Unusual Tarp Part Two - Raised Bed Mattress - Expansion Space in one step

Description

Watch the whole camp or just the section on making the mattress and bed at 4 minutes, and the space addition at 12:49

In Part One I did a different take on a Lean To using a square tarp, on this video I take things a step farther with a One Step Expansion for the tarp shelter, and I show how to make a mattress and bed out of local forest materials. The bed can be as comfortable as your bed at home. Our tarps can be set up in more than 50 ways, this tarp has 27 tie outs!! Also in the video is our Survival Blanket and Osni Cloak, both of which were used as bedding. Check out these items and all our great "Made in USA" gear at http://wildernessinnovation.com

Tags: Tarp,shelter,lean to,survival training,survival gear,how to,outdoorsman,bushcraft,camping solo

Video Transcription

quite a gusty night last night man the wind was blowing the trees playing all over the place so it's really shielded me being closed in on the ends here and carried the wind well I did something last night I very seldom do I think I I think I went to sleep about 8 or 8:30 last night every time I look over here I thought minute that bed looks awful comfortable thought well just come crawling for a little bit just kind of lay here a little bit you know and next thing I know it's four or five o'clock in the morning so I so I had my personal survival blanket I fold it in half and had in here and when I come to bed I took my Oni cloak I took it off and draped it over me as a additional blanket kind of a cover and mat I crawled right down inside of there and it was curtains I was done till morning I'll tell you what man I slept like a log

I slept eight I slept a good eight or nine hours but it's always nice to have a good sleep I'll tell you what victim Pam I gonna be coming up here a little later and we're gonna get some hunt down some Christmas trees now this is one of my preferred ways of cooking on a fire you have your main fire and you pull off some coals and stuff and that's coals you pull off you put underneath your cooking area then you cook primarily on coals well I went for a little walk because when you're trying to make hashbrowns the impatience gets in the way and you wind up turning the stuff so much but it doesn't really Brown for you if I don't stop eating the bacon I won't have any to eat put them in this panda here two numbers a couple eggs I already slapped it up I already slept it alright there we go Wow a little salt and pepper for it gets too late

yeah a little over my shoulder and can't have too much pepper man hardy you haven't got too much if you can still see what you put it on well time to do the damage here I'll catch up on the hash browns anyway so in the meanwhile finish breakfast then I'm gonna gather together some of my framework stuff I need to build me a raised bed for in here and break off the rest away that wasn't even hard now trim up these limbs and that can make one of my runners for my bed

well it's gives me three of the four main runners that I need well here's my Woodyard these four big pieces are going to be the rails for my bed the smaller stuff there as fillers and give me kind of the springy part clean this up a little bit and get some get some dimensions here well I wanted to be as high as me and then a little bit of a little bit past that so I think about right here will do the trick yeah a little piece for the fire well not right here ought to be about the right length I wanted to be able to fit inside the shelter and my bed's going to be about up so high so I want to be too long so the wood is rubbing right up right onto the tarp I want it to hang out a little bit on each end I could go I could go up more than this if I wanted to I could do another layer I can make this however high I want to but for my application right here and to fit into my shelter right into to work the best for me this is gonna be the best height okay now we're gonna tie a jamb nut that's what we've done on all the corners you tie an overhand knot in the end that's a stop or nut then bring it underneath everything come up top and then this piece with the stopper knot in it you're just going to tie a overhead nut and that overhead now it's going to slide until it hits that stopper nut so then we just want to work our not down here to the bottom you see how that's lighting okay so now what you want to do is you don't want to pull on this you want to pull a loop through like that the reason why I'll show you in a minute so now we're just gonna pull on this piece here pull it up as tight as we can get it okay yeah that's why we put the loop through because you wouldn't be able to tie your nut to there right now it's I play that like a guitar it's so tight so now I just past the end of the rope to that little loop right there alright so now it put me a half hitch in there and then I'll just cut the cord and now you can pick up the whole bed it's all tied together here's the bed frame all done I've cleaned up any sharp protrusions or anything like that it'll snapped off branches or whatever I've tried to smooth everything off on these two rails right here I've been getting in and out of the bed from this side so it's especially important here this bed can be just it can be picked up and carried wherever you wanted to he could build it somewhere and carry it to where wherever you want this collection of sticks here is what's gonna form the foundation of my mattress I've already put a few over there okay so just put something in here and kind of see how it lays no part of the country

