Make a Tunnel Tent with PST and willows

Description

A tunnel type shelter can be very effective, straight up side walls and rounded roof allow space without always touching walls. We make the shelter with abundant willows as the frame, all is lashed together without the aid of cord or twine. The shelter is very sturdy. Take a look see what can be done with the regular PST, note the same set up can be done on a larger scale with our PSTL. Check them out here. http://wildernessinnovation.com/survival-supplies/survival-items/personal-survival-tarp/

Tags: tarp,tent,shelter,survival training,cordage,willow,PST,camping,bug out,hunting,outdoor

Video Transcription

there's my there's my shelter here from regular-size PST with a totally a willow frame i used though rope no cordage no tent stakes and I made a very secure shelter that is secure in the storm and the rain and the wind and and all done like they say with just just a willow frame and threw my tarp over it cut some tent stakes and drill them down into the ground and get ready to cook a little something inside there now Miller whips

a little bit of pressure like that and one like this start flexing it about a one-inch flex it stretches the fibers

putting the weight of the knife right here and

you just kind of start off as a digs deeper and you're flexing it just starts to dive on you makes that little cut right there

very easy you don't need an accident like that harvest knees put them in ich for my type shelters I'm gonna need four four sets of news but I've got it just pre-staged them right here and trim them off and then down with the point sharpen and twist them together you know and then I'll set them all out alongside the cart and pull the tarp over and then we'll put them all together and that'll make this a little shelter okay all right so the way we lash these together we take a piece of willing we pull it around there and they just twist it and the end of it we just now that's locked right there so we'll just keep going down here on this all right now this is kind of a side kind of a cross brace that runs from here down diagonally I've sharpened the tip of that guy's down into the ground right there you see I've got a natural fork right here I'm gonna do is take advantage of that so now I'm just near the back right here so now that I'm going to do is I'm just going to twist the two edges of that fork together just them together down here ways once you get to this ending just kind of good ever you want and I think I'll just take it up over the top right here now basically just pull them back through a little bit of a loop there leave it like that so now I've got a cross brace to help support this thing so what you want is the fairly green ones some are even more green than this or even more flexible but this will be fine so what we do and you can strip you know if you want to strip the leaves off and stuff I kind of leave them on just because kind of gives a little more grip but what you do is just bring it around there and then we just start twisting kind of like you're sort of like you're a while like you're twisting your rope but you're not really you know putting the back twist on it and so all we do is get a little like that and then I've got another willow here it'll get two willows come together so well all we're doing tonight um is to just pull them through somewhere that it kind of wedges down and that does the trick right there so simple it is no cordage just are using willows for that sort of thing now if these willows you can go through and like stem them all off and bust off get all the leaves off but I found sometimes it's nicer to take the butt end that sharp and shove it into the ground on one end and come up here with your diagonal and then see this one right here like I could have cut that off but you know I can also always add myself some support here I kind of just kind of go around here Porter's snugly as I can kind of keep working around there and then in the end what we do we just pry apart the wedge head and say got kind of a knot right there so that'll kind of hold all that in place actually gonna

so anyway so see with that I made me a little lashing without having just with what's already connected on one in all right so I'm going to do a do this front leg here so just gonna take this green willow and then link you just be twisting that around we just keep going with it now you'll notice you know one end is thinner and the other end is kind of thicker cuz it towards the base so sometime to make it twist a little better you don't matter that much sometimes I just work the thick one a little bit this kind of get it flexing and ultimately what you want to do get out to the end and you just keep twisting and then you're gonna do is just bring it over the top like that put your hand in here and push down and what that does I've pulled it down into the crossing point there then I've got some extra here so I just pull that down under there now that's tightly lashed together twisted tightly that's not going to go anywhere now it's pretty sturdy it doesn't go anywhere this way and that'd be better cross bracing I didn't necessarily I could have got away with just one of them but plenty of willows around here it's just a couple extra minutes so now everything's fastened down these these diagonal ones they sharp on those like Jam goes into the ground on each end then we tied tied the ends you know the coop coming down and the diagonal tied those together at the bottom so that helps to kind of bond everything together as well plus we're going in diagonally which helps to hold the hoops in the ground so let me give you a recap of the of the willow framework we made and you see here we've on the hoops themselves you know we just have one long piece on each side then we join them in the middle and start flexing them and twist them together that's how we form the hoops and then I've tied them off here tied them off at the crossing points down here up here and then here again I don't know if I took a picture of this this the top Ridge Pole but I did it on both ends of it as I jammed through the to poop sticks that are twisted so it's actually secured in there then I've wrapped it around and secured it down so that makes this thing very very stable very secure so now we're I were about ready to um now we're about ready to throw a tarp over there and see what she looks like this is designed for the seven by seven tarp so what I did is I just laid the tarp out like this lengthwise and then I knew I started my end hoop there and then I just kind of spaced them out and worked my way to the front that way that just was easy way to give me my spacing all right so I'm in my shelter I got my phone blanket in here for my sleeping gear you know I'm pretty good to go here I've got this is the seven by seven PST the personal survival tarp this our standard regular size fits me just fine I'm in here plenty of space I got plenty of room to sit up I got plenty of elbow room and I come in here I could you know I could sit up I could run a stove whatever you know oh it's sort of thing but you know I got I got room in here I'm cozy

on the opposite end here if I want to close that in I've got several options if I have my PSS my personal survival shelter my poncho I could use that to make a door on the back side if I had the small version of this tarp the PST s which is five by five I could put it back there as a door or you know closure or I got plenty of willows that I made this frame out of I grabbed a few more of them put some verticals in there we've some horizontals and then stuff leaves grass you know bark whatever in there to form myself the closure on the back actually I rather have that side open and this one closed because the creeks right there that's a lot nicer view than this is but but anyway so either case I'm good to go that way so I can close this in fine you know I'm gonna put I can put some grass or twigs if I want to along here to kind of seal the bottom and I've got plenty of airflow in here if I need it you know I can close it off if I want but you know if you're wet kind of humid damp or whatever nice to have an airflow through here to kind of keep everything dry and cozy so you know as you can see I mean it works very nicely it's very cozy underneath me a lot of the ends of the Willows and stuff the little trimmings and stuff like that leaves and all that I just threw all those in here kind of on the ground is a little extra ground cushion so and I could put more in here if I want to but this is pretty pretty pretty good here anyway so so as you see I got plenty of headroom and shoulder room in here for one person you know you could put this up in about a half hour it's a very sturdy if I grab this thing here you see I tug on this thing I mean this is every bit as sturdy as uh as a fairly expensive tent that you might buy with your little in uh more carbon poles or whatever and it's just made out of willows that there's you know gazillions of around here and and you know so the framework I made up I used not one not one inch of cording that I use anywhere I rope anything like that and I used made on my own tent stakes everything's tied together with with willow willow whips a little look a little shoot on the end so I mean the whole thing has just put together with natural materials other than I got my my PST my target so that works very nicely I've left a little for the squirrel there but anywhere they were there we are where we're about about done here cook it inside of our shelter on the Nano stove with the spirit burner inside of it at about half throttle all right so the chow down here two eggs and dirty rice dirty rice left over from last night

hooked up nicely Perry peacock wilderness innovation having a great day outside by the creek having a little lunch inside my shelter it don't get a whole lot better than that man