rewilding author, teacher, & catalyst
If not for COVID-19, I’d be sitting in Jim Rigg’s wikiup at Ark Park and educating the masses about bone tools (among other related rants) by day and expanding my mind with the help of some very friendly fungi by night–at the Oregon Country Fair. Sadly, instead I made this video of my bone talk …
Birthday present I made for my lady. Deer bone fish hook earrings with mussel shell lures tied on with elk sinew. Utilitarian jewelry ftw. My next batch will be more symmetrical I hope. And yes, her ear piercings are large enough to fit these.
My brain-tanned nutria pelt murse. Case-skinned. Stitched the bum side with my bone awl and brain-tanned buckskin thong. The opening is where the face is, the shoulder strap is looped through the fore arm holes. Shoulder strap is a 5 strand braided chem-tan deer hide from scrap bins. I have only made one cut around …
I’m not that great at flint-knapping. It’s one of my goals this year to be able to make nice arrowheads from a larger core of obsidian. At Echoes in Time this year I made a couple of handfuls of bifaces, a flat stone with one solid edge all the way around, created mostly through percussion …
So, I have a friend who has property and it is over-run with nutria. About three times a year he will go around and shoot as many nutria as he can see. This may seem cold, but nutria are an invasive species of aquatic rodent brought here during the fur trade era and released when …
Continue reading “Wet-Scraping Nutria Hides With Bone and Stone Tools”
For a while now I’ve been playing around with making tools from hard stone. I’m not a great knapper. I’m not really even a good one. I’m a novice when it comes to making beautiful arrowheads and knives. I can make functional arrowheads, and functional knives from obsidian or even glass bottles. My concern has …
Continue reading “Making Stone Flakes From a Columnar Basalt Core”
This mornings experiment: English Ivy Bow-drill with old growth ivy. Bow: English Ivy. Hand hold: English Ivy. Spindle: English Ivy. Fire board: English Ivy. Tinder: English Ivy bark. String: Brain-tanned buckskin. I tried to make a good cord from English Ivy roots using them in a withy-style but they were too dried out from yesterday …
Here are my sandals. I made these to save the soles of my moccasins. I’ll be going barefoot mostly, but the sandals will give my feet and shoes a relief.
Here is my wild harvested, natural clay cooking pot. Thankfully it survived the firing. I didn’t do any temper ratio testing before hand. There are some cracks but they are very small. I’ll cook something thick and starchy in it to season and seal the pot up nicely.
Here is the bark-tanned raccoon fur vest I made to stay warm on the project. It’s made from 5 roadkill raccoons. The two front panels were from juvenile raccoons during the fall, so their coats were smaller and less thick. The two panels in the back are two adults from the winter. I cut a fifth adult, …
Today I finished my mocassins for the project. There is a floating sole stiched between the shoe and the actual sole, so three layers total. This is a modified version of the pattern in Jim Rigg’s book Blue Mountain Buckskin. Even with three soles, I may wear through pretty quickly out in the woods. Lynx …
I finally finished my buckskin shirt for the project. It started out as a tunic looking thing but I added fringe and sleeves and a colar so I could have it popped and look super cool out in the woods. Here are a few pics: — —