Living Primitively

Nothing great to report. I’ve been gathering some nettle fibres for fishing lines, a carrying net and a fishing net. I have tested some new techniques for making willow basketry, since this was a crude attempt at a burden basket I will not post anything about the techniques I’ve tested them further and gotten better at it.

Both Patrick McGlinchey and Jon_R have recently been experimenting with coiled basketry and that has inspired me to give it a go. To start on this type of project I needed to make a needle first. This one is out of a thin, flat section of reindeer antler. I expect the thinness to be an advantage in this kind of work.

I gathered a lot of birch bark for personal projects and courses while I was at home. Some is spirally cut and will be used for a rucksacks or shoes. This is a photo of some of it. All was gathered with stone tools.

This cup was made due to the need of a container to keep my worms in when fishing. This type of cup is readily made and discarded and can be used for drinking from too, but due to the simple fold it does not hold water perfectly.

The container is sewn after it is dried. I drilled the holes with a flint tip. The rim was willow bark and so was the lashing. There are many possibilities of how to do this. If you use a good type of bark, which doesn’t curl that much, you can butt the sides against eachother, but with aspen you pretty much have to overlap. This basket type is very sturdy and well worth the effort in making.

This type of container is to me the quickest way to make high quality containers there is. It has the limitation that it is to a great deal only usable in spring and summer. After the bark has been folded you have a ready made container. To make it more durable and useful however, it is an advantage to dry it before you do the final steps. Otherwise you will experience curling and shrinking of the bark, making the construction loose and without a great fit.

First choose a section of Aspen (or specie with bark of similar structure) which is fairly straight and knot free. Score around the tree in the top of the piece you want, and do the same in the bottom. Then score diagonal line connecting the other two. Make sure you score all the way into the wood. You will kill the tree anyway, so there is no reason to be careful.

I use my flat moose antler wedge to pry loose the bark.

Determine the middle of the sheet by using a folded line. I have no picture of the process, only the curled sheet.

Score a shape across the sheet, resembeling the cross-section of a convex lense. I did this on free hand this time, but to get a more regular and beautiful shape you could make a simple birch bark pattern.

Fold it over and pull it over a log stump, bind around and leave it to dry. This is to prevent it from curling inwards. Not very easily achieved primitively, so I am currently testing another method, which I have never seen demonstrated anywhere. If it works out well, it will be presented in a book.

Birch bark is extremely versatile and resilient. Consequently it can be used for making a lot of different things. You need bark of a certain quality to make this type of box.

Take a long piece of bark and roll it up double. Sew it up with some type of cordage. For such high strain, static applications, split spruce root is ideal.

I had limited amounts of spruce root available this time, so for the rest I used strips of willow bark. The bottom of the box and the top of the lid is doubled with bark in two different directions for added strenght. Stitching across the grain is always important to do when using birch bark. Otherwise the bark will most likely split.

That’s the basics of it all, an excellent box for storing all sorts of small items. There are many tips and tricks regarding fitting and similar that doesn’t fit in here. A more in depth tutorial will be in the upcoming book(s).