Applies everywhere · after Level 2

Improvised gear: building from what is around

Everything in this section is put together from what you already have after Level 2: poles, cord, stone, clay, hide. The general drawing shows what the thing is; the step-by-step build is hidden behind the "How to build it" button — open it when you get to the job itself.

The order people actually build these in. First the things that give you water and food every day: the well sweep and the filter. Then the things that save hours: charcoal, the pump, the wheel. And only then the bow and the bellows — they take weeks and dry wood, and you want to eat today.

The well sweep (shaduf) — lifting water almost without tiring

The simplest machine in the guide and one of the oldest: known from ancient Egypt, more than three thousand years old, and still in use in Africa and Asia. It is a see-saw: a bucket on one end, a stone on the other. The stone does nearly all the work — you only steer it. One movement lifts 15–20 litres (3–4 gallons) from a depth of up to 5–6 metres (16–20 ft).

A well sweep for waterpost · beam · bucket · counterweight

1 The post. Two stakes driven in crosswise, or the fork of a tree. Height: about one and a half times your own.
2 The beam. A long pole laid across the post. The pivot is not in the middle: the short arm goes to the counterweight, the long one to the water.
3 The bucket. A leather bag, a birch-bark box or a hollowed billet on a rope.
4 The counterweight. A stone or a sack of earth. Choose it so that it lifts the empty bucket on its own, while you push the full one down with light pressure.

How to build a well sweep

Choose a spot right by the water. The ground under the post has to be firm — on sand the whole thing works loose within a day.
Drive two stakes in crosswise to a depth of at least half a metre (20 in) and lash them together at the top. That gives you a fork. If there is a tree nearby with a suitable fork, use it — that is sturdier.
Find a straight pole 3–4 metres (10–13 ft) long. Lay it in the fork so that one third is on the counterweight side and two thirds on the water side.
Tie the pole to the post not rigidly but with a loose loop: it has to swing, but not slide sideways.
Hang the bucket on a rope from the long end. The rope should be long enough for the bucket to reach the water when the pole is down.
Tie the stone to the short end. Set the weight by trial: let go, and the empty bucket should rise on its own, but not with a snap.
Test the whole thing under load while standing to the side: if something lets go, the counterweight comes down hard.

Why it is worth it. Carrying water in buckets is the most exhausting daily job in a camp. A well sweep turns it into a few movements and pays for itself on the first day.

The layered filter — water stops being cloudy

Этот самодельный фильтр только уменьшает муть. Он не имеет проверенной микробиологической эффективности и не делает воду питьевой. Мутную воду сначала отстаивают и пропускают через чистую ткань или слои для осветления, затем доводят до активного кипения: не менее 1 минуты, а выше примерно 2000 м — 3 минуты. Химические, топливные, солевые и радиоактивные загрязнения таким способом не удаляются.

The layered filterbody · six layers · outlet

1 Coarse gravel. Pebbles the size of a fingernail. It holds back leaves, twigs and large debris.
2 Fine gravel. Pea-sized. From here the particles get finer and finer — that is the whole point of the layers.
3 Coarse sand. Washed, from a river, with no clay in it.
4 Fine sand. The main working layer: this is what takes the cloudiness out.
5 Charcoal. Толчёный чистый уголь из своего костра — not ash. Может уменьшить часть запаха и привкуса, но не равен заводскому активированному углю и не гарантирует удаления химикатов.
6 Cloth. It holds the charcoal and sand in so they do not wash into the clean water.
! Самодельный фильтр не обеззараживает. После осветления воду кипятят или обрабатывают проверенным средством по инструкции. Вода с химическим запахом, масляной плёнкой, солью или известным промышленным загрязнением непригодна даже после кипячения.

How to build the layered filter

The body. A plastic bottle with the base cut off (neck down) will do, or a birch-bark cone, a hollowed billet, or a trouser leg packed tightly with the layers. The shape is a funnel: wide at the top, narrow at the bottom.
Charcoal. Take burnt-through black coals from the fire, let them cool, and crush them with a stone to grains the size of buckwheat. White ash is no good — it makes the water alkaline and soapy to taste.
Wash the sand and gravel in several changes of water, until the water you pour off stops going cloudy. Unwashed sand will dirty the water more than it cleans it.
Lay the layers from the bottom up: cloth → charcoal → fine sand → coarse sand → fine gravel → coarse gravel. Each layer two or three palms thick, the charcoal can be thinner.
Put another piece of cloth or a handful of grass on top: otherwise the stream of water punches a crater in the top layer and the dirt goes straight through.
Pour slowly. The water should come through in drops and a thin trickle. If it runs in a stream, the filter is not working, it is just passing water through itself.
Pour the first half-litre away: it comes out with charcoal dust and sand. After that the water runs clear.

