10 Minute Hardwood Survival Club (doubles As a Mallet)

This is a tutorial on how to make quick and easy hardwood club. It could be used in a survival situation, either for defense and hunting, or as a mallet for making shelters, tools etc...

Step 1: What You Will Need

To make this you will need a fresh hardwood branch (I used rubber wood) at least 2.5 by 12 inches or 5 by 30 cm.

You will also need a knife, string or paracord, and, optionally, sandpaper. Obviously in a survival situation you probably wouldn't care much about finish and looks :-)

Step 2: Skinning

Use the knife to remove the outer bark and cambium (cambium is the inner bark) from the whole branch.

Step 3: Sanding and Cutting

Use a medium or fine grit of sandpaper to smooth the branch down. Make a mark slightly further up the branch than the width of your hand. Then carve down one of the ends into a handle shape, which is wider at the bottom to give a better grip.

Step 4: The Handle

To make it more comfortable and to give you a better grip, wrap string or paracord tightly round the handle for at least one layer. You can then either tie it or use glue or duct tape to fasten it. The second-to-last picture is of the finished club and a smaller one i made earlier, where I used both electrical tape and araldite to hold the string in place.

One thing you could do to make it more dangerous would be to carve down the whole thing to make it more like a wooden sword, which, although making it lighter and useless as a mallet, would concentrate the force on a smaller area, making it more deadly. (Shown in the last, poorly edited picture)

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