Showing posts with label how-to. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how-to. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 September 2015
Treewright makes a Bobbin for the Lathe.
The bobbin was developed in the 18th century as an alternative to the pole for powering the lathe.
Wednesday, 9 September 2015
How people made and ate sugar before the late 16th century
This is a sugarloaf. It's how people made and ate sugar before the late 16th century
Posted by Inverse on Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Thursday, 3 September 2015
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
Friday, 1 March 2013
Securing A Line to an 18th century Fish Hook.
There are a couple of different ways to attach a line to a snelled hook. This is one way.
I will make my own in picture and video form and show you the other way later.
Thursday, 28 February 2013
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Sunday, 6 March 2011
A Word From Colonial Williamsburg.
Reflections on Reenacting
Seeking an Authentic Past in a Specious Present
by D.A. Saguto
There is an element of escapism involved in dressing up like dead people, and playing make-believe, escapism in which J. R. R. Tolkien, he of Lord of the Rings, saw “an attempt to figure a different reality” and found emancipation. Perhaps that’s part of why people spend spare hours outfitting themselves in the garb and gear of this or that historical era and pass spare weekends fighting old battles, reveling in renaissance fairs, or just hanging out with pals who share their affinity for a past. The most serious of them have as well an abiding interest in the fine points of history, a dedication to authenticity, and a determination to come as close to living in yesteryears as they can contrive. We call those folks reenactors.
Understand at the outset that there is a distinction between reenactors—like the blue and gray clad skirmishers mock battling Gettysburg—and professional interpreters and tradespeople employed at such historical museums as Old Sturbridge Village and Colonial Williamsburg to work in costume, to preserve knowledge of the past, and to share it with guests. Museum people do it for a living. The best of the reenactors take their avocation—The Hobby, they call it—as seriously as their work, but, to be candid, others are out there for fun. That said, know that there are interpreters in the ranks of reenactors. Even craftsmen skilled in antique trades, and among them once was me. That was back in the day, and I was one of the serious ones.
Now, I’m Colonial Williamsburg’s master boot and shoemaker, hired a career ago to present an eighteenth-century tradesman, train apprentices up to journeymen, and to practice and to demonstrate the art and mystery of turning leather into footwear. In the 1980s, you might have found me passing weekends outfitted as a seventeenth-century musketeer or uniformed as an eighteenth-century highland soldier or cast in the khaki of a World War II lieutenant or wearing the pleated-pants suit of a 1930s clothes horse.
It’s not always as much fun as it sounds. You’ve lived the definition of discomfort when you’ve stood under a Virginia summer sun in armor, a leather jerkin underneath, and a steel helmet on your head. Or when you and the rest of the Saint Maries’ Citty Militia, in full kit, sweating and sun-reddened, board a ship like the replica seventeenth-century Dove to slip down Maryland’s Saint Maries River and bear away for the Potomac.
That was a sultry June weekend in the 1980s. The ship’s company herded us below like unwanted cargo, and scampered into the rigging to set sail. We had come up for air and sat on a hatch grating to take a meal, when out of the west came a storm wall of turbid grey as high as heaven to drive us back below. The tempest washed waves and foam over the deck, tossed us about, and drenched us to the skin. I clambered back out of the hold around midnight, blanket-wrapped against the damp, chill, and mosquitoes, stinking of wet woolen breeches, doublet, and sodden shoes. It was a total immersion experience. I sat in the stern taking some tobacco, reflecting on the adventure. Reenactors live for this stuff—time-travel days.
The Dove moored at the Washington police docks behind a chain link security fence, lighted all night by halogen floods. We gave tours of the ship and weapons demonstrations to school groups during the day, and ventured onto the streets of the nation’s capital to pub-crawl, still wearing our fetid 1600s ensembles, swords, cutlasses, and all. Those were different days in the District of Columbia.
Around the world, most of us have seen reenactors—as extras in such motion pictures as Gettysburg, Glory, and The Patriot, and in television miniseries like The American Revolution, if not in person.
These days there are Woodstock-scale set-piece reenactments such as commemorative battles organized and sponsored by buffs, preservationists, and promoters, which can draw more combatants than the original engagement. The American Civil War has the largest reenactor following, with more than 40,000 adherents in the United States, and more overseas. More state fair–scale remembrances occur annually from coast to coast, such as the World War II Weekend each June at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania.
There are participants-only immersion events, like private forays into the wilderness, for a handful of enthusiasts carrying thousands of dollars’ worth of museum-quality reproduction gear, weapons, authentic foodstuffs, and hand-stitched clothing. There is nothing modern that would be out of place in the past, and outsiders never witness the bivouacs.