When to renew it. Если поток замедлился, появилась муть или запах, материал перебирают и промывают, уголь заменяют. Фиксированного безопасного срока нет: это предфильтр, а не сертифицированная система.

Быстрая версия: несколько слоёв чистой ткани помогают убрать крупную муть перед кипячением. Не добавляйте найденную грязную ткань, песок или уголь, если их невозможно промыть: они сами могут загрязнить воду.

The piston pump — the water comes up by itself

A bucket on a rope has to be hauled up by hand every time. A pump does the same job with a lever, and it can lift water not only out of a well but along a pipe into camp. The design is simple: a tube, a piston and two valves — little doors that open one way only. The whole trick is in them.

The piston pumptwo strokes of the lever · two valves

1 The body. A hollowed log, a length of pipe, thick bamboo. Inside it needs an even, smooth bore, otherwise the piston will let water slip past it.
2 The piston. A wooden disc slightly smaller than the bore, with a leather cup underneath: a circle of leather nailed through its centre, edges turned up. Pressed against the wall, that is what makes the seal.
3 The valve in the piston. A hole covered from above by a flap of leather. It lets water through upwards only.
4 The lower valve. The same thing right at the bottom of the tube. It holds the raised water and stops it running back when the piston goes down.
5 The lever. A pole on a post, as on the well sweep. It gives you force and a comfortable long stroke.
6 The spout. A hole in the wall above the piston's top position.
! The suction lift is no more than 7 metres (23 ft), and that is a law of nature rather than a matter of build quality: no pump of this type will raise water higher. In practice, with home-made valves, 4–5 metres (13–16 ft).

How to build the piston pump

The body. Split a straight log lengthways, hollow a groove in both halves, put it back together and bind it tightly with cord or raw hide — as it dries, the hide pulls everything solid. Seal the joint with pitch or clay. Easiest of all if you have thick bamboo: the bore is already there, you only have to knock out the node walls.
The piston. Cut a disc a finger's width smaller than the bore. In the centre, a hole through it a finger thick.
The cup. Cut a circle of soft leather slightly larger than the bore and nail or tie it to the underside of the piston at the centre only. The edges must turn up freely and slide along the wall. No leather? Several layers of tight cloth rubbed with fat will do.
The valves. Both are the same: a hole with a flap of leather over it, fixed on one side like a door on a hinge. Test each by hand: a finger from below opens it, from above it presses shut and holds.
Fit the lower valve into the bottom of the tube and secure it. The tube goes into the water so that the lower end stays submerged at all times: once it takes a gulp of air, the pump stops drawing.
Connect the piston to a rod, and the rod to the lever on its post.
Pour a mug of water in from the top before the first stroke. Dry leather valves do not hold air and the pump will not start. Wetted, they work. This is the one non-obvious detail that most often makes people decide "it did not work".

Test it by ear. A working pump makes a dull smacking sound from the valves. A whistle or a hiss means air is being drawn in somewhere: usually the joint in the body, or a cup that is not sitting against the wall.

The water wheel — work that goes on without you

This is the first machine in the guide that works while you sleep. The river turns the wheel, and through an axle the wheel turns or pounds whatever you like: grain into flour, bark into tanning grit, ore into powder. The point is not "electricity" but that the most exhausting handwork stops being handwork.

An overshot wheel with a cam shaftovershot · axle · cams · pestles

1 The launder. A split log or bamboo bringing water to the top of the wheel. Overshot is four times as strong as undershot: it is the weight of the water in the buckets that works, not the force of the current.
2 The buckets. Boxes around the rim, open in the direction of rotation. They fill at the top and empty at the bottom. The deeper the bucket, the longer it carries water.
3 The axle. A straight log through the centre. The ends are turned down and sit in bearing hollows of hardwood or stone; grease them with fat or soapy clay.
4 The cams. Pegs sticking out of the axle. Once per turn each of them picks up a lever and drops it — that is how rotation becomes a blow.
5 Pestle and mortar. The falling weight pounds grain, bark, charcoal, ore. This is the most useful work of all for someone alone: grinding by hand is what eats the most hours.
! Put the wheel away from the main channel — in a dug leat with a sluice gate. The first flood will carry off anything standing in the river itself, and a gate lets you stop the machine without taking it apart.

