useful creatures there is. Not only does it create wetlands and enrich the lakes, it provides a lot of easy resources for the primitive. Photo: Lodge in the distance.

Despite some recent overhunting and poaching of the beaver by some local shit-kids, the area’s beaver population is still very high. The density is almost abnormally high for the region. Photo: A lodge in the distance, viewed from the lavvo (tipi).

Birch will rot very easily with the bark on, the beaver barks it and uses it for huts and dams. It will then preserve fairly well, as long as it doesn’t lie directly on soil. Seasoned or fresh, you can find both lying around, in a remarkably range of sizes and shapes. Ironically, I used a beaver stick for the new handle on my moose axe, but the beaver’s sticks provided such an easy source of materials and firewood that I almost never chopped a single piece. Photo: And what is this digging stick made from? From a beaver stick. No construction work and an excellent tool.

In fact, it provides so much firewood that you could pile up a huge amount outside an earthlodge for the winter and would never have to chop a single piece. That would not be very nice towards the beaver though, as it would most likely impact the beaver’s chances of survival. Photo: Firewood.

In addition, the beaver provides a potentially large amount of fat, good meat, some high quality fur and beaver teeth for precision carving. It’s fairly easy to hunt at some times of the year and trapping them is said to be very, very easy indeed.

If there is one animal that will make the primitive’s life easier, it is the beaver.

Cut the nettle stalks with something sharp. A quartzite blade works nicely.

Strip off the leaves with by pinching on the base of the stalk and pull towards the other end.

Pound the stalk gently, particulary at the joints to flatten it.

Stick your thumb in a crack and wedge it up the entire stalk. Flatten it afterwards.

Crack the opened stalk on the inside at one point.

Pull in each direction to get the bark off the woody core.

The fibres (really bark sheets) should then be dried for infinite storage. I’ll describe further processes in another post. Photo: Whole nettles to the left and the fresh bark sheets on the right.

The result is fairly pretty and I look forward to testing it, but the next time I will make a trap in the same way as the burden basket a little while ago. This method simply takes way too much time to be worthwhile.