Simple Pegged Bark Containers

 

Bark containers have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years by cultures all over the world and are an almost invaluable commodity when out in the woods. In this short blog I will hopefully show you have to make a very simple and very quick functional bark container.  Bark containers come in a myriad of different styles and patterns, however for this simple style we will be using we will not need any fancy glues or bindings for holding the container together as we will be using good old friction. So without further ado here’s your step by step guide to making a simple pegged bark container.

Materials

• A sheet of birch bark clean and free of knots and holes
• A craft knife of simple whittling knife
• Pegged Bark Container Template ( Click here to download)

 

Step one

Take your clean sheet of birch bark and trim it in to a square. Using the template and a pen, mark out lines just like below.

Step two

Using the template again as a guide cut down the red lines. IMPORTANT! These have to be in line with the lenticels these are the lines that run horizontally through the bark if you were to cut the lines across these then the bark would split.

 

Step Three

Fold the tabs in form the end just as in the picture below first one side then the other. This will leave a third tab which can be folded up like so.

Step Four

The last step is to peg the tabs together from the top with a split stick just like so!  And that’s it!  Do the same to the other side and you have your very own pegged birch bark container.

 

The template can be scaled up or down in size to suit the size of container you wish to make.

 

 

 

Joe Philbin