How to build the water wheel

Find a drop. You do not need a big river, you need a fall of water at least the height of a person: a small weir, a stream off a slope, a dug leat. A wide flat river with no drop is worse than a narrow fast stream.
Dig a leat off the channel upstream, and put a gate at the head of it — a board in grooves. That is how you switch the machine on and off.
The axle. Take a straight dry log as thick as your arm. Trim the ends into even cylinders. The bearings are forked posts with hollows, ideally lined with flat stone: wood on wood wears through in weeks.
The rim. Build two circles from bent withies or from joined arcs, mount them on the axle with spokes, and check that the wheel turns without wobble — otherwise it will destroy its own bearings.
The buckets. Nail or lash boxes of board or lengths of bamboo around the rim, all tilted the same way. Eight to twelve of them; more is not needed.
The launder should be set so the jet falls into a bucket just past the top point, not onto it. A jet landing squarely on the crown slows the wheel.
The cams. Drill or burn holes in the axle and drive stout pegs into them at different points around the circumference — then the pestles fall one after another rather than all together, and the wheel does not judder.
Let the water in a little at a time, raising the gate gradually. The wheel should start smoothly.

What breaks first. The axle bearings, from friction, and the buckets, from soaking. Check the hollows once a week and grease them, and replace a cracked bucket at once: an unbalanced wheel destroys itself.

In winter the leat and the wheel are drained, or the ice will burst the buckets and the rim. Taking it apart is easier than building it again.

The bow — a weapon you do not get to straight away

A bow is made not in the first weekbut after the workbench: it takes time, dry wood and a skill that takes months to build. Traps and snares feed you more reliably. A bow is for where the game is large and does not follow trails — the steppe, the mountains, the forest in winter.

A simple bow and arrowback · belly · nocks · fletching

1 The back is the outer side of the limb, the one that was nearest the bark. It is never touched at all: a cut fibre on the back is a crack, and the bow breaks on the first draw.
2 The belly is the inner side, the one facing you. Wood is taken off from here only, a little at a time, until the bend is even.
3 The nocks for the string. Angled cuts at both ends, on the belly side and the edges only — never cut into the back.
4 The grip. The middle does not bend: leave it thicker and wrap it with leather or cord.
5 The string. Sinew, nettle or lime fibre, or salvaged cord. The length should let a fist with the thumb stuck up pass between string and grip.
6 The arrow. A straight shaft, a head of bone, stone or fire-hardened wood, fletching of three feathers, a nock for the string. Straightness matters more than anything else.
! Never loose the string without an arrow on it. All the energy goes into the limb itself and the bow breaks — the commonest way to destroy several weeks of work.

How to make a bow

The wood. Best are yew and ash; elm, maple, acacia, juniper and hazel all work well. You need a straight piece with no knots, as long as your own height to the chin and as thick as your wrist.
Seasoning. Green wood bends and does not spring back. A split stave is seasoned one to two months in the shade, with the ends sealed in clay or fat so it does not check. That is precisely why a bow is not made in the first week. A bow from dry deadfall of a good species comes quicker, but it also breaks more often.
Rough shaping. Mark out the grip in the middle (a palm's length) and taper the limbs towards the tips, taking wood off the belly only. Do not touch the back at all.
Checking the bend is the most important stage. Hang the bow by its grip and pull the string down a little at a time, stepping back to look at the curve. Both halves must bend equally and along their whole length. Wherever a spot bends less than the rest, shave there, a hair's thickness at a time, and look again.
Work it up like that until you can draw to your chin. Haste here means a broken bow: nine bows out of ten break because someone drew harder than the bend allowed.
The string is tied with a loop at one end and a knot at the other, so the bow can be unstrung after shooting. A bow must not be left strung for days — it "tires" and loses power.
Arrows. Straight shoots a finger thick, dried and straightened over steam or warm coals. Fletching: three feathers split lengthways and bound on with thread. You need at least ten arrows: half are lost on the very first day.

An honest word about the result. Shooting a home-made bow at live game is a skill of months, not of a weekend. At first a bow brings in less food than ten snares set in an hour. Make it as a job for the future, not as an answer to today's hunger.

Bellows without leather: the bow fan

A fire gives no more than 600–700 °C (1100–1300 °F), while firing lime needs about 900 and smelting ore 1100–1300. The difference comes not from the fuel but from air: a blast raises the temperature of charcoal several times over. Classic bellows need tanned leather, meaning a successful hunt and weeks of work. The way round it is the same bow mechanism as for making fire, only with a blade on the spindle instead of a drill.

The bow fanbow · spindle · blade · pipe to the hearth

1 The bow. The same one as for fire-making: a curved branch with a loosely tied cord. A plain stick with a loop will do.
2 The axle. A straight stick with the string wrapped once around it. The upper end sits in a bearing hollow so the spindle does not wander.
3 The blade. A plate of bark, thin board or split bamboo mounted on the spindle. It works in both directions: air moves on the forward stroke and on the back stroke alike.
4 The pipe. A clay or stone tube leading the air to the very bottom of the furnace. Coat the tip thickly with clay — inside the furnace it is the first thing to burn away.
5 The furnace. A clay shaft packed with charcoal. The blast goes in at the bottom: the air has to pass through the whole bed of charcoal, not over it.
! Firewood will not do here. It has to be charcoal: it burns without smoke and gives three times the heat for the same blast.

