Chapter 5 OUTDOOR HANDICRAFT

Camp Furnishings-Dressing-Table, Seats, Dining-Table, Cupboard, Broom, Chair, Racks, Birch-Bark Dishes, etc.

Camp is the place where girls enjoy most proving their powers of resourcefulness.

Handicraft in the woods.

Details of the outdoor dressing-table. Comb-racks of forked sticks and of split sticks.

It is fun to supply a want with the mere natural raw materials found in the open, and when you succeed in making a useful article of outdoor things, the entire camp takes a pride in your work and the simple but practical and usable production gives a hundred per cent more pleasure than could a store article manufactured for the same purpose.

Be comfortable at camp. While it is good to live simply in the open, it is also good to be comfortable in the open, and with experience you will be surprised to find what a delightful life can be lived at camp with but few belongings and the simplest of camp furnishings. These last can, in a great measure, be made of tree branches and the various stuffs found in the woods.

Dressing-Table

A near-by tree will furnish the substantial foundation for your dressing-table and wash-stand combined. If you can find a side-piece of a wooden box, use it for the shelf and fasten this shelf on the trunk of a tree about two and one-half feet or more above the ground. Cut two rustic braces and nail the front of the shelf on the top ends of these supports; then nail a strip of wood across the tree as a cleat on which to rest the back of the shelf; fit the shelf on the cleat and nail the lower ends of the braces to the tree; strengthen the work still more by driving a strong, long nail on each side of the top centre of the back of shelf, diagonally down through the shelf, cleat, and into the tree.

It is not essential that the straight shelf edge fit perfectly to the rounded tree, but if you desire to have it so, mark a semicircle on the wood of size to fit the tree and whittle it out.

Should there be no piece of box for your shelf, make the shelf of strong, slender sticks lashed securely close together on two side sticks. For cleats and braces use similar sticks described for board shelf.

When the shelf is made in this way, cover the top with birch bark or other bark to give a flat surface.

Hang your mirror on a nail in the tree at convenient distance above the shelf, and your tooth-brush on another nail. The towel may hang over the extending end of the cleat, and you can make a small bark dish for the soap. Your comb can rest on two forked-stick supports tacked on the tree, or two split-end sticks.

Camp-Seats

Stones, logs, stumps, raised outstanding roots of trees, and boxes, when obtainable, must be your outdoor chairs, stools, and seats until others can be made.

Outdoor dressing-table, camp-cupboard, hammock-frame, seat, and pot-hook.

Two trees standing near together may be used to advantage as uprights for a camp seat. Cut a small horizontal kerf or notch at the same height on opposite sides of both trees, get two strong poles (green wood), fit them in the wedges and nail them to the trees; then lash them firmly in place. Be absolutely certain that these poles are of strong wood, firmly attached to the trees and not liable to slide or break.

Make the seat by lashing sticks across from pole to pole, placing them close together. Two more long poles, fastened to the trees at a proper distance above the seat, would give a straight back, if a back is desired, but it is not essential; with a folded blanket spread over it, the seat alone is a luxury.

Camp-Table

A table can be built in much the same way as the seat and will answer the purpose well if one of boards is not to be had. For the table make your crosspieces about twenty-two inches long, nail them ladder-like but close together on two poles, and make this table top flat on the surface by covering it with birch bark tacked on smoothly. Having previously fastened two other poles across from tree to tree, as you did when making the seat, you can lift the table top and lay it on the two foundation poles; then bind it in place and the table will be finished. Another way of using the table top is to drive four strong, stout, forked sticks into the ground for the four table legs and place the table top across, resting the long side poles in the crotches of the stakes, where they may be lashed in place.

Benches for the table can be made in like manner, only have the forked-stick legs shorter, raising the seat about eighteen inches above the ground.

Camp-chair, biscuit-stick, and blanket camp-bed.

Camp-Cupboard

A cupboard made of a wooden box by inserting shelves, held up by means of cleats, will be found very convenient when nailed to a tree near the cook-fire. Hang a door on the cupboard which will close tight and fasten securely. Have this in mind when making out your check list, and add hinges, with screws to fit, to your camp tools.

Camp-Broom

With a slender pole as a handle, hickory shoots, or twisted fibre of inner bark of slippery-elm, for twine, and a thick bunch of the top branchlets of balsam, spruce, hemlock, or pine for the brush part, you can make a broom by binding the heavy ends of the branches tight to an encircling groove cut on the handle some three inches from the end. Cut the bottom of the brush even and straight.

Camp-Chair

If you have a good-size length of canvas or other strong cloth, make a camp-chair. For the back use two strong, forked stakes standing upright, and use two long poles with branching stubs at equal distance from the bottom, for the sides and front legs of the chair; in the crotches of these stubs the bottom stick on which the canvas strip is fastened will rest.

Each side pole must be fitted into one of the forked high-back stakes, and then the top stick on the canvas strip must be placed in the same crotches, but in front of and resting against the side poles, thus locking the side poles firmly in place.

To fasten the canvas on the two sticks, cut one stick to fit across the chair-back and the other to fit across the lower front stubs. Fold one end of the canvas strip over one stick and nail the canvas on it, so arranging the cloth that the row of nails will come on the under side of the stick. Turn in the edge first that the nails may go through the double thickness of cloth. Adjust this canvas-covered stick to the top of the chair, allowing the cloth to form a loose hanging seat; measure the length needed for back and seat, cut it off and nail the loose end of the canvas strip to the other stick; then fit one stick in the top of the upright back stakes and the other stick in the bottom stubs.

