The Swiss Army Knife Book: 63 Outdoor Projects

Felix Immler

The cover for this is a bit misleading – it's not a history of the Swiss Army Knife, as I thought on first flash glance, or a celebration of it. It's a bushcraft book. Open it and you'll find a load of things you can create with one tool and a stick, or, in some cases, several sticks and some twine. Those things include the at-least-somewhatexpected spoon, shovel or table as well as the entirely unlikely hammock and water-powered spit. Felix Immler works in nature education and has a fantastically practical eye for woodwork. A mallet, for example, is not made from two pieces of wood, but one log, with a branch sticking out. Trim it off and you have a natural no-faff hammer with no joint to create weakness. The tasks in here will probably take some time and focus, but that's really the point – to immerse yourself in making something and savour the time in nature. This is a project book, not a survival book. For many of these items, the time spent making them will outweigh the use they get afterwards but for the committed, there are skills enough here to create a functioning woodland home.

Descriptions are clear and the photography is instructive and helpfully numbered to illustrate key points. It'd make a great ideas book for feral kids and parents and of course it's inspiring. There's a lot of productive enjoyment to be had in these pages!