Time-line events present multiple eras at once, such as Military through the Ages convened every March at Jamestown Settlement. They are not reenactments per se, but gatherings of reenactors time-tripping on wars ranging from remote antiquity up through today’s.
The common denominator is the concept of “living history.” Coined by historian Carl Becker in 1931, the term has been adopted, and adapted, by museums, historic sites, and event planners, and especially by individuals—buffs in autonomous groups of a handful to 100 or more, trying to create an authentic representation of the past to share as comrades. Becker said:
The history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history, is living history, that pattern of remembered events, whether true or false, that enlarges and enriches the collective specious present. For history to be of value, it must reach the people and move them both emotionally and intellectually.
Reenactors live history as experiential, individualistic, sensory, and immersive moments—why just read about the past when you can dress, eat, sleep, and smell like it? Above all is the desire is to personally connect with an authentic past and roll around in it.
Highbrow reenactors prefer to call it experimental archaeology or living history, putting old things and old life skills to a function test, or verifying their readings of the record. To one demographic of Americans it’s about blood ties, too, retracing their forebears’ footprints, experiencing things, places, and events belonging to their families. For other demographics, it’s little more than history-themed role-playing and escapist fantasy.
When did it start? Why do they do what they do? Who are these folks? Let’s see.
Gladiators dressed as heroes of ages past, and staged grand battles in Roman amphitheaters. There were tournaments with ancient Roman themes in the Middle Ages. Victorians re-created medieval jousts, and battle re-creations have long been part of military training.
In 1822, veterans of the American War for Independence reenacted the 1775 Battle of Lexington. In 1902, Crow Indians and militiamen reenacted Custer’s Last Stand near Sheridan, Wyoming. But none of these commemorative pantomimes was quite as moving on the scale emotionally and intellectually, as Becker said, as what emerged in the United States after World War II and spread round the globe.
Mainstream military reenacting is an artifact of the twentieth century. Since the 1930s, perhaps earlier, there was competitive target shooting among antique long-rifle aficionados. At first, they fired antique weapons; then exactingly crafted replicas. This, the black powder, muzzle-loading rifle movement, was momentarily interrupted by World War II. After VJ Day, it bounced back, grew rapidly, and spread from coast to coast.
In 1949 and 1950, a group of enthusiasts in the Washington, DC, area, led by Ernest W. Peterkin and John Rawls, established the North South Skirmish Association, which organization has conducted shooting matches at its home range in Winchester, Virginia, ever since.
Soon military drill was added for realism—loading and firing weapons in teams as soldiers did in battle, according to Civil War era drill manuals. This was followed by attempts at loosely simulating uniforms—blue for the Yankee teams and grey for the Confederate platoons was close enough. Muskets and canon were fired with live ammunition pointed at targets, not loaded with blanks, or pointed at each other.
Observance of the centennial of the American Civil War from 1961 to 1965 was really the first ragged volley fired in the reenactment hobby. The black powder shooting fraternity wanted in, of course, but their focus had been on target shooting, less so on wearing authentic uniforms or trying to experience firsthand the hardscrabble life of Civil War soldiers. Enter the next generation of buffs—the Baby Boomers coming of age. What emerged was a melding, leveling experience that characterizes the first generation of the hobby.
In 1966 a group of University of California at Berkeley students of medieval history and science-fiction and fantasy fans got together and formed the Society for Creative Anachronisms, “as a protest against the twentieth century,” their website says. Today, medievalist reenactors of the SCA, as they are known, claim 60,000 participants worldwide, focusing their time-tripping on the eras before gunpowder.
The next national good excuse to reenact—the Bicentennial of the American War for Independence—ran from 1975 to 1983. It provided fresh opportunity and brought together in one shared and transforming experience two antagonist generations, the youthful and long-haired don’t-trust-anyone-over-thirty gang and their fathers’ clean-cut crowd, during a polarized era in American history.
Middle-aged executives and veteran military officers fell in under the command of twenty-something art school dropouts and assorted history hippies on alternative career paths. Escapees liberated from their twentieth-century status, politics, ranks, and roles, they tried to create a shared patriotic experience. In his 1984 book Time Machines: The World of Living History, anthropologist J. Anderson called it a “secular mystical experience.”
But that was then. The first generation of reenactors has largely retired or died. A new generation has succumbed to the allure of the past, and the Internet and social networking websites have replaced the typewritten, photocopied regimental newsletters of the twentieth-century reenactor organizations.
