Category: Traditional Skills/Fieldcraft

Springing Into More Prepping — An Update, by 3AD Scout

The snow has melted and temperatures are more often than not above freezing. Spring is right around the corner. We have been preparing for or have started several projects here at the homestead. It was great to see our contractor show up this past week to start to finish our screened-in porch that was started last Fall. This space can be used as a summer kitchen if need be. But more importantly we have started putting fence posts into the ground for our pasture. We designed a stainless steel “box” that will be used for our outdoor pizza/bread oven. The …


Tool Maintenance, by Richard T.

I’m now 73 years old and can’t remember ever not having tools. In my mother’s diary she wrote about little projects I made before I even started kindergarten at the age of four. Some of the tools that I have today were my father’s. These include a hammer and some tinsnips. They outlasted him and those and others will outlast me, if they are maintained properly. This is where most of us fall short, me especially when it comes to tools for tasks that I’m not particularly passionate about. Outdoor yard projects fall into that category. For a tool to …


Reloading for Obsolete Rimfires, by Michael Z. Williamson

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Yes, that’s correct. Reloadable rimfire ammo for your obsolete guns. I can now shoot my original rimfires, most notably my 1863 Colt Pocket Navy conversion. The company HC Collection in France produces these kits for .32 Rimfire, .32 Rimfire Long, .38 Rimfire, and .41 Rimfire, as well as several pinfire calibers. I bought one to try out. The .32 Rimfire kit contains cartridge cases, bullets, swaging tools, dies, and instruction (in English.) It comes in a wooden case. Because it shipped from overseas, it did not contain primers, but those are readily available here in the USA. This kit can be …


TEOTWAWKI Clothes-Washing System, by St. Funogas

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One thing we take for granted in this day and age is the ability to throw our clothes into a machine, forget about ‘em for an hour, then come back have them all nice and clean. When I was born, my military family was so poor my mother washed diapers for two babies in the bathtub. Not only was it hard on her knees but also on her petite hands as she wrung out all those diapers before hanging them on the line. The day my dad made third class he borrowed a crow (third-class insignia) and wore it home. …


Editors’ Prepping Progress

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To be prepared for a crisis, every Prepper must establish goals and make long-term and short-term plans. In this column, the SurvivalBlog editors review their week’s prep activities and planned prep activities for the coming week. These range from healthcare and gear purchases to gardening, ranch improvements, bug out bag fine-tuning, and food storage. This is something akin to our Retreat Owner Profiles, but written incrementally and in detail, throughout the year. We always welcome you to share your own successes and wisdom in the Comments. Let’s keep busy and be ready! Jim Reports: I’ve been keeping the home fires …


Keeper of The Fire, by PJGT

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This article is not about cutting wood, nor is it about the best chainsaw or other tools. It is about keeping the fire. About the life and warmth of a fire. If you are thinking about transitioning to wood fire heat, I’m hoping to help avoid some of the frustrations and shorten the learning curve of learning to keep a fire. I’ve lived in many different parts of the world, and there are different types of forests and wood available. Use what you have. Make it work. That’s my best advice. Getting things together and making it work is what …


Simple Heat Treating for a High Carbon Steel Knife Blade – Part 2, by Steve A.

(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) The blacksmith would heat the steel to a bright cherry red, check it with a magnet, bank the forge fire over the steel, and let it cool in the dying fire overnight, ensuring a very slow cooling rate. A modern heat treat shop would heat the steel to temperature in an atmosphere-controlled furnace and then turn the furnace off until the steel has cooled sufficiently. Another way to do this starts by clamping the file by its tang upright in a metal vise and annealing it with a torch. If you slowly …


Simple Heat Treating for a High Carbon Steel Knife Blade – Part 1, by Steve A.

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Modern civilization owes its existence in part to the early discovery that iron containing small amounts of carbon could be made much harder than other iron compounds. This substance, iron with between about 0.6 and 1.7 percent carbon and no other alloying elements, was the first predictably hardenable steel and can be referred to as “high carbon plain steel”. Such steels can be made as hard as a file and form the most basic group of tool steels, where tool steel is defined as steel that is able to cut softer steel. The range of these steels include the simple …


Economics & Investing For Preppers

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Today, on Christmas Day, in place of my normal Friday news column, I have this special bit of investing commentary for my readers: Investing In Your Children’s Future Today, December 25th, for most Americans, is a holiday of generous excess. We live in a still relatively prosperous nation, and we are a people known for our generosity. One end of your house is most likely strewn with bits of wrapping paper and ribbons. Your children or grandchildren are surely playing with their new toys, dolls, and games. A few of them are probably pouting, because they didn’t receive a Playstation …


JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

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Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. The focus is usually on emergency communications gear, bug out bag gear, books, and movies–often with a tie-in to disaster preparedness, and links to “how-to” self-sufficiency videos. There is also an emphasis on links to sources for storage food and a variety of storage and caching containers. You will also note an emphasis on history books and historical movies. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This week the focus is on your last-week-with-certain-shipping-before-Christmas shopping — especially tools that are Made …


Your Smartbooks and Battlebooks, by G.P.

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During in-processing to Army Basic Training many years ago, my fellow trainees and I were issued two little books. They were cheaply-made and thin, about 3” x 5” with the longer dimension being their width. One had an orange paper cover, which was for all basic trainees. The other had a white cover, that was for trainees in the specialty of combat engineer. These were always to be carried in our pockets over the next three months. The contents of these pocket-sized books were cram sheets for the material we were supposed to be learning. They were the condensed and …


What Happens When You Get Old, by R.F.D.

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I have been blessed with good health and a clear mind these many years. I also have been blessed with inherited traits, or maybe they were learned, which have allowed me to pursue interesting (for me) activities outside my job during my working career. These activities have mainly revolved around becoming self-sufficient, physically capable, working with my hands, and clear thinking. Another trait that may be good or bad is, I tend to be quite obsessive when, I,m picking up a new skill. I was fortunate in being born late in the Great Depression and having parents who were brought …


How to Make Wooden Mason Jar Crates – Part 2, by St. Funogas

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(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.) Second Jig – Drill-Press Jig  If you have a pneumatic stapler, which greatly speeds up many nailing tasks, you can skip this section. Once you have the first slats cut, you’ll need to drill guide holes for the 4d nails using a 3/16” drill bit. If you try to nail without a pilot hole, not only will many of the slats split, but it’ll slow down your nailing time considerably. This is where jig number two comes in. As seen in Photos 10A  and 10B (inset), this jig positions stacks of five …


How to Make Wooden Mason Jar Crates – Part 1, by St. Funogas

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If you’re an average prepper, you no doubt have enough mason jars to sink a small yacht if they were all filled with pickles and tomato sauce and snuck aboard. And if you’ve done a lot of canning, you’ve probably thought there has to be a better way to manage all the jars than those cardboard boxes they come in. I’ve found that homemade wooden crates work great for me and may work for you as well. What I really like about these crates is that you can store empties in them as well as full jars, then stack the …


Sign Language as a Survival Skill, by B.R.

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When I see and read all manner of survival books, magazines, online articles, I’ve noticed a major issue important to me that is never talked about at all, for the most part. What is this issue? In any survival situation how do the healthy, hale members of any society or culture communicate treat and work with our handicapped people/family members? For this article, I will concentrate on the deaf/hard-of-hearing citizens of our own country. As a being profoundly deaf man since the age of four, I have experienced numerous good and bad situations throughout my life. Sometimes the situations were …