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                                                      Earth Connection              
                            School of Wilderness Survival             
                                    and Ancient Skills                     

Primitive Tools & Hide Tanning

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Our Tool Making, Hide Tanning and Basketry courses are intensive primitive technology courses that are designed to provide a great deal of information with hands-on instruction.

Tool Courses

 

Primitive Tool Making 

Hide Tanning

Basketry

PRIMITIVE TOOL MAKING

 
Primitive Tools

In our Primitive Tool Making course, students will learn to make a wide variety of tools of stone, wood, bone and antler.  This course will cover the percussion flaking and pressure flaking foundations of flint knapping (stone tool production) and some of the stone tools that will be produced are knives, scrapers, pecked hammers and projectile points.  Wood working skills will be covered in order to produce digging sticks, a variety of vices, mallets and wedges.  Fresh deer legs will be worked with stone blades to yield sinew, hide glue materials, bone projectile points, fish hooks and punches.  Antler will also be used to make composite pressure flakers, chisels and more.  Cordage; making and using hide glue and pitch glue; and using fire as a tool will also be covered.  

All materials will be provided by us.  Each student will have the opportunity to make their own primitive tool kit which they can keep and even use during future courses.

Dates and Pricing

Date in 2007 Length Cost
June 2-3 2 Days $180

 

HIDE TANNING

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Fur, rawhide and scraper  -  Buckskin

In our Hide Tanning course, we teach the ancient skill of tanning animal skins with animal brains under both modern and primitive conditions.  The tanning method used in our courses is the dry scrape brain tan method.  Hides tanned in this natural way are beautiful looking; and pleasant to smell, touch and wear.  This course will cover all of the tanning steps that transform a fresh, raw deer skin into finished brain tanned leather. These steps include fleshing, drying, scraping, braining, stretching, and smoking. Uses for the hides, brain extraction with stone tools and storing untanned skins and brains will also be demonstrated.  Students will have the opportunity to work a hide through all of the tanning stages and go home with the hide that they have tanned.  All tools, materials and a hide will be provided by us.

The Hide Tanning courses for 2006-7 have a rain date of the following weekend.  If you sign up for the course, please be prepared to take it on the advertised weekend or the first weekend after.  If the weather causes the course to move to the rain date and a student cannot make it to the rain date, they may transfer their tuition to another course or receive a refund, minus deposit. 

Dates and Pricing

Date in 2006 Length Cost
Oct 21-22

Rain date 28-29

 2 Days $170
Date in 2007 Length Cost
Oct 20-21

Rain date 27-28

 2 Days $180

 

BASKETRY

Wicker baskets from Grape vines and Wisteria

Our Basketry course covers several styles of traditional basketry from around the world.  The course includes information on basket material selection, harvesting techniques and seasons, how to make wicker basketry from vines, how to make coil basketry from grasses and twigs, and how to make bark baskets from sheets of bark.  Materials will be provided by us, and supplemented by materials that we show how to gather during the course.  Each student will go home with several primitive baskets of different styles, that they have made.

Dates and Pricing

Date in 2007 Length Cost
August 11 1 Day $75

 

 

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Web site designed by Jennifer MacWelch        Last modified: October 01, 2006