Cyberspace has created keyboard commandos who, with Internet courage, take to the field online more than they assemble, drill, shoot, or make the uniforms and equipment, or venture into the great outdoors together. Rather than forming a local group to re-create a particular regiment from a particular war in particular detail, today’s reenactors tend to be geographically scattered. Meeting occasionally, if ever, they jump from one uniform to another, one war to the next, sometimes wearing a uniform once before it’s added to the collection in their closet. They still are drawn by history, however.
British novelist L. P. Hartley wrote that “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there,” and who wouldn’t like to go exploring foreign countries?
Tens of thousands of hobbyists to the contrary, we hear gloomy reports of how little Americans know of their history, how poorly they score on tests, how desperate the situation is, and how irrelevant most feel history is.
Something’s amiss.
The number one pastimes of Americans include genealogy, authentically restoring and furnishing old houses, collecting antiques, history-themed war-gaming, and tuning into the steady stream of history programming on cable television. To say Americans dislike history seems overstated.
Living-history pursuits are “very Presbyterian,” according to anthropologist Anderson; they lie “outside the boundary of established academic and public history” and thrive “on independence.” He writes, “Each . . . unit makes its own covenant with historical truth and determines the way it will carry on its dialogue with the past.”
So, if the present is seen as specious, and sometimes history seems to be strangled until it confesses something, the reenactor looks for emancipation in escape to a fully faithful, if re-created, reality of living history.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote, “If you don’t have any history, it is as though you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, you will believe anything,” motivation enough it seems to drive armies of these independent weekend warriors and armchair historians deeper and deeper into their own dialogues with their past, and thank goodness.
D. A. Saguto is Colonial Williamsburg’s master boot and shoemaker, is editor and translator of The Art of the Shoemaker, and has a commission in the 71st Regiment (Fraser’s) Highlanders Veterans’ Company.
Seeking an Authentic Past in a Specious Present
by D.A. Saguto
There is an element of escapism involved in dressing up like dead people, and playing make-believe, escapism in which J. R. R. Tolkien, he of Lord of the Rings, saw “an attempt to figure a different reality” and found emancipation. Perhaps that’s part of why people spend spare hours outfitting themselves in the garb and gear of this or that historical era and pass spare weekends fighting old battles, reveling in renaissance fairs, or just hanging out with pals who share their affinity for a past. The most serious of them have as well an abiding interest in the fine points of history, a dedication to authenticity, and a determination to come as close to living in yesteryears as they can contrive. We call those folks reenactors.
Understand at the outset that there is a distinction between reenactors—like the blue and gray clad skirmishers mock battling Gettysburg—and professional interpreters and tradespeople employed at such historical museums as Old Sturbridge Village and Colonial Williamsburg to work in costume, to preserve knowledge of the past, and to share it with guests. Museum people do it for a living. The best of the reenactors take their avocation—The Hobby, they call it—as seriously as their work, but, to be candid, others are out there for fun. That said, know that there are interpreters in the ranks of reenactors. Even craftsmen skilled in antique trades, and among them once was me. That was back in the day, and I was one of the serious ones.
Now, I’m Colonial Williamsburg’s master boot and shoemaker, hired a career ago to present an eighteenth-century tradesman, train apprentices up to journeymen, and to practice and to demonstrate the art and mystery of turning leather into footwear. In the 1980s, you might have found me passing weekends outfitted as a seventeenth-century musketeer or uniformed as an eighteenth-century highland soldier or cast in the khaki of a World War II lieutenant or wearing the pleated-pants suit of a 1930s clothes horse.
It’s not always as much fun as it sounds. You’ve lived the definition of discomfort when you’ve stood under a Virginia summer sun in armor, a leather jerkin underneath, and a steel helmet on your head. Or when you and the rest of the Saint Maries’ Citty Militia, in full kit, sweating and sun-reddened, board a ship like the replica seventeenth-century Dove to slip down Maryland’s Saint Maries River and bear away for the Potomac.
That was a sultry June weekend in the 1980s. The ship’s company herded us below like unwanted cargo, and scampered into the rigging to set sail. We had come up for air and sat on a hatch grating to take a meal, when out of the west came a storm wall of turbid grey as high as heaven to drive us back below. The tempest washed waves and foam over the deck, tossed us about, and drenched us to the skin. I clambered back out of the hold around midnight, blanket-wrapped against the damp, chill, and mosquitoes, stinking of wet woolen breeches, doublet, and sodden shoes. It was a total immersion experience. I sat in the stern taking some tobacco, reflecting on the adventure. Reenactors live for this stuff—time-travel days.
The Dove moored at the Washington police docks behind a chain link security fence, lighted all night by halogen floods. We gave tours of the ship and weapons demonstrations to school groups during the day, and ventured onto the streets of the nation’s capital to pub-crawl, still wearing our fetid 1600s ensembles, swords, cutlasses, and all. Those were different days in the District of Columbia.
