Forest Park Overnight

It's been a busy few weeks at work. My team released our new website and it took a lot of work to get it done on schedule. I was in the mode where if I wasn't working, I was thinking about work. The launch was very successful. During the final stretch, I promised myself I would spend at least one day by myself in the woods.

Saturday I had my brother drop me off on the SW side of Forest Park around 2:30pm. I had a school sized back pack with my sleeping bag, my medium sized (camera case) survival kit, rain jacket, felt hat, a nalgene and a snapple bottle of water, my knife, a headlamp and a relatively small amount of food. The food consisted of a bagel (no cream cheese), about three dehydrated apples in chip form, about 12 ounces of beef jerky and a Hershey's bar. I also had other non-survival stuff including my phone, iPod, keys, wallet and a book. I didn't have a tent, cooking gear, change of clothes, tooth brush, etc..

The place I was dropped off was not an entrance to the park. It was just the side of a road. Luckily it was on the uphill side of the park so my journey was mostly downhill. I bushwhacked through the forest for about two hours. Along the way I came close to a few houses and tried to stay out of sight. I'm not entirely sure I was inside the park the whole time. I tried to follow deer trails as much as possible to make the hike easier. Finally as I made my way down a ridge I spotted the Wildwood Trail, a 30 mile trail spanning the length of Forest Park and into Washington Park.

At this point it was about an hour and half till dark so I prepared a shelter a ways back up the hill out of site from the trail. I found two Douglas Fir trees that were about my arm span apart. I was a little concerned about rain, so I decided to sleep between the trees so I had some canopy cover. I cleared the brush away and gathered fir balms that had fallen for insulation and cushioning. While gathering I realized that there wasn't enough insulating material around to construct any kind of debris shelter in a reasonable amount of time. Survival there without a sleeping bag would've been a challenge. I took the poncho and part of the para cord strap from my survival kit and tied it to the trees above my sleeping bag. The poncho was the thinnest plastic you could imagine. You could easily see through it. I was able to rig up a shelter with it but I won't be putting it back in my survival kit. I'd rather have a sturdy trash bag. Luckily it didn't more than drizzle and there was little wind to worry about.

I gathered several fists full of twigs no more than pinky thick to make a small fire. The fire was mainly just for fun and to test my kit. I was able to start the fire with one match from my survival kit. The fire was small enough that I could huddle with my legs on either side. The challenge was to keep the fire small while at the same time providing it enough fuel and oxygen so it didn't smoke me out. Using such small sized fuel allowed me to completely burn up the fuel leaving only white ash.

I went to bed early. The temperature probably got to the low 40s which wasn't a problem for my 20 degree bag. I did close up the hole to my sleeping bag as much as I could. I never really got cold though. The fir balms didn't end up being as much cushion as I hoped and woke up often.

The next morning I broke camp at about 7am and headed for the trail. I started off with the bagel and ate apple chips and beef jerky as I hiked. Overall I covered about 11 miles in about 4 and 1/2 hours. The best part was when I remembered I had a Hershey's bar. Everything tastes so much better when you are hungry.

When I reached Pittock Mansion less than 4 miles from the end of the Wildwood Trail, I called my brother to come pick me up. I was out of food, water and my ankle was starting to hurt. Before he arrived I took a quick look at Portland from the back of the mansion. It was cool to see the city with Mt. Hood in the distance.

It was a fun little overnight. I got to somewhat rough it and test a few things in my survival kit. I also got to explore Forest Park and enjoy the nice weather.

Obsidian Spear

A couple posts ago, I showed the spear point I finished and talked about the spear shaft I harvested. Over the past weekend I finally put it all together. The shaft dried out nicely with no cracks and the bottom end straightened out like I planned. Pictured below is the finished product.



To prepare the shaft I removed the bark and smoothed the whole thing with a draw knife. I removed wood to make the diameter comfortable for my hand and shaved down knots till they were smooth. I then sanded the whole thing. After cutting out a deep notch I stained the wood with black walnut dye. To add some style I scorched in some black bands using a heat gun. This could have been done with open flame as well but a heat gun makes it easier. I used a piece of soda can to cover the places I didn't want to scorch which gave me pretty nice straight lines. Finally, I rubbed in some rendered fat to moisturize the wood.



