Bushcraft Shelters - The A Frame Shelter | TA Outdoors

Description

Making a shelter out of natural woodland materials is an essential bushcraft skill. There is a number of techniques and shelters out there. Mike Pullen shows you the A-frame bushcraft shelter. Using materials found around him and armed with just a folding saw, Mike gives you some tips on his version of the 'A' frame shelter. Mike is in a coniferous forest and is surrounded by predominantly pine trees. The shelter takes roughly an hour to build depending on how large you make it. He uses bracken to waterproof the outer layer. We hope you enjoy the video, Mike will be back out in the field soon! Please feel free to subscribe, like or leave a comment :)

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CAMERA & FILMING GEAR I USE:

Main Camera: Canon 550d

Secondary Camera: http://amzn.to/2cc4yNV

Tripod: http://amzn.to/2c3VVXJ

Microphone: http://amzn.to/2cKi7Zc

BUSHCRAFT GEAR I USE:

My Backpack: http://amzn.to/2cKiGlF

Folding Saw: http://amzn.to/2cr9iEX

Sharpening Stone: http://amzn.to/2cr90O7

Firesteel: http://amzn.to/2cAgYRZ

Shemagh: http://amzn.to/2cvsI8Y

These are amazon associate links

If you wish to send me stuff:

Mike Pullen

PO Box 7466

HOOK

RG27 7NA

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Tags: Shelter (Building Function),bushcraft,wilderness,outdoors,tips,survival,technique,fire,fire making,fire started,a frame shelter,natural shelter,woods,forest,woodland,ta outdoors,totally awesome outdoors,mike pullen,graham pullen,graeme pullen,show

Video Transcription

okay so the first thing you need to think about when you are looking to build a natural shelter is find an area of woodland that actually has lots of deadfall lots of branches and blocks that are accessible for you to build the last thing you want to do is to be dragging these logs miles to your shelter it just you expend all your energy you're going to get tired quickly so find an area with lots of deadfall at the moment I'm in a woodland I'm going to pine forest but it's right adjacent to a deciduous forest so it's quite nice I've got a mixture of both pine trees and other trees evergreen trees as well where I can use those leaves as shelter first thing I'm going to do is obviously I found my area of woodland that's got lots of deadfall now I'm going to now look for basically two trees to put my kind of Ridge log in the middle log and I'm going to scout around I don't want to find a piece of rotten wood it needs to be kind of if it's dead for obviously it's going to be dying but it needs to be rigid this is an important pole this area this ridge line it's the strength of the basically it's the strength of the shelter and it's going to be the main part of the a-frame that's holding it up so I'm gonna have a scout around see if I can find the right sized one as well but I'll also show you the site of where I'm going to build this shelter so I've chosen my site I've got big kind of big tree here big point view here and then another tree there and what I'm going to do is find a log for some long deadfall over there that's long enough to Lydon basically up at an angle about that long so I need to not measure it out but just roughly gave you an idea that it needs to be roughly probably about five or six foot longer than the distance in between here that way it will stick out like that and I can lean it up and pinch it in between these two trees like that and that will form the beginning of the a-frame and then I can put smaller logs down the side of it you

okay one of the things you want to be wary of this looks like a nice long ridge this could be a really good Ridge log it's very long it's not too thick so it's not too heavy to lift however what you want to be wary of is this one if you can see is actually touching the ground so it's been on the ground a while and if I roll this over you'll see especially up this end if you look my role is over you can see funghi starting to grow here and that that's definitely could be a weakness in the log because it's been on that ground it's very damp I can feel that it's actually very supple and that it's to be honest pretty quite rotten so this could break quite easily under pressure so be wary of picking one straight off of the ground I found a different one that it's slightly off the ground and I'll just go and show you now okay if you look at this one here it's actually as it's falling down it's above it's about half a foot off the ground

almost all the way along so for me that is ideal it's being kept off the ground it's been kept sort of off the damp it should be fairly dry this one and basically I'm going to cut it at the right length and you definitely use this one as my Ridge Pole but as a little tip for you just be wary if they're lying dead on the ground they may be a bit moldy but this one is only been on the ground at the bottom end but this whole part up here has been up off the ground so it should be a lot drier than the other logs because we've had quite a bit of rain recently okay so at the moment this log is too long for what I need so basically I'm going to cut this log here got the following saw here this is the barco Laplander and you can see a review of this actually on our on our Channel ta outdoors I'll put a little link up to it in a box in the corner so I'm just going to saw this bit here it feels nice and dry it's been off the ground I'm going to saw it longer than I need it to begin with there's nothing worse than cutting it too short and then it not being able to fit in the gap between those two trees so but I saw it a little bit longer than I normally would have it as your soaring and the deeper you get into a log generally these two bits because of the weight of this log pulling down they'll tend to pinch together like that and your blade gets stuck so if you can lift the log up a bit it then opens up that gap and it makes it prevents your sore from getting pinched

