Primitive Technology: Woven Bamboo Baskets

In the daily life of the primitive era, home appliances were always an essential tool to make things easier to improve. In this article I will show you how to knit a basket, a multifunction container. The following will be a procedure that follows the individual “primitive skills” and only appears at “primitivekills.net“.

The main materials to make a basket here are bamboo sticks, a few ropes or bark for straps. First, I’ll bring a stone ax into the forest to find a flexible and thick bamboo. Use an ax to cut a straight tree, 1 to 2 years old (ie do not take the tree too old or too young) for the best flexibility and stiffness. When finished, cut off the original part and measure two segments, each about 3 m long, and then bring them back. Use two feet to hold the bamboo tube at the knee level and use a stone ax to attach it to the end of the bamboo tube so that the bamboo tube is divided into two equal parts, press down on each part with two feet and the hands will lift the rest until It splits completely. I continue to split the bamboo now into small pieces about 1cm wide by placing them on a hardwood tree and using the adjacent stone ax to the place cut from the top with a hammer. Use your hands to break each piece long enough, use a stone knife to separate them completely, split into bamboo eyes, then use a force strong enough to separate. Next, thin the small pieces of bamboo into thin strips (called bamboo strips). Do the same for all the remaining pieces of bamboo, then move on to the next step.

This knitting step is very important, we need really pay attention to knitting properly. Start knitting from the sole up; Put the first pair of bamboo strips down, hold with your foot underneath and swipe on the ends of the strip and mark the center of the strip. Place the second pair in parallel and at a distance of 1cm from the first pair. Place the third pair in the direction perpendicular to the first two pairs, if the first pair is below the third row, the second pair will be above the third pair as shown in the picture:

  (how to knit the basket base)

Knit the remaining pairs similar to the above so that 5 pairs of horizontal and 5 pairs of verticals. When counting the number of pairs as shown in the picture above, you can use a hard piece of bamboo about 20 cm long with your thumb combined with a wooden hammer to adjust the distance between pairs of equal length possible. . Splitting a smaller thread to knit, the purpose of ensuring that the previous pair of knitting will not deviate from the original position in the next knitting process. Fold the piece in half as in the [video] and knit it so that the two halves of the thread slide in opposite directions to gain strength. When knitting in corners we have to soften and twist together to avoid breaking. Knitting one more time to ensure stability.

                      (how to bend the strips without breaking)

Next, knit the basket body: after keeping the sole stable, we bend the ends of the bamboo strips with a new shape to form the shape of a basket. Link each pair next to each other to form an “X”, use other bands to knit around horizontally, squeeze across the “X” shape and tighten. The second loop is wider than the first and so on, the knitting is slightly wider than the previous loop to form a “V” shape. The goal is to make the mouth of the basket bigger than the bottom of the basket for convenience when moving in and out. After knitting the 9th circle, we proceed to do the border.

Baskets are woven with the remaining bamboo strips after knitting the basket body. At the 9th round, the layers of bamboo strips outside the circle will be bent inward in the direction to the right a 2-piece “X” and then pierced. Then knit back to the base of the basket, in the order of the 9th round is inside the 8th inside, the 7th outside until it reaches the basket base. Next, the layers of bamboo strips outside the 9th circle will be bent outwards in a sloping direction to the left of a 2 “x” segment and then inserted. Then return to the base of the basket in the order of the 9th inside, the 8th outside, the round 7 stays in and so on until it reaches the base of the basket.

After knitting the rim of the basket, weave a portion of the outside of the base of a piece of about 4 horizontal strips of bamboo. Then bend the remaining bamboo strips and knit under the sole (do the same as the border). The purpose of this section is to ground, protecting the base of the basket from being scratched through use. Next, to ensure the durability of the baseplate, we used two small pieces of bamboo finger, 30cm long, diagonally placed together, plugging both of their ends into the two baskets of the basket basket.

The strap part we use the bark. The tree has thick, tough and firm bark. Use stone ax to peel off and dry to add toughness when used. Use 2 small pieces to make 2 loops on the top of the sole a little, straight from two adjacent corners up to create a place to adjust the strap length and strap strap. The top end of the belt is tied to the basket edge in a straight position from the two rings below the sole, adjust so that the belt fits and then tie back. The leftovers of our strap were cut out of stone. To test the effectiveness and convenience of the “primitive skills” basket will be like “video“. It is very convenient to carry, just wear on the back and move, no need to hold or hug and move is also much easier.

Thank you for reading the article on “primitivekills.net“.

See you in the next posts!