in our part of the country you're gonna have a hard time getting a straight stick and generally speaking I look like to put about 10 sticks in there they don't have to be close together I mean they don't have to be jammed in there anything this is just to give us a springy platform all right so I've got my I've got the foundation of my mattress in here and I flip-flop some of the ends and I've tried laying in here a couple times I'm kind of tweaking it around and you can you can make this as soft or hard as you want if you want a little softer you can put the thinner ends more towards the upper part of your body or you can take some of them out you know don't have as many but I look at if I can get it reasonably comfortable just lay it on the sticks then when I put the boughs on I mean I'm golden so when you get in here it should it should it should bounce it should be flexible that's what you want you don't want something a lot of people make a bed kind of like this and they they put the sticks just right butt up against each other and short all that that's that's like sleeping on concrete though the last thing that I did here is I put me across piece this is about where my the back of my knee is gonna be when I lay in here I don't need to have any flexibility from my knee to my feet that can be rigid but I want to have flexibility from basically from about the back of my knee at least to my shoulder anyway I've actually wound up taking out a couple pieces and now I have seven five seven sticks in there and that's just perfect there we go so so to armfuls is enough to give me the the bedding that I need on this particular bed so what you want to do is you never put you never put the point in towards the inside because it can wind up poking you so you always they always want the points to be facing the outs and we typically like to put these down in a in a herringbone fashion like this summit they kind of so they kind of layer over top of each other and it helps them it helps them actually to kind of walk down the foot end we don't really worry about anything a little bit of a little bit of almost anything on the foot area will work all right so here we are got the blanket in here I'm ready I can just crawl right in here between the covers here go to sleep and sleep like a baby one thing I should mention is because of a springiness of the of the foundation that I put in here I can sleep on my side comfortably as well as sleeping on my back or whatever makes a great shelter to sleep in or bed to sleep on whether you're sleeping on your side or on your back or whatever and you can you can literally sleep as good as you can sleep at home on a on a bed kind of trying this out I lay in it if I notice any hard spots or anything I don't like then I make adjustments for it because you want to get everything set because nothing's going to get any come or comfortable doing tonight so if it doesn't feel good now it's not going to feel good at 2:00 in the morning but here's the tie out tab that's in the center of the tarp so if I pull up on that look what that does versus that's the normal hanging position if I pull it up like that look how much of a difference it makes I just gave like 18 inch of a additional space inside of there I reach the end of the tie out tab basically I'm gonna do a figure eight around that little stub that's sticking out just just to hold the court in place isn't that amazing pulling up on this I totally changed the shelter I've got now look at this I got room back behind here to stick backpacks or other supplies or whatever and and they're back out of the way so look at that a ton of extra room just by doing one thing to this shelter you see what I'm talking about right here that back wall right there is almost vertical and so we have gained a ton of extra space I should have built this for last night this is this is comfortable sleep like a baby just like this so so your beds lashed together right here no we got to do is pick up whichever corner is low with with a stick or a rock or whatever and you raise raise your corners up whichever ones are low - you got them right that's all you got to do to level the bed all right put a little butter in the pan the butter has been in the cooler so it's kind of hard so I packed me a lunch I planned on having grilled cheese so I brought along a little bread and the cheese I this cheese I love it there's a local cheese maker that they make this pepper cheese that has a lot more flavor I mean look at that right there it has a lot more flavor and it's hotter and a little spicier than most olives like the pepper Jack's and stuff like that you get so dipped butter in the hot pan here to soften it to butter the bread here alright let's see how we're doing here haha I don't think I'd be cooked any more perfect than that right there look at that now let's just check the cheese here I like that that's what you like to see right there that cheese tastes so good I love that cheese got toothache and you know why not lay down and eat who says you have to sit up this is really living I think I mean you can do whatever you want but I'm gonna do this right here oh it's snoozing time you