Camp Clothes-Press

If you are in a tent tie a hanging pole from the tent ridge-pole, and use it as a clothes-press.

Blanket Bed

Two short logs will be required for your blanket bed, the thicker the better, one for the head and one for the foot, also two long, strong, green-wood poles, one for each side of the bed; your blanket will be the mattress.

Fold the blanket, making the seam, formed by bringing the two ends together, run on the under-side along the centre of the doubled blanket, not on the edge. Lap and fasten the blanket ends together with large horse-blanket safety-pins, and with the same kind of pins make a case on each side of the blanket fold; then run one of the poles through each case. Chop a notch near each end of the two short logs; in these notches place the ends of the poles and nail them securely. Have the short logs thick enough to raise the bed up a few inches from the ground, and make the notches sufficiently far apart to stretch the mattress out smooth, not have it sag. A strip of canvas or khaki may be used in place of the blanket if preferred.

Camp Hammock

By lashing short crosspieces to the head and foot of the side poles the blanket mattress can be a hammock and swing between two trees, having been attached to them with rope or straps of slippery-elm, beech, or black birch.

The birch-bark dish that will hold fluids. Details of making.

Birch-Bark Dishes

It will be easy for girls to make their birch-bark dinner plates, vegetable dishes, baskets, dippers, etc. Soften the thick bark by soaking it in water; when it is pliable cut one plate the size you wish, lay it on a flat stone or other hard substance and scrape off the outside bark around the edges, allowing the outer bark to remain on the bottom of the plate to give greater strength; use this plate as a guide in cutting each of the others.

With your fingers shape the edges of the plates in an upward turn while the bark is wet, using the smoothest side for the inside of the plate.

A large bark cornucopia with bark strap-handle can be made and carried on the arm in place of a basket when off berrying.

Variations of circular, oblong, and rectangular bark dishes may be worked out from strips and rectangular pieces of birch bark, and all dishes can be turned into baskets by adding handles. When necessary to sew the edges of bark together, always have the bark wet and soft; then lap the edges and use a very coarse darning-needle with twine of inner-bark fibre or rootlets; have ready hot melted grease mixed with spruce gum to coat over the stitching and edges of the article, or you can use white-birch resin for the same purpose.

The bark utensils will wear longer if a slender rootlet or branchlet of pliable wood is sewed, with the "over-and-over" stitch, to the edge of the article.

For round and oblong dishes or baskets, sew together the two ends of your strip of wet bark; then sew the round or oblong bottom on the lower edge of the bark circle. In this case it is not easy to lap the edges, simply bring them together and finish the seam with the addition of the slender rootlet binding.

Rectangular dishes are made by folding the wet bark according to the diagrams and fastening the folds near the top of both ends of the receptacle. These will hold liquids.

Cooking Utensils

A forked stick with points sharpened makes a fine toasting-fork or broiling-stick for bacon or other small pieces of meat. The meat is stuck on the two prongs and held over the fire.

A split-end stick may be used for the same purpose by wedging the bacon in between the two sides of the split.

Your rolling-pin can be a peeled, straight, smooth, round stick, and a similar stick, not necessarily straight but longer, may do duty as a biscuit baker when a strip of dough is wound spirally around it and held over the fire.

A hot flat stone can also be used for baking biscuits, and a large flat-topped rock makes a substitute for table and bread-board combined.

If you have canned goods, save every tin can when empty, melt off the top, and with nail and hammer puncture a hole on two opposite sides near the top, and fasten in a rootlet handle. These cans make very serviceable and useful cooking-pails.

Whittle out a long-handled cake-turner from a piece of thin split wood, and also whittle out a large flat fork.

Make a number of pot-hooks of different lengths, they are constantly needed at camp; select strong green sticks with a crotch on one end and drive a nail slantingly into the wood near the bottom of the stick on which to hang kettles, pots, etc. Be sure to have the nail turn up and the short side of the crotch turn down as in diagram.

Campers employ various methods of making candlesticks. One method is to lash a candle to the side of the top of a stake driven into the ground, or the stake can have a split across the centre of the top, and the candle held upright by a strip of bark wedged in the split with a loop on one side holding the candle and the two ends of the bark extending out beyond the other side of the stake. Again the candle is stuck into a little mound of clay, mud, or wet sand. If you have an old glass bottle, crack off the bottom by pouring a little water in the bottle and placing it for a short while on the fire embers; then plant your candle in the ground and slide the neck of the bottle over the candle. Steady it by planting the neck of the bottle a little way in the ground and the glass bottle will act as a windbreak for your candle.

Never leave a candle burning even for a moment unless some one is present; it is a dangerous experiment. Fire cannot be trifled with. Put out your candle before leaving it.

A good idea before going away from camp when vacation is over is to photograph all the different pieces of your outdoor handicraft, and when the prints are made label each one with the month, date, and year and state material used, time required in the making, and comments on the work by other camp members.

Be sure to take photographs of different views of the camp as a whole, also of each separate shelter, both the outside and the inside, and have pictures of all camp belongings.

The authors will be greatly interested in seeing these.

A bear would rather be your friend than your enemy.

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