How to Make a Burn Bowl | Survival Skills

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If you had a pot it would be easy to cook. If you have a nice campfire, a nice cooking fire, sometimes you might find yourself without a pot. If you don't have a pot you're going to need to improvise and make a bowl.

The bowl that I've made right here, or I'm making, is called a burn bowl. It's made by taking pieces of coal, putting them in the bowl, blowing on them until you get a fire. And what's going to happen, and what you can see is happening, is that that's slowly going to burn out the bottom of the bowl.

This could take a while, so you can get one or two burn bowls going. It's nice to have a couple bowls. I have a second bowl that's sitting right up behind me. And you have one bowl that's filled with water. You can dip your hot rock in it and it'll clean it off. Then take that rock and put it in another bowl, and instead of drinking charcoal-y water you'll drink clean water. So this is a good way to get things boiling and a way to make a nice bowl.

Now once you get your charcoal in your bowl and it starts to burn away the bottom, and I'm just going to dump this out to show you, you're going to want to scrape the bottom away. And if you can see, all that freshly burned area is scraping out. I'm scraping it right now with an antler. You can use a rock. You can use a stick. Most of this bowl was scraped with a stick, but I'm using this antler right now just to get the last few pieces of ash out of the bottom.

So our bowl is going to get deeper, and rounder, and nicer. At the very end you can take a rock or sand, put sand in the bottom, and then take a piece of deer hide or a piece of your shirt and rub it with the sand in the bottom. That's sort of like sandpaper and you can sand it out to a pretty smooth surface. On this one I used pumice, so I used a volcanic rock to sand it out.

So, you can get a nice bowl that will give you the ability to eat, store water, cook with water, and that's kind of what it looks like in the process. And that's a little bit further along in the process.

[thebushcraftbible]

Nice bowl! However in a survival situation you may have to make the bowl from a round, uncut log and burn a suitable section off to work with using coals or placing the section you want to cut off in the fire.

[napalmocean]

lol I thought you said you used hummus not pumice. hahaha

[thegrumpygenxer]

Great video, the one thing you left out that I would like to know, is how long it took you to make those bowls. It would help to know if it took all day or just a couple of hours. Thanks for the video.

[Karin]

Great video! From the looks of your commenters you need to make another video about how to make tools that you can cut logs with in the wilderness. God help these people if shtf.

[seecanon]

The way your place was lined with pine needles to keep bugs from infesting your place was a neat idea. I have made one of these bowls when was a kid, thanks for the reminder. If you use your brain and figure out how things are constructed you will be set instead of wanting.

[ExpertSurvivalTips]

Reminds me of what I learned while reading one of the Clan of the Cave Bear books. Great job on the video

[mrwaterfighter]

What's the best way to get the bowl started? Should I dig it out with a edge stone first to hold the charcoal?

[ThePatrick]

I need to make one of these next outing. If you're near a creek you can just submerge the bowl and toss some sand in their to smooth it out and clean it at the same time

[WheelsRCool]

It's not just a matter of having a tool to cut the logs with, it's the energy expenditure. In a survival situation, if you don't have food readily available, the last thing you want to be doing is using up a bunch of calories cutting down a tree. Having a bowl would be very important for being able to boil water for purification purposes, so you want the easiest-to-make bowls.

[mystikwhitewolf]

could you please make a similar video with out a precut perfect log like that one.... like a rounded log like what you'd find in the wild... or show how to make that log without killing yourself doing it. that would be amazing plz do it.... love this video though.

[rongrey]

This is an awesome idea, thanks for sharing...wow...if I get caught somewhere unexpected, then I can do this....great idea.

[JudyIsWIP]

That's so cool.I'd expect the fire to burn the entire thing...

[АлександрБолбат-ыу]

Next lesson: How to make this piece of wood in survival situation.

[WheelsRCool]

How does one get the big piece of wood to make the bowl though? That looks like it was cut from a log. In a survival situation, that would mean that you'd have to cut a tree down and then cut a piece of the log off, then cut it in half. Now you'd have to do that with a hand axe most likely as you wouldn't have time to make a good one, but even then, the energy expenditure to do that would be HUGE.

[thunderdreamer]

You get a log cut like that with a saw, and an axe, or knife, or sharp rocks and wood/antler wedges

[BrownComanche]

sorry guys, i'm french and i don't understand all the video.But it looks like very interesting.
What is the purpose of the burn bowl?

[Aboufoul]

Indeed, it's nice to have a couple balls.

[brettpierce]

I understand ur video and appreciate it, but u said u could cook in those, may I ask how?

[cortlanddaily]

I wonder, will the charred bowl naturally filter out your water to a certain extent?

[ThePioneerChannel]

how long does it take to burn out a bowl anyway?