Heavy Hammer Bushcraft

 I wanted to make a short post about Fixin wax. While it was not originally included in Nessmuk's ditty bag (he used shoemakers wax), I felt that it was a solid substitution since I couldn't readily find shoemakers wax. Fixin wax is very simple to make and there are various recipes all over the internet for it. Most of them have lots of various ingredients that i don't see as being necessary. While I haven't been able to find what he used to the shoemakers wax for, I know that wax of any variety is good for coating high carbon steel knife blades, and leather sheaths. Both of which I'm sure Nessmuk had to do account for. Blades during his time were not stainless steel, so carrying something that he could coat a high carbon blade with would have been essential. Knowing this I didn't see any reason to add essential oils, or fragrances of any type, which man y recipes called for. I opted for a simple formula, one part beeswax, to one part lard. These things are grea...

 As part of the Nessmuk ditty bag I created, there were two specific items I needed to create. Fixing wax, which I used as a substitute for shoemakers wax, and Sticking Salve.  Sticking salve is was a slave used by Nessmuk, and presumably by others during his time, for minor scratches, scrapes, and skin irritations. During my research I found several recipes for Sticking Salve, however none really included ingredients that would have been readily available during the mid 1850’s Most included vitamin E oil, eucalyptus, and various other ingredients which seemed to me would have been out of reach for Nessmuk. So I was left to my own devices on this. I knew that the base would have been beeswax, with a few other simple ingredients that would have been readily available. My first go to was simply honey. It has been used for centuries or longer because of its medicinal, and preservative properties.  I ruled out essential oils simply because they wouldn’t have been something th...

I spent a good portion of yesterday collection the things I needed to recreate Nessmuk's ditty bag, and actually making the pouch itself. In his book Woodcraft and Camping  Nessmuk stated that his ditty bag was a 4"x6" chamois leather pouch. Clearly at the time he was writing this pouch would not have had a zipper, so I created mine with a leather drawstring. Chamois leather is easy enough to obtain, although its more modern use is as a drying cloth for when you wash your car.  Most people that I heard or read disagreeing with the weight of this bag, seemed to think that Nessmuk's pouch by itself without contents weighted 2.5 ounces. Chamois leather is very light however, and after stitching the pouch together and adding a leather drawstring, the total weight of the pouch was a mere .4 (4 tenths) of an ounce. Which leaves 2.1 ounces for the contents.  Clearly this was off to a good start. The leather was very easy to sew, and didn't require a leather awl. O used h...

  Proving Nessmuk I’ve recently read George Washington Sears (A.K.A. Nessmuk) “Camping and Woodcraft”. Being from the northeast or Northern Wilderness as he was and having personally seen his canoe in the Adirondack Experience museum several time as a child I became intently interested in his gear selections and started some research.  I found much to my surprise many people claiming that what he claimed in his book could not be accurate. Things such as the weight of his gear, and the contents of his pack were called into question repeatedly. It seems the Bushcraft community simply cannot believe that this man in the mid eighteen hundreds could do what he claims with the gear he talked about. Foremost in my mind was his “ditty bag”. It is claimed by him to weigh 2.5 ounces and contains the following items; 12 Small fish hooks 24 yards fishing line, braided (4x6yrds) 4 Small sinkers 4 Seeing needles 5 yards Sewing thread Darning needle 5 yards Darning yarn Beeswax Fixin wax (sh...