How to build the bow fan

Nail or weave a box housing the size of a shoebox, open on one side with a hole for the pipe on the other. The housing is essential: without it the blade simply pushes air around the room.
Pass the spindle through the side walls. Make the holes slightly loose — a precise fit is unnecessary and actually harmful.
Mount the blade on the spindle — a plain flat plate the size of your palm. No aerofoil and no fan blades: those are good only when rotation is one way, and here it alternates.
Wrap the string once around the spindle and work the bow back and forth. Test: a hand held to the pipe feels a steady flow.
Join the pipe to the furnace at the level of the lower third of the charcoal bed and seal the joint with clay.
Work steadily and for a long time. A smelt means 6–8 hours of unbroken blast, and on your own that is the real problem, not the design of the bellows.

Once you have leather, make proper bellows: two wooden discs with a concertina of hide between them, and a flap valve in the lower one. They give twice the air for half the effort. The bow fan is the answer for someone who has no leather yet.

Charcoal — the fuel without which nothing above a campfire works

You need charcoal twice over: in the filter for water and in the furnace for any heat above a campfire — lime, pottery, glass, metal. It is made from firewood by taking the smoke and moisture out of it: the wood smoulders with no air reaching it, everything volatile leaves, and what remains is almost pure carbon that burns hot, steady and without flame.

A charcoal burnsection · vents · four days

1 The pipe. A well of logs, or the stake pulled out of the centre once the stack is built. The pile is lit down it from above and the smoke leaves through it.
2 The wood. Stacked upright, tightly, the big pieces in the middle and the small ones outside. Dry: green wood gives half the charcoal and a lot of trouble.
3 The covering. First a layer of leaves, grass or moss, and over that earth or clay a palm's thickness. The earth must not fall between the logs, which is what the layer of leaves is for.
4 The vents. Several holes right at the base. You control the burn with them: flame breaking through — close them; smoke stopped — open them a little.
5 Lighting it. Burning coals are dropped down the central pipe from above. The pile has to smoulder, not burn.
6 Smouldering. About a day for a pile the height of a person. You watch it the whole time, patching breakthroughs with earth.
7 Closing it. Every hole is sealed solid and the pile stands closed for 1–2 days, until it is completely cold.
! Do not open a hot pile. Let air into red-hot charcoal and you burn four days of work in minutes. It has to be cold to the touch: a hand on the covering feels no warmth.

How to burn charcoal

The site. Level ground on bare earth, away from dry grass and overhanging branches, downwind of camp — the smoke will run for a day.
The wood. Split logs all the same thickness, about an arm's width, knee length. The best charcoal comes from hardwood: birch, oak, maple. Softwood works but crumbles.
Stacking. Set a stake in the centre and pack logs around it upright and leaning slightly inwards, the large ones first and a second course of smaller ones. That gives a dome. Fill the gaps with kindling: the tighter it is, the greater the yield.
The covering. Cover it all with leaves or grass, and over that earth or clay a palm's thickness, leaving the central pipe and several vents at ground level open.
Lighting it. Drop burning coals and kindling down the pipe. When thick smoke starts coming out of it, plug the pipe as well, leaving only a small opening.
Watch the smoke — it is the only instrument you have. Thick and white means water leaving and everything going right. Bluish, thin, almost transparent means the wood has given up everything and the process is done. If flame appears, seal that spot with earth immediately.
Seal everything solid and leave it alone for 1–2 days. Only break the pile open when it is completely cold.
Finished charcoal is black, light, rings when tapped and blackens your hands, and the grain of the wood shows at a break. Put underburnt brown pieces aside for the next burn.

How much you get. A pile of firewood yields roughly a fifth by weight and about a third by volume. That is normal and it is the same for everybody: the rest was water and smoke. Plan your stock in advance — one smelt eats more charcoal than you would think.

A danger of its own. A smouldering pile gives off carbon monoxide, with no colour and no smell. Do not sleep downwind of it and do not check the pile by leaning down to the vents.

Generators, honestly

A coil of wire and a spinning magnet do technically make current, and a water wheel could turn them. But wire and magnets cannot be made from what is around you in the wild: copper wire has to be drawn, and a magnet has to be magnetised. Realistically, electricity is something you find: motors, loudspeakers and generators out of city ruins, a car alternator with a belt onto the wheel's axle. As a craft from nothing — no, and promising otherwise would be a lie.

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