Around the world, most of us have seen reenactors—as extras in such motion pictures as Gettysburg, Glory, and The Patriot, and in television miniseries like The American Revolution, if not in person.
These days there are Woodstock-scale set-piece reenactments such as commemorative battles organized and sponsored by buffs, preservationists, and promoters, which can draw more combatants than the original engagement. The American Civil War has the largest reenactor following, with more than 40,000 adherents in the United States, and more overseas. More state fair–scale remembrances occur annually from coast to coast, such as the World War II Weekend each June at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania.
There are participants-only immersion events, like private forays into the wilderness, for a handful of enthusiasts carrying thousands of dollars’ worth of museum-quality reproduction gear, weapons, authentic foodstuffs, and hand-stitched clothing. There is nothing modern that would be out of place in the past, and outsiders never witness the bivouacs.
Time-line events present multiple eras at once, such as Military through the Ages convened every March at Jamestown Settlement. They are not reenactments per se, but gatherings of reenactors time-tripping on wars ranging from remote antiquity up through today’s.
The common denominator is the concept of “living history.” Coined by historian Carl Becker in 1931, the term has been adopted, and adapted, by museums, historic sites, and event planners, and especially by individuals—buffs in autonomous groups of a handful to 100 or more, trying to create an authentic representation of the past to share as comrades. Becker said:
The history that does work in the world, the history that influences the course of history, is living history, that pattern of remembered events, whether true or false, that enlarges and enriches the collective specious present. For history to be of value, it must reach the people and move them both emotionally and intellectually.
Reenactors live history as experiential, individualistic, sensory, and immersive moments—why just read about the past when you can dress, eat, sleep, and smell like it? Above all is the desire is to personally connect with an authentic past and roll around in it.
Highbrow reenactors prefer to call it experimental archaeology or living history, putting old things and old life skills to a function test, or verifying their readings of the record. To one demographic of Americans it’s about blood ties, too, retracing their forebears’ footprints, experiencing things, places, and events belonging to their families. For other demographics, it’s little more than history-themed role-playing and escapist fantasy.
When did it start? Why do they do what they do? Who are these folks? Let’s see.
Gladiators dressed as heroes of ages past, and staged grand battles in Roman amphitheaters. There were tournaments with ancient Roman themes in the Middle Ages. Victorians re-created medieval jousts, and battle re-creations have long been part of military training.
In 1822, veterans of the American War for Independence reenacted the 1775 Battle of Lexington. In 1902, Crow Indians and militiamen reenacted Custer’s Last Stand near Sheridan, Wyoming. But none of these commemorative pantomimes was quite as moving on the scale emotionally and intellectually, as Becker said, as what emerged in the United States after World War II and spread round the globe.
Mainstream military reenacting is an artifact of the twentieth century. Since the 1930s, perhaps earlier, there was competitive target shooting among antique long-rifle aficionados. At first, they fired antique weapons; then exactingly crafted replicas. This, the black powder, muzzle-loading rifle movement, was momentarily interrupted by World War II. After VJ Day, it bounced back, grew rapidly, and spread from coast to coast.
In 1949 and 1950, a group of enthusiasts in the Washington, DC, area, led by Ernest W. Peterkin and John Rawls, established the North South Skirmish Association, which organization has conducted shooting matches at its home range in Winchester, Virginia, ever since.
Soon military drill was added for realism—loading and firing weapons in teams as soldiers did in battle, according to Civil War era drill manuals. This was followed by attempts at loosely simulating uniforms—blue for the Yankee teams and grey for the Confederate platoons was close enough. Muskets and canon were fired with live ammunition pointed at targets, not loaded with blanks, or pointed at each other.
Observance of the centennial of the American Civil War from 1961 to 1965 was really the first ragged volley fired in the reenactment hobby. The black powder shooting fraternity wanted in, of course, but their focus had been on target shooting, less so on wearing authentic uniforms or trying to experience firsthand the hardscrabble life of Civil War soldiers. Enter the next generation of buffs—the Baby Boomers coming of age. What emerged was a melding, leveling experience that characterizes the first generation of the hobby.
In 1966 a group of University of California at Berkeley students of medieval history and science-fiction and fantasy fans got together and formed the Society for Creative Anachronisms, “as a protest against the twentieth century,” their website says. Today, medievalist reenactors of the SCA, as they are known, claim 60,000 participants worldwide, focusing their time-tripping on the eras before gunpowder.
