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hey folks,

for those of you who are interested in checking out that Teaching Drum cult  which I must admit I´m a part of, there are a few videos online about what they´re doing. From what I´ve seen and experienced, they approach h/g-lieways with a holistic approach that I do miss in most of the primitive skills community...extending far beyond the "practical" skills and attempting to peel back our civilized layers and conditioning...
that´s my perspective anyways, you can check it out here:
http://www.teachingdrum.org/media.html
under the header television...

cheers
thomas

hey,

if any of you are interested in having a look at some pictures from the Wild Moon experience in norway (Torjus briefly mentioned it briefly in a post), here´s a link:
http://wildmoon-europe.magix.net/

thomas

greetings all,

new on this forum though not new to the subject of primitive skills ;-)

If anyone is interested in producing birch bark tar, I´d suggest having a look at
http://www.primitiveways.com/birch_bark_tar.html
if you haven´t already. I recently produced a small quanitity using the same principles...
I used a flower pot made of clay buried in a firepit a a container to clollect the tar, another flowerpot on top with a lid and a small hole in the bottom where i stuffed the birch bark. then a hot fire on top or a few hores - et voila! some birch bark oil, which i further boiled down to tar. i think i might actually have to dry it out a little more because it´s still a little sticky on the hafted flint knife i used it on...
sorry no pictures since i don´t have a camera ;-)

greetings
thomas

Due to some 700 pending approvals, most of them probably spammers, registration is closed. Please mail me on my personal e-mail adress and I will register you. The adress is: torjusg (at) gmail.com

How did it feel inside durring the winter?

Looks plenty durrable to me.

Very interesting design, looks like it's easily accomplished with limited tools.

Great work!

Wow, great stuff.

I have been experimenting with something similar myself as seen in one of the earlier blog posts, but this seems like a much more stable design. Mine moved around my feet constantly and were really quite a pain to use.

I'll make a pair as soon as possible. I would think moose hide would work excellently for this type of design.

Thanks,
You can probably see much I improved from making the first shoe on the left to the right one.
It amazing how the rawhide forms the charactristic shoe shape around the foot.
I just had some unpaleo waxed cotton thread lying around so I used this.
Gut or fishing line were the traditional materials to use
 

Wow, thats pretty amazing from just one piece of rawhide! They look great. What do you use to stitch them together?

This is a type of one piece rawhide shoe that I have been trying out recently.
Their extremely simple to make and quite effective in a mild climate.
 They were the traditional footwear in Ireland before 1000AD.
 In fact people only stopped wearing a very similar version in the last 50-20 years ago in some of the more remote Island regions of Ireland.
Since they are ideal for getting in and out boats and walking over rocky island landscapes.
Cowhide versions are said to last about a month of constant use.
 



I made mine from red deer skin with the grain scaped off, as a result they proved very stretchy and they had to be resewn to tighten them. As they are rawhide they must be soaked prior to wear.
 After a days use they will generally dry out and become quite hard and need resoaking. I also use dry grass to fill them out to. This also helps to keep the feet warm in the damp rawhide.
My next pair will use solid rawhide to avoid the stretchiness this should also be more durable also.

Robert