Primitve Skills

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lumpymike1

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Sep 3, 2004
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On Saturday I was fortunate enough to be able to take a class with Christoper Nygeres who has been teaching primative living skills in Los Angeles for many many years. This was the 4th class that I have taken with him and it was great. It took place in the beautiful Angeles Crest Mountains and you could not ask for a more fantastic day. We covered a lot of skills, and just had a great time.
The 1st pic is of Yucca cordage that I made in the morning. Cordage is one of the skills that I have been banging my head a against for awhile now and I really think I saw the light saturday. Made about 5 feet of really strong cord using a reverse twist method, and finally learned how to spice in more sections. Thanks to Dude and Gary for helping me.
The second Pic is of the class building a lean-to out of avaiable materials.
The 3rd is of the backside of the shelter. We only had time to get it about halfway done, the bedding needed more leaves for padding, and we needed another 2 feet or so of insulation on the back side of the shelter.
Pic 4 is of me lying down in the shelter, the contractors bag full of leaves was supprisingly comfortable.
Pic 5 was of Christopher trying to take a nap before we pestered him for more.

Hopefully I will be able to get more pics up later, it was a great time and I learned a lot.

Mike
 
Cool pics. Hope you can post some more. Does that fellow in the second pic have a small hatchet on a shoulder harness of some type?
 
Yes he does, a GB Mini. His name is Dude, and he is a mod over on the hoodlums. Real fun guy. Great little axe. I have a GB SFA, but this was the 1st time I got to hold the mini. And now I must go spend some more money....
 
Wow, looks like a good time. I'm jealous! Thanks for snapping those pics, you guys built a nice shelter.

It's really difficult to learn things like making cordage from a book, I'd like to take a good class sometime.
 
Looks like you had a great time. I've been working on my cordage skills recently too. Seems like a great class. Mac
 
Added a few more pics:
The 1st one is Christopher harvesting some Yucca for our cordage.
2 and 3 are of California Buckwheat and some deer that we saw from the trail. In 34 years I've rarely seen deer out and about in the Angeles Crest, so having them stay still enough for a pic was great.
Pic 4 is of Gary showing us how to make a snare of the same type that my son sets every year trying to catch the Easter Bunny. It's like I have an 8 year old Elmer Fudd...
Last pic is of the Angeles Crest from the parking lot. It does not do justice to the beauty of the day.

Mike
 
hollowdweller said:
Cool.

If you picked up enough I'd love to hear more how to on the cordage thing:thumbup:
Click to expand...

Others can tell it better than I can, and as spooky stated it is much easier to be shown than to read but I will try to describe in the steps that we took.
1.After harvesting the yucca we were handed a single leaf (sharp tip removed)
2. We were told to bend it in half and start rubbing at the bend to break up the fibers.
3. once it was broken down and you could see indivedual dections, we started pulling it apart into sections so that we had long thin strands about 1/8th of an inch wide at the most.
4. take 2-3 strands, fold in half around a pencil sized twig. Since I am right handed I held the twig in my left. Hold the strands coming over the top of the twig in one bunch and the ones coming from the bottom in another.
5. Start your reverse twist by rolling the top bunch to the right or away from you. Then bring it back towards you, under the bottom strands and keep tension on it with your left hand.
6. Now the original bottom strand has become the top and repeat step 5, roll it to the right and then bring it back towards you and under.
7 Continue on this way until you reach 2-3 inches from the end of your strands. Then take another 2-3 strands, folded in half and place the fold right at the "crotch" of your original strands. Then continue on as before with the roll and twist method above.

Some people remove the stick the original bend was made over at some point, but I kept mine to spool my cord up so I was able to keep some tension on it at all times.
Hope that helped.
Mike
 
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