The next national good excuse to reenact—the Bicentennial of the American War for Independence—ran from 1975 to 1983. It provided fresh opportunity and brought together in one shared and transforming experience two antagonist generations, the youthful and long-haired don’t-trust-anyone-over-thirty gang and their fathers’ clean-cut crowd, during a polarized era in American history.
Middle-aged executives and veteran military officers fell in under the command of twenty-something art school dropouts and assorted history hippies on alternative career paths. Escapees liberated from their twentieth-century status, politics, ranks, and roles, they tried to create a shared patriotic experience. In his 1984 book Time Machines: The World of Living History, anthropologist J. Anderson called it a “secular mystical experience.”
But that was then. The first generation of reenactors has largely retired or died. A new generation has succumbed to the allure of the past, and the Internet and social networking websites have replaced the typewritten, photocopied regimental newsletters of the twentieth-century reenactor organizations.
Cyberspace has created keyboard commandos who, with Internet courage, take to the field online more than they assemble, drill, shoot, or make the uniforms and equipment, or venture into the great outdoors together. Rather than forming a local group to re-create a particular regiment from a particular war in particular detail, today’s reenactors tend to be geographically scattered. Meeting occasionally, if ever, they jump from one uniform to another, one war to the next, sometimes wearing a uniform once before it’s added to the collection in their closet. They still are drawn by history, however.
British novelist L. P. Hartley wrote that “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there,” and who wouldn’t like to go exploring foreign countries?
Tens of thousands of hobbyists to the contrary, we hear gloomy reports of how little Americans know of their history, how poorly they score on tests, how desperate the situation is, and how irrelevant most feel history is.
Something’s amiss.
The number one pastimes of Americans include genealogy, authentically restoring and furnishing old houses, collecting antiques, history-themed war-gaming, and tuning into the steady stream of history programming on cable television. To say Americans dislike history seems overstated.
Living-history pursuits are “very Presbyterian,” according to anthropologist Anderson; they lie “outside the boundary of established academic and public history” and thrive “on independence.” He writes, “Each . . . unit makes its own covenant with historical truth and determines the way it will carry on its dialogue with the past.”
So, if the present is seen as specious, and sometimes history seems to be strangled until it confesses something, the reenactor looks for emancipation in escape to a fully faithful, if re-created, reality of living history.
Historian Howard Zinn wrote, “If you don’t have any history, it is as though you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, you will believe anything,” motivation enough it seems to drive armies of these independent weekend warriors and armchair historians deeper and deeper into their own dialogues with their past, and thank goodness.
D. A. Saguto is Colonial Williamsburg’s master boot and shoemaker, is editor and translator of The Art of the Shoemaker, and has a commission in the 71st Regiment (Fraser’s) Highlanders Veterans’ Company.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
One Of Karl,s Favourite Pictures. A New Blog.
I think this one is by Robert Griffing.
http://ranger-pathfinder-notes.blogspot.com/
Karl's blog is called: Ranging, Pathfinding, Bushcraft & Survival Notes
The information will be a mix of woods lore and history. Karl has been busy teaching overseas after a stint in the army, so he has been busy, but he vows to get back into blogging, so this might be a good time to get in on the action before he gets into full swing.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Affordability. Equipment & Tools. The Tomahawk/Axe.
I think the cost of tools and equipment are a serious consideration for many people wanting to get into 18th century living history. If you have the money, it is no problem, there are traders that cater to the living historian. Even so many people regardless of wealth prefere to make as much as they can of their own gear and family gear. Having said that though, purchasing ready made knapsacks, haversacks, snapsacks, rucksacks and market wallets here in Australia is not going to be easy.
I emailed Graeme Forbes today to see if he can supply me with some prices on guns, meanwhile though I will cover what tools I can. Tomahawks I believe can be purchased from Green River Rifle Works in S.A., guns also, but last I looked they could not be contacted via the net.
For those of you who have to make your own, or use second hand goods, this is what I have done in the past.
Tomahawk/Belt Axe.
The images below are of an ordinary second hand hatchet head purchased at a second hand store for about $4.00, which I turned into a period axe.
1) I buried the blade of the axe in the ground and lit a fire on top of it. This heated the eye area but not the blade and edge. I got it red hot, then removed it with pliers and hammered it upside down over the spike of a pickaxe which I had also driven into the ground. Don't worry about the hammer damage, it gets cut off later. This process will give you an oval to round tapered eye in the head.
2) If you are going to use a hacksaw to shape the head, then you need to heat the whole of the head to cherry red and let it cool slowly. In which case just heat it in the fire when shaping the head and don't worry about burying the blade in the ground. I have done it both ways.
