Bumbling Bushcraft Comic: Wiping the Lens

Bumbling Bushcraft Comic: Water is for Fish

Let's Wrap It Up: A Review of the Shemagh

This week we will be reviewing the shemagh, a middle eastern head garb that is popular with the soldiers over there because it is very useful in keeping sand out of their faces. We talked earlier about the bandanna being used to cover your face in a dust storm, this item is actually better to serve that purpose. The bottom part of the wrap can be pulled up to keep the sand out of my face and the top can be pulled down to keep the sand out of my eyes. The tighter the shemagh is tied, the better I am prepared. Not only is this useful in a hot environment, you could also use this in a cold environment to help combat wind chill and basically use this as a second scarf. Of course you can wear it as a scarf simply by tying it around your neck.

To tie the head wrap you want to start by folding it diagonally into a triangle just like we did with the bandanna. You are then going to place the long length of the wrap over your head with 1/3 of the length on one side and the other 2/3 on the opposite side. Make sure that your head is cowled like a cloak before you tie it off. You then want to take the short end, wrap it around your chin and hold it in place. Then take the long side and wrap it around your chin in the opposite direction and around the back of your head to meet the end from the short side. You can tie one overhand knot here, but I found that when I did it this way the wrap tended to slip so I recommend two. After that all that is left to do is adjust. It may take you two or three tries, but just get something that is comfortable to you.

Other uses for this fabric? Well it's 42" x 42" of fabric, which means it is a square and can be used as a sling in case of an emergency. This shemagh is definitely bigger than the bandanna fabric that I showed you earlier so I am going to tie this similar to how I did that fabric. I'm going to make a self tightening knot, or a loop, on one end, take the loose end through the loop, place your arm and neck into the sling and adjust. To adjust, all you need to do is pull the loose end until your arm is resting comfortably where it needs to be. Then tie the loose end in an overhand knot around the sling to keep it in place.

I'm not entirely sure if the shemagh is 100% cotton, but I would imagine it is. The texture is very similar to the flour sack towels, but it is just a bit softer. Really though when we're talking about bushcraft stuff we aren't talking about the fashion trend, or how soft it is, we're talking about its function. In addition to keeping the wind and sand off of you, it can also keep your head cool. Back in the day I rocked a turban a few times, not all the time, just a few times. To tie it off, you start it in the back like you do a bandanna, bring the ends around front, tie it off again, turn the knot to the back and tuck in the ends. And there you have a simple turban. This would help my head to regulate temperature. The only downside is that the wrap is very dark. I chose these colors because I am in the eastern woodlands and these colors act better to camouflage me. This can also aid in hunting as a sniper's veil if you drape it over you. As a side note I could also clean with this, but it's not something I actually tested because the fabric is so similar to the flour sack towels that I am not worried about it.

This wraps up the final installment of cotton and also the last of the 10 C's. This is the end of our first arc, the 10 C's of Survivability, An In Depth Look. I'm excited to be done with this, not because I didn't have fun, but now I can bring you my own content that I have actually done my own research on. That won't be next week, but the first of April. I will also be doing a livestream tonight that is March 19th at 11:30 pm EST until 12:05 am. This will be our typical farewell to cotton livestream as well as a farewell to something else and you won't want to miss it! As always feel free to comment by clicking the comment link at the end of the blog, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.

Keep Those Fires Burning Challenge

Out of the Water and Into the Fire: Utilizing Your Cotton as a Resource

This week we are still moving right along with our cotton series, but I feel that we are finally at the point where we can start testing things out. We are going to see which of these, between your everyday bandanna and the flour sack towel, would be better utilized in an outdoor situation.Utilization could mean  anything from wearing it, cleaning up messes, or first aid uses. I'm looking into what it can do when cut into strips. Specifically what I want to do is see if I can filter water with them, or turn them into char cloth.

What I have to test with is a jar of water with a nice layer of dirt down at the bottom. The water is still slightly discolored even though most of the dirt is down at the bottom. What I am going to do is test and see which between the bandanna and the tea towel will have the most water, and the cleanest water in a period of time. So what I am going to do is place the dirty water on a surface that is elevated above the two clean jars I will be filtering the water into. In this case I just placed a bread pan on my kitchen table, set the dirty water on it, and one clean jar on each side. I then wet the bandanna strip and the flour sack towel strip, place one end into the dirty water, and one end into their respective jars. I then wait about 5 hours and come back to see my results.

As you can see from the picture on the left, that is as much water as I got from the flour sack towel after 5 hours. There was even less water in the bandanna jar. Neither of these did a great job purifying the water, and it took entirely too long. It would be even better to set up a simple tripod water purification system. The next thing we are going to do is try to make charcloth. I've cut a strip of bandanna and a strip of flour sack towel. The flour sack towel I'm sure will make great charcloth because it is 100% cotton. The bandanna I'm not so sure because it does have polyester in it, and I am unsure of how it will affect the composition.

