Category: Traditional Skills/Fieldcraft

Tree Felling, by George H.

Disclaimer: Tree cutting is inherently dangerous with many injuries and fatalities every year, please do you own research and obtain training before trying this on your own. In New England there is extensive woodland and always a need to cut down trees to keep your garden growing and your house from being overrun. This keeps your house warm with the resulting firewood. Cutting down a tree is always risky but there are many ways to reduce this risk using various tools and skills. Never start cutting unless you are well rested, fully alert and all your tools are sharpened and …


Two Letters Re: Sewing, Mending and Altering Your Clothing After the Ball Drops

James: I would like to add a couple of things with regard to the recent article and letters on sewing.   1.  Get a button jar.  People used to save the buttons from discarded, worn out clothing and use them for repair or when making new items.  When a button hole begins to wear out even a novice with needle and thread can sew on a larger button and make the garment wearable until the button hole can be repaired. A riveted metal button cannot be sewn back on and neither can a broken button.  I have buttons that have …


Traditional Skills: What Value are You to Other Preppers?, by Blacksmith Tom

Prepper communities and compounds rely on each members worth to their group, cooking, sewing, carpentry, leatherwork, gardening. There is one skill that cannot be over looked as one of the most valuable skills/trade for a prepper to possess.  Blacksmithing.  All other crafts and trades will require once again the skills of a blacksmith to replace stolen, broken tools.  In addition to making these tools a blacksmith can also make weapons, swords, axes, daggers, spears, arrow heads.  But how would one go about obtaining these skills?  Look in your local areas for classes offered, some community colleges are now offering blacksmithing …


Letter Re: IED Awareness

I received the following from an embedded mil-blogger friend.  His personal information has been redacted: Sir,  If I may, I would like to share some information with you.  Some is based on personal experience, and some comes from experts I know and trust.  What you do with this is up to you, but I wanted you to have it to think about just in case.   First, I can commend an I-phone app (should be available for other platforms as well) that the Army had suggested to me called IED Aware.  It is actually pretty much the basic Army awareness course …


Letter Re: Sewing, Mending and Altering Your Clothing After the Ball Drops

James Wesley, I have a few comments on the recent clothing article:   Good heavy work clothing is around, if you know where to look. Carhartt, Prison Blues, Roundhouse, Wild Ass jeans and Dickies to name just a few of the better known names. Treat this clothing as an investment and buy it even if its expensive as it’s worth every penny.   Buttons.  Lay in a store of metal buttons.  I can’t tell you how many plastic, conventional buttons I’ve smashed working on something.  Metal shirt and pant buttons don’t break and wear for years. Plan on making clothes using …


Make Your Own Inexpensive Frangible Slugs, by Sailor Frank

]Editor’s Note: See my warning about this technique, below!] With the current ammo shortages that have been plaguing the country and seem to have no end in sight, having a way to stock up on a key caliber for your preps is vital. Hindsight being 20/20 many of us now wish we would have put more of our valuable prepping budget towards stocking up on ballistic wampum. I believe I’ve found a way to still stock up on some very useful ammo while still making your valuable prepping dollars stretch just a bit farther. The shotgun is universality accepted as …


Sewing, Mending and Altering Your Clothing After the Ball Drops, by Belle

My husband, children and I live in a largely off-grid community in the desert southwest.  We live on forty acres with solar power, a water well and water catchment.  We garden and live with chickens and are adding skills to our new life style all of the time.  My husband does not like for me to be too specific, but I outlined some of our lifestyle changes in an article on trash in July 2012. This article is about clothing.  It is about sewing and mending and altering.  I know you’d rather read about AR-15’s, but IMHO, clothing is going …


Wealth From a Prepper’s Perspective, by DocLiberty

Many (if not most) people seek wealth, yet few can define it.  There are many practical definitions.  One author defines wealth as having sufficient assets to provide the cash flow necessary to meet your monthly living expenses.  That’s a great definition for normal times, but having a bunch of rental houses when the dollar is worthless and the hungering hoards are loose upon society won’t do you much good. If you are at all familiar with the concepts promoted in this blog you know what you need to have for basic survival.  I will not spend space and electrons reviewing …


Make Yourself Worth Saving, by John G.