I used an angle grinder to cut out the shape. I placed the head on the ground and placed a metal bar through the eye so I could stand on the bar and hold the head in place. As I cut, I occasionally picked up the head with the bar and quenched it in water to stop the edge of the blade losing its hardness.
If you soften the head to use a hacksaw, you will have to heat the cutting edge to cherry red and quench in water to re-harden after shaping and filing.
I emailed Graeme Forbes today to see if he can supply me with some prices on guns, meanwhile though I will cover what tools I can. Tomahawks I believe can be purchased from Green River Rifle Works in S.A., guns also, but last I looked they could not be contacted via the net.
For those of you who have to make your own, or use second hand goods, this is what I have done in the past.
Tomahawk/Belt Axe.
The images below are of an ordinary second hand hatchet head purchased at a second hand store for about $4.00, which I turned into a period axe.
1) I buried the blade of the axe in the ground and lit a fire on top of it. This heated the eye area but not the blade and edge. I got it red hot, then removed it with pliers and hammered it upside down over the spike of a pickaxe which I had also driven into the ground. Don't worry about the hammer damage, it gets cut off later. This process will give you an oval to round tapered eye in the head.
2) If you are going to use a hacksaw to shape the head, then you need to heat the whole of the head to cherry red and let it cool slowly. In which case just heat it in the fire when shaping the head and don't worry about burying the blade in the ground. I have done it both ways.
I used an angle grinder to cut out the shape. I placed the head on the ground and placed a metal bar through the eye so I could stand on the bar and hold the head in place. As I cut, I occasionally picked up the head with the bar and quenched it in water to stop the edge of the blade losing its hardness.
If you soften the head to use a hacksaw, you will have to heat the cutting edge to cherry red and quench in water to re-harden after shaping and filing.
A standard shaped modern hatchet head.
Note the damage done with the hammer when driving the head down over the pick axe head spike. This though is on the part which gets removed.
Note the eye is tapered now and oval.
The finished product after making and fitting a new helve.
Video: Making A Tomahawk Helve.
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Camp Activities.
Camp Activities.
I have been asked several times “what do you do on historical treks?” and “what is there to do when camping?” “Don’t you get bored?” Well actually I don’t think I have ever been bored when camping under canvas, there is always so much going on around me.
I can sit and just watch and listen, and if I get tired I can lie down and sleep. I can brew a cup of tea and listen to the sounds of the forest and watch for wildlife. Sometimes I will take my gun and go exploring, following a trail to see where it goes and note what types of animals have travelled this track. All the while looking out for wildlife so I know what frequents this area.
I also look for edible plants and plant tinders, taking note of where I saw them. Bracket fungus like the Lietiporus Portensosus will spread its spores in the same area each time, so it is wise to keep track of where you find them. If I need tinder I will collect some and take it back to camp and prepare it there, charring the material in the camp fire and placing it in my tinderbox to extinguish it.
There are many skills that are second nature to me now, so I rarely practice them unless I need to, but there was a time when I would practice these skills in camp. Making cordage is a good skill to learn and cordage can have many uses from fishing and yabby lines to traps and shelter construction. Make it heavy enough and you can use it to hang game for skinning and butchering.
Tomahawk throwing is good fun and a good survival skill to practice if you can find a dead tree, and if you have a good fishing hole nearby what a great way to spend some time catching dinner.
One of the things I do make each time I go out is a kettle hook. Simple and easy to make with my clasp knife, yet an essential item in camp. I don’t usually have a need to make cordage because I use the same leather ties that secure my blanket roll and oilcloth to construct my shelter and hang my kettle.
Making traps for practice is always worthwhile if you have not done a lot of it. In a real survival situation setting out a trap line is a priority. Traps will work for you day and night whilst you are working or sleeping. The more you can depend on your traps, the less you will have to depend on your gun, and therefore save powder and lead. Trapping large game will require plenty of strong cordage and knowledge of the trails they use.
Getting plenty of firewood in is important during the colder months, because with only one blanket you will be relying on your fire and its rock reflector surround to keep you warm. Some kindling must be stored under your shelter, in case your fire should go out in the night. Should it rain or snow you will need that dry kindling. The other firewood should be stacked outside your shelter, but close up against it so you can stoke the fire in the night without having to leave your blanket.
Sometimes there are repairs to be made to moccasins; packs that have got damaged on the trail and of course your clothing. This is a good time to check things out and make those necessary repairs before the return trek. Check out your tools, do your blades need sharpening? Or your gun need cleaning? If you carry a journal as I do now is a good time to record things that have happened so far. If you are new to woodsrunning you might want to note down items that you carry that were not needed, or perhaps and item you wished you had taken with you. How is your food supply working out? Do you need to make changes to food choices or quantities? This is a good opportunity to note how much of any particular food you use. If you are out for say two nights, take note of the food used and work out how much you would need for say 8 nights.
