Quick and Dirty Leather Crafting

hatchet sheath

Leather crafting is agreat skill to learn and know. You may have to rely on it as well.  You can make;  holsters, bags, pouches, scabbards … on and on.

Just think of all the things we encounter in daily life that are made of, or USED to be made of leather.The leather items that you make can also be used for barter  (in dire situations),  as well as useful stuff for your own self.  As far as survival goes, the final results don’t have to look  pretty  to do the job.

All that is needed are a few easily found items.

$1.00 worth of pigskin leather scraps

– Leather, of course, leather comes in a variety thickness and hardness.  If possible, choose your leather wisely for your specific projects. Remnant scraps are sold by leather dealers.  They are a cheap way to get started. There may come a time where you can not be so specific.   In  a pinch an old pair of boots, or an worn jacket will work.

 

leather awe

– A leather awe or even an ice-pick for punching holes in the leather.  Many pocket knives have semi – useful punches.

 

 

 

dental floss for sewing

– Strong waxed thread for sewing, good strong dental floss works too.

 

 

tapesty / leather needle

– Blunt tipped sewing needles.  There are all kinds of leather needles, tapestry needles are often used, as well.

 

 

 

hobby / needle nose pliers

– A pair of hobby pliers for assisting the needle through the holes punched into the leather.  Needle nose pliers are an “around the house” substitute.

 

 

 

xacto(tm) knife

– A Xacto ™ knife or a utility knife can be used for cutting the leather.

 

 

 

To make a your leather item, follow these steps.  It is really easy and surprisingly fun to do.

1.  Trace a pattern on a piece of leather

2.  Cut it out, Punch your holes as you go, Thread the needle & start sewing.

3.  Finally, when I am all done with my project, I sand the edges down fairly even. so, it looks nice!!

Making something useful from just scraps can be a very rewarding experience. Grab yourselves  some leather and start your leather crafting, it can be more than just a hobby.

Here is nice video that shows your pretty much the same thing.  It shows how really simple it is to start doing this.  It’s not our video so you will have to forgive the “hotel lobby” background music.

BTW;  here are two more sheaths made by the author.

Knife Sheaths Made by Author

Shortwave Primer

An experience with a cheap, wind up “survival”  radio piqued my interest in shortwave.  Even though English broadcasting on shortwave frequencies is waning this may be your only source of information if the internet completely fails or the “kill switch” is thrown.

I had some single channel operator experience with the old PRC 77 and other VHF radios.   I have fooled with a shortwave radio a little, at least enough to get a Spanish radio station and a snake handling church with a transmitter, in the past.

Selecting a Radio

It didn’t take long to realize I needed a much better radio, if I was really going to listen to shortwave.  I’m not going to labor the details but the serpent gospel couldn’t be found on my windup Chinese turd.   So, I turned to the internet for advice.   One of the better product review sites I  found was Eham.net.  It includes  A LOT of amateur radio hardware reviews, They have listings for present day models along with older (used) models.

Note: Older (used)  reliable models merit serious consideration.

Comprehensive list of shortwave receivers with reviews and prices.

http://www.eham.net/reviews/products/8 

I settled on a cheap very basic model that has received a lot of praise.  The Sangean ATS 800 (aka Realistic DX/370) which is now out of production ($35 used).   A short time while later, I ordered another receiver, the Tecsun PL-660 ($90 new), which offered some more features.  Both have good  reviews and are priced fairly modestly for their features.

Finding Stations

But, finding the time, frequency and languages of the stations was tricky.  If you don’t know, shortwave listening is better done at night, and stations do not broadcast continuously like your local FM country station.

Short-wave.info is an excellent resource for finding this information.  The site is interactive and it knows the time of day and your location.  It even gives a little strength meter that lets you pick out more likely prospects to explore.

Other frequency listings

http://www.short-wave.info

http://support.radioshack.com/support_electronics/doc66/66356.htm#Time

http://www.endtimesreport.com/shortwave.html

After posting this, I had a big Duh moment.  I don’t want to overstate the obvious but all these online resources won’t work if something big happens.  Write or print these frequencies out that you think are important to you.

 

Our Hardtack Recipe

Here is our own contribution.  Making a video is high on our list.  Tell us how it works out for you.

Ingredients:

5 cups UNbleached, all purpose, NON-self rising flour

1 table spoon salt

1 table spoon baking powder

1 1/2 cups cold water ( + or -)

Instructions:

dry flour mixture

1. Mix All ingredients together in a bowl. Make a stiff dry dough.

-add water if needed

2. Roll dough to a workable thickness of about 1/2 inch.

hardtack cutter

3. Cut into 3 inch squares and  make  holes on the top, five (5) by five (5) rows. This can be done with a nail or something similar.  An actual civil war era hardtack cutter” is available from fall creek sutler.

http://fcsutler.com/fctin.asp

3.  Place on cookie sheet & bake at, 300 degrees for 50 – 90 minutes.

Surviving Civil War Hardtack

– You can make them rock hard like they are supposed to be , or make them a little softer so they can be consumed without
breaking teeth, It’s your choice.

Feel free to post your opinions or helpful hints making this age old classic of long term food staples.

Recipe contributed by Mr. R. Shackleford.

There is not a good selection of videos for Hardtack recipes, but Rusty  says this one is closest.

How to Prepare

The hard tack brigade is a group of decades long friends, who have been enthusiasts of survival, survival tech and prepping skills. Each with their own specialties, training and experience.

Here is where we plan on sharing, and if all goes well, growing to our host and content manager, soon.

We plan on covering the real nuts and bolts how too prepare. Giving sources and hopefully some respectable video as well, with practical how to guides.

“Scary” weaponry is only a portion of what has to be understood, if you and your family encounter a “Katrina Scale” collapse of normal order.  Real world skills are being forgotten, for example, navigating without a GPS, preserving food, and making a pair of boots from leather. These skills may prove invaluable in the future. We’ve not shared in this format before and your more than welcome to give you input. but we think now may be the time.

Participation is the only price  we would like you to pay. Where ever possible creative commons and open source licensing will be used.

Electric Energy from Wood with Redneck Tech

It may seem odd, to some, but internal combustion engines can be run on gas produced from plain old wood. The practice was somewhat common in petroleum starved axis countries during World War II. The trick here is gathering up all the parts and doing all the welding BEFORE the you go through an energy blackout.

One important thing to note is that the process basically pressure cooks the wood.  This can be an extremely risky affair since the device has a home made potential bomb built in.

For more information on wood gas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas