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Tarps - Benefits and Basic Instructions |
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Written by Richard Halbert
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Page 2 of 3
For shorter trips I still enjoy the luxury of the Golite Breeze Cave 1. It's 7' X 8.25' size is ample for one person. It also has 17 inch triangular extension or beaks on the front and back which help reduce the exposure to the elements of these otherwise large openings. |
My first tarp was 8' X 10' in size and without the front and back extensions. This was large enough that I did not have problems with rain splashing in even without the beak extension's.
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I also have a 6' X 8' tarp which I like to use in cold weather with the more open configuration.
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Setting up a Tarp as an A-Frame
I will attempt to explain the steps I have found work for me in the set up of my present tarp.
Equipment List
Golite Cave 1 tarp
12 titanium tent stakes. Most of the time there will be objects to tie to (trees, rocks etc. ) and you won't use all of these.
Trekking poles and two sticks four or five feet long or four such sticks if you are not using trekking poles.
Tie outs: The Cave comes with all these in place. They are, however, very light nylon ribbon and line. I found that these had a tendency to become tangled and were difficult to tie. So I replaced these lines, first with Kelty Triptease Lightline, and later with venetian blind cord. The latter is very light and I buy it by the foot at stores specializing in window accessories.
Knots: Tie-outs are attached to the tarp with either a simple overhand knot or, my preference, a bowline. All stakes and poles are attached with the clove hitch. This is very simple to tie and when it is time to put the tarp away the knots will simply fall apart when you slide them off the end of the stakes or off the end of your poles. This knot also can be loosened easily when you need to slide it up and down a pole in order to find just the right height.
 Set Up Variations: During a driving rain or just a strong wind you can stake the windward side very close to the ground. With the Golite tarp one also can stake the beak in back so that it touches or nearly touches the ground. This is what I have done in the illustrations that follow.
Stake the two corners on the windward side first.
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Pitch the tarp so the prevailing wind hits the side of the tarp. I stake the back windward corner first. As far as I am concerned, when these two stakes are in, the hard part is over. The tarp is not going to fly away or flip back and hit you in the face. Corners should be staked diagonally. |
Stake the remaining two corners. Place your stakes so that there will be slack available for the raising of the ridgeline of the tarp. It may take some practice to gage this on the first try. Until then, simply move the stakes closer together or farther apart as needed when you raise the ridgeline.
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BushMoot, the best event of the year - from 1st -5th August 2008 at Merthyr Mawr in South Wales. 
I used Hazel wood. Choose the
thin long shoots of wood which i would think are a couple of years old.
If you don't catch anything at first don't worry. It may just be a case of
changing a few things.
Most bushcrafters know that Birch bark is fantastic for fire lighting
because of all the oil concealed within it. This tutorial guides you
through the process of extracting that tar from the bark.
Now we could bung a label on (which should always say they type of wine and when it was bottled). I suggest you cross-reference to a book of recipes and notes so that when you get a cracking wine you can recreate it. We are going to add a little something to the presentation of the wine by putting a foil cap over the neck. First we drop a foil cap (available for a couple of pence from a wine shop) over the bottle neck.
Right, we now have clean, fined and filtered wine. We pour it into clean (yes and sterilised) bottles with a funnel. We need to cork it. Its possible to put corks in with a mallet. I use a corking gun and waxed corks that do not need to be soaked (plain corks do)
Well, the finings have worked – the wine is beautifully clear.
As soon as I'd finished my Paracord Bracelet, I'd decided to write a tutorial on making one. A good thing considering the majority of the responses since I posted it were asking me how to do it! Here goes.. You will need approximately 3 metres of paracord with the ends already sealed/melted, and something to make a temporary knot - a twist tie or piece of string should suffice.
There was a period in my life where I lived out of a pack for months at a time and this was one of my staples.
I like to coil it like a rope on a stick and bake it over hot coals...
I have been asked a number of times recently to provide some advice of guidance on the best way to sharpen an axe. Whilst I am always happy to provide input, I thought that it might be worthwhile to put together a tutorial on the basic techniques. The techniques used in here are intended to provide not only a sharp axe but also a safe and efficient axe.
There are many different ways you can make a berry picker but this is just a design i came up with which uses a packet of kebab skiewers and some discs of wood.
The whole kit took less than three hours to finally pull together — though that really overlooks by far the most time-consuming aspect, the preparation of materials. In fact, preparation has two components, actually. The first is the selection of materials. The second is the actual preparation.