I always carry the same amount of everything regardless of the length of time I am away from home. In this way I get used to the weight, and I know that if I can not get back for some reason, I have enough food. In reality on a long trip my food would get lighter. Once the meat was gone that I was carrying, I would hunt for more, eat what I needed, and dry some of the meat over my fire to take with me. If you should ever get sick, having enough food will be important, because you will not be able to check your trap line or go hunting.
On one trek I started constructing a half-faced shelter. Although I live in the forest I have other work to do, daily chores. So I only had a day to spare on site. I cut the poles and stacked them ready for next time. On the next trek I started erecting the shelter, and so it went on until the shelter was finished.
I have been asked several times “what do you do on historical treks?” and “what is there to do when camping?” “Don’t you get bored?” Well actually I don’t think I have ever been bored when camping under canvas, there is always so much going on around me.
I can sit and just watch and listen, and if I get tired I can lie down and sleep. I can brew a cup of tea and listen to the sounds of the forest and watch for wildlife. Sometimes I will take my gun and go exploring, following a trail to see where it goes and note what types of animals have travelled this track. All the while looking out for wildlife so I know what frequents this area.
I also look for edible plants and plant tinders, taking note of where I saw them. Bracket fungus like the Lietiporus Portensosus will spread its spores in the same area each time, so it is wise to keep track of where you find them. If I need tinder I will collect some and take it back to camp and prepare it there, charring the material in the camp fire and placing it in my tinderbox to extinguish it.
There are many skills that are second nature to me now, so I rarely practice them unless I need to, but there was a time when I would practice these skills in camp. Making cordage is a good skill to learn and cordage can have many uses from fishing and yabby lines to traps and shelter construction. Make it heavy enough and you can use it to hang game for skinning and butchering.
Tomahawk throwing is good fun and a good survival skill to practice if you can find a dead tree, and if you have a good fishing hole nearby what a great way to spend some time catching dinner.
One of the things I do make each time I go out is a kettle hook. Simple and easy to make with my clasp knife, yet an essential item in camp. I don’t usually have a need to make cordage because I use the same leather ties that secure my blanket roll and oilcloth to construct my shelter and hang my kettle.
Making traps for practice is always worthwhile if you have not done a lot of it. In a real survival situation setting out a trap line is a priority. Traps will work for you day and night whilst you are working or sleeping. The more you can depend on your traps, the less you will have to depend on your gun, and therefore save powder and lead. Trapping large game will require plenty of strong cordage and knowledge of the trails they use.
Getting plenty of firewood in is important during the colder months, because with only one blanket you will be relying on your fire and its rock reflector surround to keep you warm. Some kindling must be stored under your shelter, in case your fire should go out in the night. Should it rain or snow you will need that dry kindling. The other firewood should be stacked outside your shelter, but close up against it so you can stoke the fire in the night without having to leave your blanket.
Sometimes there are repairs to be made to moccasins; packs that have got damaged on the trail and of course your clothing. This is a good time to check things out and make those necessary repairs before the return trek. Check out your tools, do your blades need sharpening? Or your gun need cleaning? If you carry a journal as I do now is a good time to record things that have happened so far. If you are new to woodsrunning you might want to note down items that you carry that were not needed, or perhaps and item you wished you had taken with you. How is your food supply working out? Do you need to make changes to food choices or quantities? This is a good opportunity to note how much of any particular food you use. If you are out for say two nights, take note of the food used and work out how much you would need for say 8 nights.
I always carry the same amount of everything regardless of the length of time I am away from home. In this way I get used to the weight, and I know that if I can not get back for some reason, I have enough food. In reality on a long trip my food would get lighter. Once the meat was gone that I was carrying, I would hunt for more, eat what I needed, and dry some of the meat over my fire to take with me. If you should ever get sick, having enough food will be important, because you will not be able to check your trap line or go hunting.
On one trek I started constructing a half-faced shelter. Although I live in the forest I have other work to do, daily chores. So I only had a day to spare on site. I cut the poles and stacked them ready for next time. On the next trek I started erecting the shelter, and so it went on until the shelter was finished.
What Do I Do First.
Before you reach the area where you intend to set up camp or settle permanently, collect some firewood as you go. It may not be enough to see you through the coming night, but at least if dry, it will give you something to start a fire with.
If you are alone, then set up your shelter first. Store some kindling and other wood at the back of your shelter and put your pack and other gear under cover. If there are two of you under one shelter, then your partner can be collecting firewood whilst you are setting up the shelter. If you are using separate shelters then after both shelters are set up, one of you can start constructing the fireplace and make fire whilst the other collects the firewood.
