Primitive shelters are great, but more often than not they are windowless. Light enters either through the doorway, or when it gets dark or cold enough you just get a fire going. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to come up with a window somehow that you could source from the landscape? Enter the survival window. A survival window is essentially greased up inside-out drum. The fat will seal in the small irregularities on the animal hide and that will allow it to let more light in. It is not see-through (well, maybe a little bit), but it is translucent. I did make the mistake of putting the hide on the normal way for this project. Only when it was done did I realize that it would let more light in if the hair side of the skin was facing the inside of the hut. Live and learn, I guess. It is very important to leave the hide as-is. Trying to scrape it or sand it will just make the surface worse. You see me heating the oil and adding pine resin to it. Rawhide plus fat is great food for many animals. If you add resin to it, it makes it toxic to them.
Some kind of chimney cap was long overdue for this shelter. It went together pretty fast. The hide you see here, I’ve had for a while. It started out as a hard-tan skin most suitable for outer garments and footwear. I greased it up instead and made this cap out of it.
The clay for the little container came from the base of the rooted up tree I used for raw materials all year. This is the first time I pulled my pottery from the fire right away. It’s supposed to be a big no-no. They tell you to let it cool off gradually overnight. I took a gamble on it and it worked out.
0 Comments