January/February 2012 Features

You had a great day in the woods, the meal was delicious, the weather is perfect for sitting around the dying campfire, the sun is about to set and then you remember, you have to wash the dishes and there is no hot water! Start the fire up again! Or, at the end of the day and you want to wash up, but there is only cold water? Well, you can remedy this with this simple hot water heater. It works all the time, uses a minimum amount of fuel and keeps the water hot round the clock, and best of all, it is very portable.

Time. And the lack of it. These are the true factors that limit what we can do, learn and accomplish in a given day, month, or year. As much as we would all like to have the time to spend all of it as a backwoodsman practicing the fading craft of sustenance living, the reality is that it's "just not gonna happen". Now some of those reading this may indeed be able to do so. But then there are the rest of us that are limited by work, family, health, location or even age.

At first glance, the Whelen Lean-to is reminiscent of a small Baker tent, a Dan Beard tent, or Nessmuk's shanty tent. But Whelen has made important modifications. Across the front is a small awning, which can be extended at a variety of angles or thrown back completely as needed. The tarp can be pitched with a few poles, as many as six poles, suspended from a ridge pole lashed between trees, or simply strung up by ropes to standing trees.

Remember as a kid exploring science by using a magnifying glass to burn holes in leaves? I sure do. But as hard as I tried I was never able to start a fire. Probably a good thing for my neighborhood. With just a little more information than I had as a kid, I can now make fire very easily with a magnifying glass on a sunny day. It is still incredible to me that by focusing the sun's rays with even a small magnifying glass you can start a fire. While the techniques described here are limited in their use to sunny days, they are effective and should be part of your survival background knowledge.

The huge Walker and Dragoon pistols were fine for the military, especially if you had a horse to carry them, but Sam Colt knew there was a market out there waiting for a revolver a man could carry in his pocket for "just in case". Lots of small pistols were available but most were single-shot Derringers or cumbersome Pepperbox pistols that were unreliable and wildly inaccurate. Colt knew he could do better.