Challenge for April

[Joe]

The challeenge for April:

Make a primitive craft. Not too specific other than it has to be done with your own two hands.

This can be a basket, a pouch, an arrowhead, a shirt, shoes, anything. The idea is to use materials you gather and to create something as awesome as you can. If you hit Urban Scout up on his Ivy Basket class, you can build another one with the mad skills he helped you develop.

Post up your successes and failures and maybe we can help.

At the end of the month either we’ll get Urban Scout and Willem to judge the best one or we’ll just vote.

Here are some suggestions:
Basket
Pouch (If you have some skins floating around the house or maybe you need to go get some skins ;D)
Shirt or other piece of clothing
Spear
Knife
Bow and Arrow (This woul dbe hard but awesome)
Atlatl
Boomerang
Sling
Bow Drill Set

[Dan_Garmat]

Cool
I’ve wanted to make a bramble stems basket, since they grow everywhere here. Might also have an easier time of it this time of year, if I recall correctly.
Thanks for this idea. I’ll post a pic or two

[Dan_Garmat]

Already on it

Went back to my state gamelands I went last week for foraging. Same field I saw a bunch of robins last month had raspbery brambles everywhere.

So I cut a bunch for a basket (knife for scale). I’d planned to use multiflora rose but kept feeling no, I wanted to use raspberry stems. Trying to build that intuition so decided to go with it.

Found this on my walk back near where I’d seen virginia pines for last month. Looks like someone started building a larger version of a one-person shelter. Pretty cool. I wonder if it would work.

1st person view walking back to the car. Still in the trunk right now. Needs to dry out. I plan to follow instructions from this site: http://www.bushcraft.ridgeonnet.com/basic_basket_old_version.htm

[Dan_Garmat]

Ended up traveling most of this month so never got to my bundle of brambles drying in my kitchen. On one trip, though, I went to Rivercane Rondezvous in North Georgia (http://www.primitiveskills.org/, might see photos for this year at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27240090504&v=photos).

At Rivercane, I did make some cool stuff with bamboo:

A blowgun. Made of bamboo, the dark parts come from heating to bend it straight. The darts use part of thistle flowers harvested in Fall, attached in this case by dental floss, but sinew also would work, and on a skewer, but carved wood also would work. It works ok - really I need practice rolling thistle onto darts, and a longer blowgun, then accuracy would increase.

We did use a metal tool to bore a hole through that joint midway through, but could use a stone tool attached to a stick, just takes longer. This kind of hunting weapon works well for small game, which works for me, since I think possibly only small game may exist in substantial quantity at some point in my lifetime.

Once you have food, you need utensils! Super-easy to make, this knife and two spoons worked pretty well at Rivercane’s meals. Did use a saw and a knife, but felt easy enough to do with simpler tools.

And after dinner, music. Lol. Did use metal, sandpaper and a sanding machine, so again, doable without, just takes more time. Opted for “unfinished” look. Came out pretty well. Trying to learn some songs right now, got a bit of Pirates of the Carribean and Star Wars.

[streunner]

i like what ypu do.