Okay so now for the charcloth, I am again going to cut a strip of each fabric. I am then going to roll them up and place them in my Altoids tin. I would show you how I make charcloth, but I am going to save that for a "How It's Crafted" hopefully to premier in the upcoming weeks. Now as you can see, I have a larger piece of flour sack towel than I do bandanna. This shouldn't be a problem because if the charring process is working correctly you cannot over char.

Upon checking my cloth I notice that both have charred very well. I can tell which is which easily by quantity. But the flour sack towel is still identifiable by the fibers leftover from where it was cut, and the bandanna is identifiable because of how it got thinner as it was cut. Now to see how well each fabric catches a spark with a ferro rod. Both catch well. I will admit in the past that I have had trouble  turning bandanna into charcloth, but it worked this time which is all that matters to me.

I hope you guys are enjoying this cotton series, we are almost done. Next week we are going to be doing a review; it's going to be a pretty cool review and one of the last reviews we will be doing for a while. This will definitely be one of the last reviews for the 10 C's and you won't want to miss it! As always feel free to comment by clicking the comment link at the end of the blog, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.

Bumbling Bushcraft Comic: What Goes Around, Comes Around

More Than A Towel: Uses of Cotton in Camp

We are back again this week still talking about our cotton material. One thing I mentioned a lot last week that we will be talking about today are the uses of your cotton material around your camp. Real quick, there are a few things you want to be sure that your cotton material can do such as protecting the back of your neck from the sun, protecting your face from the element, or wearing it like a typical bandanna in case you did not have a hat to protect the top of your head.

Of course these tasks are easy to accomplish with a regular bandanna, so now let's see what we can accomplish with the flour sack towel. It is definitely big enough to wear as a mask and it's bigger than the bandanna so I can actually pull it up over my nose more and tuck it under my chin. With that being said I can pull it up and use it as a bandanna on my head and tie it around my neck to protect it from the sun. Another plus with the flour sack towel is that it is light colored which means it will reflect the sun and not draw it in.


Now when it comes to our last item, we run into the problem that it is just too big. So to even begin to be able to use it as a mask I have to fold it over and over and over. Even afterward, it's just too big and bulky. For that reason I am not even going to try to use it as a bandanna or wear it around my neck. It's just too big.



The next thing I like to do is to try and clean with my cotton material. What I have with me is an old tray and I am first going to try and clean it with the bandanna. I'm not going to use soap, just dip it in a bit of water and use a little bit of elbow grease and the spot I was scrubbing comes away clean. Using the flour sack towel the first thing I notice is that it absorbs water much better than the bandanna. That makes sense to me since that is what it's intended to do. Much like the bandanna it does a fine job cleaning, but it does come away much dirtier than the bandanna did. The large piece of material absorbed much like the bandanna did and still got the job done. The only difference is I have way more clean material to work with after the fact. Having the flour sack towel get dirty was probably the biggest down side, however if you don't mind your cotton material being discolored it doesn't matter anyway.

The next thing I need the cotton material to be able to do is to make a sling. Now with the bandanna it is a smaller piece of fabric so I will need two of them to create a sling. The first thing I need to do is create a triangle with one bandanna and fold two corners of the triangle together and tie them off. Then, I will create a triangle with the second bandanna, place it around my neck, and tie the two corners  around the knot of the other bandanna, and slide my arm through. The problem with this is that it is difficult to adjust, but it will work in a pinch.

Next we will try the large bandanna material. The easiest way to do this after getting a triangle shape is to tie an open loop in one end, one that will tighten as you pull on it, feed the other end through the loop and then place your head and arm into the sling. To adjust it, all you would need to do is pull on the loose end that is through the loop and tie it off where it is the most comfortable. Now we have mentioned before that this is such a bulky piece of material so I am really excited to see how the flour sack towel does.

So for the flour sack towel I am going to fold it into a triangle, and tie two corners of the triangle together into a sturdy knot. I now just have to place my arm in and put it around my neck. It's a little tight around my neck and there is no real way to adjust it, but I don't have to have more than one like with the bandannas and it is not as bulky as the big piece of fabric. It's a solid in between and experiments like this are what make me grow even more fond of these towels.

Guys I've only shown you three simple and easy ways you can use these around your camp, but there are so many more uses like carrying things and using it as spare patching material for sewing. Really there are countless other ways you can apply it. Leave me a comment and let me know what you use your cotton material for or whether you carry cotton material or not and why. Next week we will still be working with cotton but we are going to see what it can do to help us purify our water and  you know you don't want to miss it! As always feel free to comment by clicking the comment link at the end of the blog, hit the follow button in the top right corner, share this blog, and check back next week for a new one on Sunday 10pm (est). If you want to keep up with me and what I’m doing, Follow me on Facebook: @BPackBushcraft and on Twitter @BPackBushCraft. Lastly if video is more your style check out my YouTube Channel backpack bushcraft where there is a video version of this with the same title. Until next time, keep those fires burning and put another log on for me.