Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters (Dover Books on Architecture)
December 31, 2018 - Comment
This excellent hands-on guide by one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America contains a wealth of practical instruction and advice on how to build everything from a bark teepee and a tree-top house to a log cabin and a sod house. No professional architects are needed here; and knowing how to use an axe is more important than possessing carpentry skills.
More than 300 of the author’s own illustrations and a clear, easy-to-follow text enable campers to create such lodgings as half-cave shelters, beaver mat huts, birch bark shacks, over-water camps, a Navajo hogan, and a pole house. Additional chapters provide information on how to use an axe, split and notch logs, make a fireplace, and even build appropriate gateways to log houses, game preserves, ranches, and other open areas.
An invaluable book for scouts, campers, hikers, and hunters of all ages, this guide and its fascinating collection of outdoor lore “still has intrinsic value,” said Whole Earth Magazine, and will be of keen interest to any modern homesteader.
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My boys love this book My 13-year-old boy scout asked for this book. After reading bits and pieces for a week or so, he enlisted his brother and some neighborhood boys to go build some “shelters” in the woods down the street. They kept talking about the shelter and I figured it was typical exaggeration. A few of us adults walked down one day to see the shelter — WOW! It was impressive — and it stood up to the recent ice storms that left people without power for weeks. All built with branches and saplings in…
Must Have This book is “Old School” and one of the best I have seen for making shelters. It has a good bit of detail and pictures that really help. I got it for my Nephews but started reading it and was very pleased. It is a lot more than just shelters. The book talks about building ladders, Long term shelters even how to build a proper fireplace, doors and much much more. You could do well with this book. Many of the newer books do not carry this kind of instruction but just skim over a subject…
It’s no wonder why this book is still being published and enjoyed to this day! If only this book would of fell into my hands 30 years ago! I was lucky enough to be raised on 38 acres of land that was partially used for farming. A large portion of this land was just “woods” and it was here where my some of my best childhood memories were formed. The place was literally my playground and I can remember going back in those woods to build forts and pretending to be Daniel Boone. I was never in the Boy Scouts but participated in a very similar program for boys…