/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>398823

Totally forgot to add what I used as the actual pack.

Sometimes I wouldn't need a pack, since I just needed to pack around firewood or whatever, but the quickest way to make a pack was to find a large dead birch tree. The birch tree rots from the inside out, so the inner wood is really easy to get out. From there, I'd just fold over the bottom and stitch it up to make a kind of basket that I can affix to the frame. When hunting, I'd sometimes use a burlap sack to take my kills home, so that would occasionally be the pack.

As for animals and their hides, I always tried to utilize animals the best I could. I didn't save squirrel skins, but I did save their tails for making fishing lures. At first, when I skinned an animal, I just let the skin dry into rawhide after fleshing it out. Eventually, I learned about tannins and read about brain tanning. I tried both of them.

Rawhide is pretty useful on its own, but it's hard to work with on any thick-skinned animal. Brain tanning is a traditional method of preparing hides, where you mix the brain of the animal with warm water, then work it into the hide. Some people smoke it after braining it, but I've found it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. This makes a very soft, supple hide that's great for making clothing and stuff out of.

Tanning with tannins is a bit more work. Tree bark contains very high amounts of tannins. Hardwoods are usually used for this process, but I've never tried using a softwood bark. To extract it, you have to chop up the bark as finely as you can and boil it. You're left with this very dark, astringent solution that you can soak hides in overnight to tan them. You're left with a nicely coloured, reasonably soft hide.

I did sometimes make clothing out of it, but I never really wore it outside of the woods. More often than not it went to making tools and the like.