as you can see here the reason I cut that angle on that top section it's just so I can fit snugly against here I noticed there was a knot in the tree just here that was kind of protruding so I've used that to my advantage cut cut an angle in there and now I can put all my weight on that top Ridge pole and that is not going anywhere the base is touching nicely down there and you can see it's pushed up against that tree that way any weight pushing that way is going to put pressure on the tree so it creates creates basically equal weight on the tree but yeah this little tip that if you cut an angle on that top section just helps it pinch in a bit more now that's not going anywhere now I can start to collect sort of smaller size logs just for the edge of the a-frames the other thing is would these bits here these notches which you often get in felled trees that be either being felled or they've just fallen over in a storm I would not cut these off I would not pull these off these can act as a good support for those logs going down the side there's another one here perhaps I'd make it smaller I might Nick it off there but other than that these are really handy to actually lean logs against so I wouldn't cut these ones off so now as you can see I've collected a few logs down there varying different sizes I'm going to collect a lot more the longer you have your side poles coming out this side logs the wider your section will be so I want mine not too wide really because I'd only I saw one person shelter but I can get I can place them more vertical if I see from this angle if I place them more vertical there it's going to be a narrow angle on my a-frame if I place them right there then I'll have more space as I go in okay so you can see the actual beginnings of the a-frame shelter I've got my Ridge Pole rich log going down here and then I've got the first part of the a you can actually see that log coming down here and a log coming down there I've actually cut these so they're the exact same height the rest of the logs I probably won't really cut takes a bit more time but if you look they're actually slightly at an angle this way towards this tree here and all that's to do is to help basically even the pressure on this ridge log all the rest of them will be leaning slightly just slightly forward and if they're all in the same way then that's equal pressure then on this ridge log and it should make for a more stable support okay wood is all collected in different sizes time to build well there we go I've pretty much finished the majority of the a-frame shelter I've still got a few gaps to fill in but I'm a bit restricted with time that's taken me pretty much an hour that's not including the filming that obviously I've done in between as well so I'd say it takes about an hour probably by the time you collected earlier you logs and things like that I've tested it I've pushed against it I put a lot of my body weight against it just a double check that everything is stable and secure it's a good way of checking just pushing against it at different angles just to check that everything is secure what I've done is like a cross latching at the top going all the way up the top so I've cross latched it basically just to give it that added support and to ensure that all branches all the logs are actually leaning properly against that ridge log it's important that they come over the top of the ridge log here just so they got that support on the actual ridge log and not often they won't then slip down below and fall down so it's more for safety reasons really just to try and keep that cross latching going and then filling in the gaps with other logs ok next step is i'm in a pine forest and there's lots of Bracken fern over just behind me so I'm going to collect a load of Bracken up and use that just a kind of waterproof rain proof this a-frame shelter as you can see lots of Bracken here I'm coming into mid-october now so it's starting to die back so ideally I'd do this kind of shelter in the summer and do an overnighter in the summer but I thought I'd do a video to show you guys just how to make it but I'm going to use this Bracken definitely there's plenty of it there cut it down near the base near the roots and just be careful don't pull it with your hand okay I was saying about pulling it with your hands the reason why is I've got a bit that's kind of dying back here if you pull here your hands yes most of the time you probably would be able to pull it out however your hand can generally slip and as it slips it cuts through here as you pull through and it actually cuts up your hand quite badly so I suggest either using a knife or just a small blade just to Nick it at the roots there you do want this long bit here because this is going to go in between those logs on the a-frame shelter and help pinch it in place if you just pull up the top the actual leaf bar up here if you just pull that off then you've got nothing to secure it to your shelter so definitely use the majority of that to help secure it to your shelter try not to use your hands it will if you skid it will cut your hands up okay say got about five minutes worth here three batches of Bracknell fern and they're gonna put this now on to the shelter and I'll show you why I left that stalk long when I cut it okay so here's my phone or Bracken with the long stalk the reason why is that I can tuck it facing backwards in these gaps push it in there and then that's it nice and snug now with lots of those in there I can get that fitting nice and tight and if it's if the stalks pushing too far into the actual shelter then I can just snip off the ends but now I'm going to fill it up with the rest of these and see what we get okay say almost a finished article really I'm strapped for time now so I need to head back but as you can see I've placed a load of ferns it doesn't look like much on the outside after some wind and rain that will start to settle down that probably last a few weeks and before they start to die off and thin out but you know if you're doing short overnighters in the summer it's you know brilliant really and that's sort of one side and I talked about leaving those stalks long on the on the fern the bracken and that definitely helps to lock it all in prices the other side and you can see you wouldn't even know it's a shelter really less a bit messy from this side but who cares what it looks like on the outside is what's on the inside that matters so let's check it out okay so this is the inside and what I've done is any kind of bits of Bracken that's sticking down any of those roots and those long stems I've trimmed those off just to make sure there's as much space as possible in there there's definitely enough room for two people and it can comfortably fit one quite easily let's check it out okay so say about two people you can see there's easily enough room for one person line down that way and enough room this side for another person line down that way oh this is kind of rushed job really so there's definitely some gaps still what I'll do is I'd put more logs definitely to fill in those gaps there because if it did rain quite heavy it might push that Bracken in so I put some more logs there nobody's perfect so that's you know just evaluating here what I've done as well started today I'm running out time there is I've actually started to use the back of my blade the sword here the sword the saw I've used the back of the saw here and I've just started to sweep the bottom bit up just against the side here and that acts as kind of a wind shelter draft shelter just to sort those cold drafts coming in in the mornings and it also helps me clear an area that I can lie on and man if I wanted to make this extra comfortable I could get a lot more Bracken and I could lie that down in here at you know pile it up a bit couple of because if you really want to be raised up off the floor when you're sleeping you don't want to directly on the floor so I could raise it up you know maybe a foot or something and that would provide something comfortable to sleep on and help keep the draft and the cold out but for now all I've done it's just started to move with the back of my blade so started to push it up against there just to stop that draft and I'd do that all the way around the edges just to seal off that draft obviously there's some gaps at the back there which I'll patch up with some sticks and just make it a bit bit more sealed and waterproof but underneath it feels pretty secure and I'd put a lot more Bracken on this but I don't really have the time at the moment it's probably something I can come back to you hope the videos helps you guys hope you've got a couple of tips you

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