Trees in Bushcraft portfolio

Hi,

Over the past year or so I have been keeping a portfolio of (Mostly) native trees and their uses to the bushcrafter. Here are a few pictures. It is a fantastic way to retain information and organise your learning if you want to push forward. It is to easy to drift from one subject to another without learning much. If you try and focus a bit you will learn a huge amount in a short time.

Each tree profile has a pressed leaf, photos, info on species, family, genus, origins, uses, habitat, habit, associated wildlife and anything else I fancy writting really. There are also loads of pencil drawings of different things like flowers, fruit and nuts etc. It is based on my own observations and experiments as well as information I have yet to test from books. Well over 100 pages now and counting.

I also have one for wild plants from my country and their uses which I am building up.

Water purification by Chlorine dioxide

 Hi,

I have been looking into a lot of different water purification methods recently. Generally we are lucky in N.Ireland to have good good water quality in most places. Obviously you can't drink the water from the river Lagan in the centre of Belfast but the water in the hills, mountains and upland areas is usually ok to drink from source.

All the same it is best to treat all water as bad if you are out for any length of time because getting sick ruins a trip.

There are lots of different pro's and cons of different methods which I am not going to go into.

This is obviously chemical!

You can buy Chlorine Dioxide from Life Systems in droplet form or as tablets.

The tablet version which is what I bought came in a hard plastic box which is easy to open and close and is quite tough.

The instruction are clearly printed on the back of the box and on each individually foil wrapped tablet too.


I took 1 litre of clear water from a local river and added 1 tablet. The water was visibly clear to begin with which is good for chemical means which can be unreliable in turbid water. I added 1 tablet and waited 30 minutes. I also turned the bottle unside down and loosened the cap slightly to allow the chemicals to cleanse the threads too.

The water took on a very slight greenish tinge and had a detectable chlorine scent and slight taste. The taste was much better than the old chlorine tablets by far.


I would definitly use this method again if the available water is clear. In combination with a filter it would be unbeatable really.

Cat tail Pollen

Hi,

I was out gathering some wild edibles the other day and I thought i would show a picture of the Pollen I gathered from the male flowers. The Male flowers and female flowers are on the same stem. The male is at the top.

The best method is to cut the flower off the stalk and leave for a few hours to a day then shake in a bag. This seems to yeild the best amount but is very destructive obviously. I usually just bend the stalk into a bag and tap with a stick.

This pollen is like flour in many ways and can be used as such as thickener etc. It tastes very bland but is not unpleasant.

Pollen has usefull amount of protein as well as many vitamins and minerals.

Wild cherries

These cherries are very bitter but can be used for jam or drying.
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Fallkniven u2 figure of four trap

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Woodtrekker

Hi all,

I really like this guys blog. Here is a recent article he wrote about why he enjoys bushcraft. His reasons reflect my own in most ways.

woodtrekker's blog 

Micro figure of 4

Tiny!