The end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI) has probably crossed your mind lately. It might have been just a brief news flash about a silly Mayan prophecy, or maybe you have an uncle who still thinks the Russians are gonna nuke us. More likely in our generation, our societal bonds could disintegrate thanks to erosion of our financial system. If you have not given this situation much thought, it is high time to start. The first step is to take the possibility seriously. If you cannot handle this basic prerequisite, well, Devil take the hindmost. Once you …


Getting Back to My Roots — Why I am a Prepper, by Chad T.

I was born into a family of preppers.  My grandparents were all farmers and lived through the Great Depression in the Midwest.   My parents both grew up on farms and came from large families.  While my folks would not label themselves today as preppers, they would consider themselves as independent and self-reliable.  In order to understand my journey as a prepper, you have to go back a few years.  Early into my parents’ marriage, my dad just got out of the navy and worked in various cities and towns, from Texas to Minnesota.  The largest town we lived in was …


Off Grid Cooking Solutions, Part 2, by V.W.

To follow up o my article Off Grid Cooking Solutions, Part 1: One of the first items we purchased for off grid cooking was the humble Dutch Oven.  There are many enthusiasts of this time honored way of cooking.  The Dutch oven is surprisingly versatile as it can be used over a fire, with charcoal briquettes, on a regular kitchen stove, a woodstove, portable camp stove, or the rocket stove.  Because of the fuel consumption required and the logistics of storing charcoal and wood, I am not as interested in using my Dutch oven over an outdoor camp fire or …


Letter Re: Sew You Think You’re a Prepper? Look to Your Treadle in Troubled Times

Some great points have been brought up by R.S. in a response to my original article. I appreciate the input and agree completely with the value of a true industrial machine while electricity is available. Nothing compares to a walking foot industrial for those heavy jobs that use materials such as thick leather, webbing and multiples layers of canvas. I should have mentioned that a household low-tech treadle would pale in comparison to a modern electric industrial machine. I too, appreciate their capability for sewing heavy work.  As luck would have it, I own and operate both a Consew 226R …


Letter Re: Holey Ground–The Use of the Auger in Homestead Food Production

James: I’d like to take exception to the recent article by M.S. on using augers to make plant holes. No professional would consider using an auger for planting. Augers compact and glaze the edge of the hole as they work their way down.  While this is great for post holes, it’s a death sentence for the plant roots. A far better and faster way is to use either a small backhoe  or an articulated trencher that will cut a fan shaped hole.  The spoil from the hole is broken up and now suitable for back fill.  Post-SHTF, a good quality …


Holey Ground — The Use of the Auger in Homestead Food Production, by M.S.

When planning to grow their own food, many people understandably focus on the plants. A plant, however, simply expresses its genetic blueprint to the extent it can based on the energy and materials available from the sun and soil. We can therefore state that a critical aspect of successful vegetable production is the quality of the soil. Given the limitations of either the amount of warning you might have before needing to produce food for your family, or the amount of money you are able to put toward improving your soil to the point it will yield reliably, amending your …


Letter Re: Sew You Think You’re a Prepper? Look to Your Treadle in Troubled Times

JWR, The sewing submission by TJG about Singer 66 Treadle machines is informative and “generally” relays the usefulness of such a machine, especially in a grid-down environment, however, as I have learned personally, her claims that the Singer 66 can handle THICK and BULKY items like leather and nylon is not accurate in my opinion. I learned this by buying a beautiful electric-motor-driven Singer 66 “Red Eye” model to do all the nylon web gear modifications I have always wanted to do to my gear, as the Singer 66 is indeed a tough all-steel sewing machine, yet I quickly discovered …