Hafting in the point was pretty easy. I used my trusty pitch mixture of 50% pine sap and 50% ground up charcoal to seat the point in firmly. To secure it more I then wrapped it with sinew. Finally, I coated the sinew with hide glue to make it water resistant.



What will I use this for you might ask. Probably nothing. Some day maybe I'll hunt with it. It's also handy in case of a home invasion.

How'd you like that comin atcha!

Buffalo Harvesting Workshop

My brother and I are teaching our first official class with Trackers Northwest on March 21st. We are going to buy a live 1000 lb. Buffalo at a ranch outside of town. For safety and out of respect for the animal we will have the owner dispatch it humanely. After we gut it, we will transport it to The Scout Pit where we will completely process the animal.

In addition to the meat (each student will take home 20 lbs.) we will attempt to make use of as many parts of the animal as possible. The hide will be racked for tanning. We will render fat for future projects. The sinew and bones will also be saved. We are planning to do much of the work using stone flakes and knives like those from my last post.

I believe this will be an amazing experience and am really looking forward to it.

To see the full class description check it out on the website.

New Knives

My brother and I have been getting involved with the local Trackers Northwest organization. They offer many different classes including survival, martial arts, homesteading, medicinal plants, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Today we helped teach flintknapping and animal skinning for a free event. About ten people showed up to learn what the organization offered.

I used the opportunity to finish up an obsidian spear point. I'm pretty happy with it, but I wouldn't mind if it were a bit longer.



Brian, one of the instructors, took us down to the park across the street where many trees had been cut down. There I cut a six foot limb from a downed tree to make my spear shaft. I took the bark off it tonight and have it clamped to a shelf to try to straighten a few bends as it seasons. It'll probably be awhile before I can haft in the spear point. I want to make sure the wood dries slowly so it doesn't crack.

I also finished two obsidian knives this weekend. The first is pictured below. The handle is Vine Maple stained with black walnut dye.



This little guy is a different color of obsidian with some brown color in it. The handle is an antler tine. I drilled out the inside of the tine so the haft of the knife is hidden inside. You can see a thin band of pitch between the point and the tine.

Felted Hat

Last week my brother and I experimented with the art of felting. We started by buying bundles of wool fibers from a store in the area. Most of the wool was of different sheep varieties but we also choose llama wool because of the nice brown color and cheaper price. There were many colors to choose from but we choose earth tones for making camouflage gear. We bought a total of 28 ounces of wool for about $40.

We took some of the white wool and dyed it using black walnut husks and osage orange saw dust. 

Pictured below are the wool fibers after dying. The yellows are from the osage orange dye. The orange and brown are from the black walnut dye. We were hoping that these would come out black and I'm not sure why one batch was orange and the other brown.

We decided to make hats. We referenced four different felting books from the local library. Each had a slightly different technique for felting a hat. The main concept was to pat, press, rub, agitate, massage, knead and throw the wool until it was felted. An important point was that the wool shrinks about 40% as from start to finish. Therefore we had to start with a hat 40% bigger than our head.

Below you can see one half of my hat laid out. Notice how it was 40% bigger than my head.

After laying out the wool I poured warm soapy water on it and pressed it down to tangle the wool fibers, starting the felting process. I left a 2 inch fringe of fibers dry so I could splice the matching hat piece to it.

Here you can see my hat with both pieces spliced together on the left and my brother starting his hat on the right.

After more rubbing and pressing the hat became felted enough that I could pick it up. Notice it is still very large.

After more kneading and throwing it hard against the table several times, the hat shrank quite a bit and I was reading to put it on my mold. We both constructed head molds from foam insulation prior to starting the hats. Once on the mold I pushed the fibers together more to shrink the hat to the desired size.

The final product is a totally customized, stitchless, wool hat. Because I made it myself, the camo pattern is exactly what I wanted and it fits my head perfectly. It took at most 6 ounces of wool to make putting the cost at around $8.

After successfully completing my first hat, I decided to challenge myself further. I made a reversible hat with a striped pattern. The first challenge was to get the stripes to line up at the splice line. The second challenge was to make the reverse side have different colors. Lining up the stripes at the splice line on the reverse side at the same time was very difficult. The splicing didn't work out so great on one part and I had to stitch it up.

Here is the same hat inside out (reversed).

On the list of future projects are quivers, bow socks, mittens, socks, boots, and perhaps other clothes. My dream project is to make a stitchless hooded sweatshirt, but the splicing would be very hard, not to mention making matching sleeves.