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The Spider Shelter Part 4, Simple Improvments

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Video Transcription

talk about this shelter again for a minute we're going to do some improvements to our stove inside I want to show you a couple of tricks you can do with that and also we're going to put a little bit of an overhang on this thing so that we stay out of the weather if we just want to sit in front of shelter and work on something so stay with me we'll get right at it okay guys there's a couple things I wanted to show you real quick we can make some improvements to this stove area now we've got a shelter that's actually liveable and I want to do some improvements here okay so I want to show you a couple things you can do quick to a little pit stove like this it'll make things a lot easier on you the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to start a small fire in this pit all right now I've got a fire built in here with some wet fire and if I put very much wood on that's very quick my flames are going to be up into my into my structure okay so what I've done is I've built myself a platform right here where I could take us over a rock a flat rock and just place it right here over my fire just like that and now my fire has oxygen coming in from the side very similar to a Dakota fire pit but at the same time I can still get heat generated from it and it will heat this rock up very very quickly now you can see I've got my water bottle sitting back here that I can use to heat water up and I can shove that into me if I need to to make me warm at night but I don't think I'm going to need that so right now let's just get this fire stoked up keep an eye on what happens with this fire pit now when I need to add sticks to that I can stick them in underneath if I want to or I can just take like my digging stick and use that to pry up the corner of the rock and lift that up a little bit just like that to put sticks inside and set it back down it's not a big deal what I'm more interested in is if I get a good fire going in here where's the smoke gonna go that's what I want to look at

I really want to get the fuel in here get a good bed of coals going in here I'm really looking to do right now now I got this rock lifted up a little bit with this stick right now just to let some oxygen in there so these flames start going real good but soon as I drop this down it's going to take a lot of the option away from that fire which that's not really a big deal but I just want to make sure that the fires going for I starve it too much for oxygen once it's cold I'm not that worried about it good a guy spent about 20 minutes here I just fired burning are at this rock and I've taken it separating some leaves on the shelter right up here to create a girafft and I can put that back real easy that's not a big deal at all I can shove a piece of bark in there that I can move up and down and between a couple sticks and use that for a draft if I want to I wouldn't sleep in this shelter with a fire burning like this inside of it and have a door on it and take a chance on carbon monoxide poisoning by any means probably but with the door wide open on this shelter like it is in my head sleeping right by this door there's plenty of oxygen there's not a problem there I would be a lot more worried about burning the shelter down than getting carbon monoxide poison from sleeping inside of it with a small fire burn what I'm trying to control right now is the fact that the flames can't get too high I'm giving myself a little surface you know above it that's a hot plate it's still going to give off heat that rocks going to collect a lot of heat I'm slow burning right now staying outside the shelter while I do it because I picked that rock up down by a creek bed it was in a dry area but that still could be holding moisture so I want to get it nice and hot and heat it up and get the moisture evaporating from it in case it explodes or something I don't want to be anywhere around it okay so that's just a safety tip that you need to remember when you're collecting rocks around water if they hold water inside them they can crack a fracture and you know kind of blow up like a grenade if you're not careful so I'm slow heating this rock from outside the shelter and watching what's going on with it I'm going to burn this fire for about an hour keep an eye on where the smoke goes and how things are drafting inside the shelter here like I said the main draft is right by the door right here so there's air getting into the fire so it's keeping it burning but the flames are controlled and they're not getting up into the shelter in any way shape or form and that's what I I let that burn down to a bed of coals before I went to bed and slept in here tied in the middle of night if I got cold I can wake up and I got a fire pit right there you know I've got my water bottle sitting over there I can heat some water up I want something hot to drink while I'm in here there's plenty of room to do that kind of stuff in a shelter like this if we need to now let's talk about some other improvements we can make it a shelter besides just our fire pit now one thing that we really don't have on this shelter that we're building here is we don't have anywhere to get it out of the weather or to keep ourselves from getting rained on while we're just working we don't want to spend all of our time in a shelter we might want to get out of the elements so maybe we could put a little bit of an overhang in front of this shelter well obviously have a fire pit somewhere outside the shelter for cooking and making things and things of that nature we wouldn't just go inside because we needed fire that's strictly basically for heating the shelter up at night maybe heating up a little water in the morning or something early but for the main part of fire it would not be in that shelter it would be out here in a fire pit somewhere in front of the shelter off to the side so let's talk about maybe building overhang for the shelter

all right

these couple-y branches start this project out with and we don't want to get too wide on the shelter we want to stay fairly narrow and we just want to make them sharp enough that we can drive them into the ground and top it up get me a good pull up here speed on this thing look find something keyed in here like that

that's not too bad right there it's not as hot as I wanted anyway I got to get me another one just like it all right okay if you watch this in the ground here

and one's a little lower than the other so it's gonna have a little bit of a pitch to it and that's okay because what's going to happen when I lay my pumps in here understand my knees inside the structure itself basically but when I lay the crossbars on here if they're out a little bit of an angle I don't care about that because they're gonna collect water laying horizontally anyway I just assumed they had somewhere to drain now I've got my basic structure right here I'm gonna have the lace of cross members across here okay so now that we got a structure in place we will lay some beams across here and then we'll start do the same thing we did with the spider shelter as far as laying in some foliage of things to keep it semi waterproof I'm not worried about being totally waterproof at this point but semi waterproof would be good to start okay

now making something structural here is really not the intent what I'm trying to do is just build a frame a lattice framework that gives me a little bit of an outcropping for my shelter and I'll take and go to the top of that with the vines and the leaves and that will put weight on it make it structurally sound all right so let's get that done and take a look okay this is what I'm looking for right here see all this vines right here guys this is what I want to weave in or hop it out lattice before I put debris on okay so I took a big hunk of these vines stuck them right on top of this lattice work now time for the debris ma'am redness right over into my shelter and I want to integrate this whole thing together a lot of chunks in here I feel casual they want I want it heavy yeah yeah

I'll get from one now get someone so stuff inside here poking out

quickly Ron there okay that's looking real good real good okay guys I got a pretty good overhang now outside our shelter so we got just a little bit more area we can work scrape all that out of there and put it on top of the shelter so it's not laying on the ground there all the excess debris and things looking pretty good right now pretty good oh gosh there we go you got my mercy space blanket sitting outside I was sitting on the arm overhang fires died out now I'm done I must stick back in the back back here for right now I got my bed roll rolled up right there my sleeping mat I'll pull my mercy space blanket up put it inside to back up here take a look at this thing get a wide-angle view what we got here

alright now that my friends I'm pretty happy with that is fine camp all we need is a fire pit out here and that's easy enough

guys I'm Dave Canterbury pathfinder school I appreciate you guys viewing my videos thank you for joining me for this fourth installment on Spyder shelter the only thing left to do now is to sleep in it really give it the true test see if I can't maybe do that this weekend when my young and schooling on get him up in the morning for now I appreciate your views I appreciate your support and I'm glad that I can still make videos for the time being so I'll keep them coming your way thank you very much

About the Author

wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

Here you can explore the world of survival knives, survival kits and simple tips on outdoor self-reliance. We are always learning and enjoy passing on the knowledge we acquire.

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