If you are caught in a situation where you have no tools of your own to work with you may have to find ways to get creative. We have a list of four items we deem essential for your outdoor survival and examples of how to make these tools using just the items you might find in the great outdoors.

The Essential Tools For Survival:

• Natural/Handmade Leather
• Knife
• Spear
• Club

Natural Leather

The best kind of natural leather or binding material are animal tendons. If you have already caught an animal then this is the best supply to use for binding tools together. If not, the fiber found in trees and plants can be used as binding material.

Supplies:

• A dead animal, or
• Plant fiber from trees and plants

How To:

1. After an animal has been skinned, remove the sinew from the corpse.
2. Lay these tendons out to dry in the sun.
3. Once dried, pound them to break the tendons into individual cords.
4. Take these cords and make them even stronger by twisting them around one another in a clockwise direction, then take two of these groups and twist them together again in a counterclockwise direction.

Now you can use these chords to bind together pieces of the tools you’ll need to make for survival in the wilderness.

Making a Knife

A knife is one of the first items people will think of creating when stuck in the wilderness for any prolonged amount of time. A knife can help not only with skinning and gutting animals for food, but cutting and putting together shelters and other supplies.

Supplies:

• Core Rock

This rock will become the blade. Choosing this rock is fairly simple; you’ll want a larger stone preferably with a flat side and already kind of sharp. This will reduce the amount of time needed to sharpen the rock. To ensure that you are choosing the correct type of rock, clink the rocks together; you are looking for a rock that makes a clinking sound, similar to the sound glass would make.

• Hammer Stone

This rock is used to shape the core rock into a blade. You’ll want to pick a larger, heavy rock that isn’t going to break when you chip pieces off of your core rock.

• Pressure Flaker

This is a sharp-pointed rock for chiseling in detail to the blade and making the blade even sharper.

How To:

1. Wet the core rock to help lessen the amount of time it will take to chip away the core rock and mold it into a blade.
2. Use the hammer stone to chip away pieces near the edge until you get the general shape of a blade.
3. Once the rock looks like a blade, use the pressure flaker to do the edged details and to sharpen the blade.
4. If you want to add a handle use some of the handmade natural rope to tie a piece of wood or another rock to the blade.

Making a Spear

Spears can be used to strike and kill fish or small animals for food. If bamboo is available, it is  great material for creating spears. If bamboo is not available spears can be made from sticks and small rocks; the rocks can be crafted into sharp arrowheads using a similar process to making a knife (above).

Supplies:

• 1.5 meter long bamboo shaft
• Sharp rock

How To:

1. Taking the bamboo shaft in one hand and the sharp shaving rock in the other hand; start about 8 centimeters back and shave the shaft at a 45 degree angle.
2. Bring the bamboo shaft to a sharp point by continuing this process.

Making a Club

A club is helpful for killing small, slow animals like rodents. Many of these rodents will become a great source of food and materials for further tool-making. A club can be replaced by other tools like a slingshot or bola, but the club is the easiest tool to make and use when new to the wilderness experience.

Supplies:

• Strong stick (wide enough to split in half)

or

• A strong stick forked at the bottom so it looks like a Y
• A medium-sized round stone that’s got some weight behind it
• Handmade leather

How To:

1. Place the rock next to the stick and measure the distance needed to split the stick in order to fit the rock, and be able to retie the top of the Y back together.
2. At this point, wrap a piece of handmade leather around the stick and tie it into place.
3. Now use your knife to split the stick down the middle to the leather-wrapped point.
4. Wet the stick to give it some flexibility and place the rock in between these two sticks.
5. Use your handmade leather again to strap the rock into place and tie together the top of the split stick.

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