Gourd Canteen

When I was home for Thanksgiving my brother and I worked on some gourds my mom had. He made a bowl out of one. I made a canteen. I would've made a post about this sooner, but it took me awhile to complete the yucca cordage. I made 8 strands about a meter long. This allowed me to make a decent netting around the body of the gourd. The middle of each strand is centered on the bottom of the gourd so 16 ends are used to make the netting using square knots to join strands. Once I got to the neck I took 2 groups of 8 and reverse wrapped them into a handle. I wove the ends into each other to complete the circle. Ideally the strap would be a lot longer so I could throw it over my shoulder, but I didn't really know how long to make the strands when I started. This guy holds about 1 1/2 liters of liquid. I still need to scrape out some of the gunk on the inside.

My New Arrow

Over the weekend I fletched my first arrow. Besides a little glue, everything on the arrow is natural. The shaft is Autumn Olive. It is one of three my brother sent me from the D.C. area. It is an invasive species there that outcompetes other native plants and trees.

The feathers are from a turkey. I used elk and emu leg sinew to bind the feathers to the shaft. The dark brown substance near the middle of the picture is pitch which is mostly made of tree sap. I used it to prevent the sinew from unraveling. I burnt in rings around the shaft for style and so the whole shaft wasn't so bright. I have yet to haft a point into it. I shot it and it was pretty accurate so far.



This is the finished bark cordage that I wrote about in my earlier post. You may notice that the cordage is thicker than the picture in my earlier post. I ended up reverse wrapping it all again, which basically doubled the thickness and halved the length. This was necessary because it was too thin to be much good and I didn't do a very good job of keeping the strands of even thickness. This is now a little over 22 feet of 1/4 in rope. I'm amazed at how much I got out of the materials I gathered.

Bark Cordage

This weekend I met some friends in West Virginia to go white water rafting. One of the best parts of the trip was the camping. We camped two nights at a camp ground close to the rafting place. The forest was really cool. It was pretty damp and there were lots of fern plants. To me it felt like the forest planet Endor where the Ewoks lived in Return of the Jedi.

I built a fire each night we were there. The first night I was able to light it with my bow drill kit. I got a coal in less than a minute. Unfortunately no one was there to see it, because when I tried it the second night in front of the whole crowd, I couldn't get one after four tries.

Anyway, when I was gathering firewood the bark just fell off of the branches since they were so damp. I was able to get 6-7 foot long strips. Long strips are nice because when you make cordage you don't have to splice in new material as often. So far I've made about 17 ft. of rope and I've used less than 1/10th of the material.

This is some of the original material I pulled from the tree branches. From this I peeled the inner bark to make cordage.


Here is the 17 ft. of rope I've made so far. On the bottom you can see the strips of inner bark that I twist together to make the finished product.

My Hawaii Trip Part 3

I didn't get to go camping in Hawaii like I'd hoped, but that didn't stop me from playing with the local flora and fauna. There were so many plants with long blade-like leaves. Every time I looked at them I wanted to make cordage. You can see how I did this in my previous post about making cordage from yucca leaves. I tested a few different types of leaves. Some were definitely too weak to be much good, but I was able to make a decent piece of cordage from one type I found at the beach.

While I was in Hawaii, I finished the bow I made for Jon. It was a little difficult to get it down to it's final weight because I didn't have a scale to determine the draw weight. My target weight was between 50-55 lbs and the only way I could really tell was from comparing it to what I remember my bow feeling like. That and I also shot the 50-55 lbs spined arrows to see how they flew. I think the bow may be a little heavy, but it shot pretty well. I put 4 of 6 arrows through a beer can from 15 yards. The bow is made from Osage wood. I finished the handle by wrapping it in leather and adding an arrow rest.


We set up a little range on the side of Jon's house. It was fun to shoot unopened Diet Pepsi cans. They had a case of them and no one at the house drinks diet.


Before I left for Hawaii, I made earrings and a necklace for Carrie. All three pieces of jewelry had a knapped piece of colored glass as the focal point. Here you can see the earrings with light blue arrow heads. I don't have a picture of the necklace, but it has an orange arrow head that matches Carrie's hair.


This was a cat trap Uncle Sam had in his front yard. There are lots of wild cats on Maui. I'm not sure what he does with them when he catches them. I don't think I want to know.


My last night there Uncle Moe came by after hunting that morning. He showed us the crazy guns he has. One was a cross between a rifle and a hand gun if you can picture that. He also showed us the mountain goat he killed that morning. He said he took it down from 173 yards. It's pretty big for the area.


Sunday I will start my 7th class at the Tracker School. This time it will be the Urban Scout class. I'm not totally sure what to expect since the class has never been taught before. I'll be sure to post something when I get back.

Skill: Making Yucca Cordage

Cordage (rope, string, etc.) is a very useful thing to have in a survival situation. You can use it for making shelter, snares, bowstrings, tools for making fire and bundling things together just to name a few things. The yucca plant is one of the best plants for making cordage. Here are three reasons why:

• Abundant - it is a common landscaping plant. I can drive down the street an see it in many yards.
• Long leaves - Long leaves means long fibers which means less splicing when making cordage.
• Strong - Yucca is one of a few plants that is supposed to be strong enough to make a small diameter bowstring.

The process to go from leaf to rope is actually relatively quick. I was able to process one leaf in about 10 minutes. I can probably be done even quicker. To make things faster, you could do less scraping, but the final product might not be as strong. In particular, if the diameter of the rope you are making is going to be big, you can leave more green on, and not break up the strands so small. When I made the necklace cord in my last post, I broke up the strands a lot since I wanted it to be finer quality.

Leaf after being pounded with a block of wood.


Leaf after being scraped with the back of a knife.


Here is the leaf after being fully scraped.


Yucca fibers after pulling the above leaf apart.


An example of how to make cordage from the fibers.


As you run out of fiber, you can easily splice in new fibers. The piece seen above is using all the fibers from one of the smaller length leaves I have. The diameter of the rope is about 1/4 inch. When I made the necklace cord, I used about half of a large leaf. I'm thinking about making a bowstring with some of the fibers. Whatever happens, I'll post what my finished product is.

Obsidian Necklace

I recently completed a necklace made from natural materials. The arrow point is the one you've seen in earlier posts. The beads are made from bone. I ordered them from an online store. The cord is the little project I worked on during Easter. It is made from the fibers of a yucca leaf. At the top of the picture is a little toggle made from a twig. I gave this necklace to my good friend who recently gave me some important advice.



Check back for a post about how I got from yucca leaf to finished cord.