I'm a wanabe mountain man.... all that's missing is the mountains.

As time goes by, and I get older and more crabby I'm leaning more and more to the primitive side of bushcraft and further and further away from modern man made kit.

The mountainman period of American history rings my bells and it is toward this period that I find myself drawn.

I used to be into medaeval living history (still am to some extent) but smoking wasn't invented in 1475 so doing events

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My wife and I went for a walk on the marshes and along the Waveney river yesterday. We stopped to brew some coffee. I used my newly made "candle" stove, using candle wax and corrugated cardboard for a wick. Worked quite well. The only down side being the amount of soot! We saw swans in flight, grebes and lots of little birds in the reeds.

In the afternoon, I made some charcloth:

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Lately myself and a freind have been inspired by GreenPete's video on how to make a knife. We have been collecting some right odds & sods; we gathered stuff like.. old files, sausepans, frying pans, pipe, hair-dryer motor, battery, angle-grinder etc. We have made our own little custom forge to heat our steel up and then quench. We're taking it steady and basically going through the process that greenpete

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Well here I am, writing this on a sunny evening in Montevideo.

Yes, graham's out in the world again. It's not particularly Bushcrafty, but it's a lovely country. In a day or so I'll be sailing for the Falkland Islands and chances are fairly high that I'll get to do some whale spotting on the way. fortunatly for you lot I've got a new camera so If I spot any I'll be trying to get some pics up (although it'll depend on the internet access I have on the boat

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Had a day in the garden today. Why? Well, I'll be off all next week and prefer the woods to myself. So, today was one for potting on peppers, planting out beans, transplanting seed grown shallots etc.

Also the chance to appreciate the flowers. I'm a lazy gardener and so use self seeders and perennials most of the time. I show my age in my

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Well, let's see how this all works. I've already got quite an extensive blog at www.pablo475.blogspot.com so these entries will be quite short. Great idea though. It's a great way of seeing what other people are up to.

Today was archery practice day. I'm going to take the Korean bow to the spring bushmoot so I wanted to do a little practice. Have a look at the video posted on the blog site.

I finished the day by

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Trying to pack; I'm heading up to Inverness to go to work on Skye tomorrow. My car is too small for everything including the quatrain  and lances from Bothwell castle :-/ as well. I'm doing a Bronze and Iron Age activity series for Historic Scotland and I've got firelighting, breadmaking, basketry, fresh foraging and pottery making stuff to take too, and a burned bowl for the kids to scrape out .....it's a messy job but someone has to do it :-))

My garden is growing

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I soent last night out hunting with Ratbag, we stalked a few hares and tried to avoid the farmers pigs that were very interested in us!

 We saw a rabbit whilst we were coming up over the hill, Ratbag got an opportunity to try his new bipod out and got a good clean shot off, taking the rabbit down.  As he moved forward to ensure the rabbit was dead, I brought his rifle up and we left the rabbit on the fence out of the way of the foxes!

 We moved further up the hill where

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First of all let me say what a good idea this is and I hope people take it up. On the other hand I hope it doesn't detract from the forums because they are a great source of info.

I'm going to try to keep you up to date with what I'm doing.

This weekend I'm desperately trying to get ready for a bowmaking course with Forest Knights on 3rd June. I have ash and elm seasoning up against my bookcase and yesterday I made a shave horse from some 150x47x3000 carcassing

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