Your first shelter will be the one you carry with you, your oilcloth. This will be your shelter until you get something more permanent built. A half-faced shelter can be built by one person, as can some of the smaller wigwams. Once this shelter is in place you can turn your attention to constructing snake fencing and putting in a garden.
This was the first garden fencing I put in, a snake or dog leg fence. You can make one from wood from the forest floor, from saplings, or as I did here split rails from logs.
If there are more than one of you then you will have brought in more tools, and the work can be divided amongst you. Whilst semi-permanent shelters are being built and gardens being put in, others can perhaps make a start on some permanent shelter construction.
The half-faced shelter I built in Fox Valley.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Skills & the Right Tool for The Job.
Many of you may already have seen this particular video of mine, but I am posting it again because it fits in with the present topic. Take note of the skills used here, besides the obvious knowledge or ability to construct a primitive shelter.
Most modern bushcrafters say that carrying a tomahawk or belt axe is not necassary, that they can do all that a hatchet can with their bushcraft knife. Knives have specific purposes, though some knives are versitile enough to butcher game and use for camp chores, I still prefere to carry more than one knife and use the right knife for the job in hand. Knives to my knowledge never were designed to hack at wood or be driven through wood by hitting the back of the blade with a maul!
Anyway, for those of you who are interested in long term survival, I would like you to start thinking about the skills required as well as the tools & equipment NEEDED.
Most modern bushcrafters say that carrying a tomahawk or belt axe is not necassary, that they can do all that a hatchet can with their bushcraft knife. Knives have specific purposes, though some knives are versitile enough to butcher game and use for camp chores, I still prefere to carry more than one knife and use the right knife for the job in hand. Knives to my knowledge never were designed to hack at wood or be driven through wood by hitting the back of the blade with a maul!
Anyway, for those of you who are interested in long term survival, I would like you to start thinking about the skills required as well as the tools & equipment NEEDED.
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Interpreting The Woodsman.
The Eastern Woodsman.
Interpreting The Eastern Woodsman 1700-1760.
A woodsman was someone who spent time in the woods, either wholly or part time. The woodsman could have a variety of jobs. He could be a town tradesman, a militia man, a farmer. He could work as a ranger, a scout, a guide or a messenger. Depending on his present occupation he may travel by horse, wagon or on foot. Scouting areas for trapping was often done on foot. If he did not want to attract attention he would travel on foot and leave less sign.
Daniel Boone worked as a labourer for a Wagoner in the French and Indian war. Later he became a land owner and farmer, but he spent most of his time in the woods whilst his family looked after the farm.
The woodsman and even the woods woman are easy characters to emulate, because you have a variety of choices regarding dress and equipment.
• You do not need a horse to be a woodsman or woods woman.
• You do not need to carry steel traps.
• You have a variety of Historical Trekking scenarios to choose from.
• You can be an “Indian Influenced” woodsman.
• Men & Women can interpret this character & share this experience together.
• Woods women can wear men’s clothing or a mixture of men’s and women’s clothing.
The fur trade started very early on in the history of the New World. Woodsmen involved in the fur trade could be beaver trappers or they could hunt bear, deer, and a variety of other fur bearing animals for the skins.
Interpreting The Eastern Woodsman 1700-1760.
A woodsman was someone who spent time in the woods, either wholly or part time. The woodsman could have a variety of jobs. He could be a town tradesman, a militia man, a farmer. He could work as a ranger, a scout, a guide or a messenger. Depending on his present occupation he may travel by horse, wagon or on foot. Scouting areas for trapping was often done on foot. If he did not want to attract attention he would travel on foot and leave less sign.
Daniel Boone worked as a labourer for a Wagoner in the French and Indian war. Later he became a land owner and farmer, but he spent most of his time in the woods whilst his family looked after the farm.
The woodsman and even the woods woman are easy characters to emulate, because you have a variety of choices regarding dress and equipment.
• You do not need a horse to be a woodsman or woods woman.
• You do not need to carry steel traps.
• You have a variety of Historical Trekking scenarios to choose from.
• You can be an “Indian Influenced” woodsman.
• Men & Women can interpret this character & share this experience together.
• Woods women can wear men’s clothing or a mixture of men’s and women’s clothing.
The fur trade started very early on in the history of the New World. Woodsmen involved in the fur trade could be beaver trappers or they could hunt bear, deer, and a variety of other fur bearing animals for the skins.
Rangers were excellent woodsmen.
Interpreting Mad Ann Bailey.
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