Customer Reviews

Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

An interesting collection of plans to build everything from emergency shelters to a log home without using purchased building materials. Contains much information on building authentic log structures of numerous designs. Plans for building authentic doors and latches, windows, and furnishing for "rustic" homes are also included. A chapter is included for those of us who have always wanted a log home but can't get the spouse to agree--a rustic log room or den "hidden" inside a modern home. I had a copy of the original for years before losing it in a fire and look very forward to replacing it. Thanks Amazon.com

When I was a child, I would look for this book when I went to the public library. I checked it out frequently and marveled at the lined drawings of various kinds of wilderness dwellings, especially the "Boys Hogan"-a type of hidden shelter built into the side of a hill. No doubt this book became the inspiration of the "forts" we built in the woods and the lean-tos constructed in Boy Scouts.

The tree house recently built for my own children, caused me to remember this little book and so I ordered it from Amazon. It not only brings back great memories, but also has inspired me to think about building a log cabin. This is a great book for those who love the idea of building or living in primitive shelters.

I have lived in a very rural area my whole life. I love the forest, and because of this book I've been able to enjoy it even more. "Uncle Dan" Beard has lots of great ideas and illustrations to show how poeple used to, and still do, build shelters in the forest. It's great to have a historical resource to all of these techniques and ideas that are from the past - which otherwise might be forgotten about. GREAT BOOK!!

Well written, easy to read, and full of details and pictures. Presented in a clear and concise manner this book will take you naked into the wilderness and give you the basics of survival structures but build you up to a full understanding of large permenant structures. a pleasure to read, recommend to everyone of all age groups.

Interesting book that shows dozens of ways to make shelters in the wilderness. A good book for those of us who love traipsing through the bush, which in turn leaves us with that small chance of getting lost or stranded. The book I got was published by Loompanics Unlimited, and copied from the original 1914 edition, but I imagine all editions by all publishers are the same.

Anyone who enjoyed the boy scout handbook would love this book. It's full of all the diagrams and how-to's I enjoyed as a kid. This one's for grown kids and covers dwellings of every type - temporary to permanent, small to large. Great drawings; I'm so glad I found this book.

The copy I received was a poor recreation of the original that included ZERO of the important diagrams and pictures. The book is full of references to illustrations and there are none. It was recreated with the use of OCR and not very well. It is full of unintelligible typos. And, the worst part is, the Amazon Look Inside feature on this page was showing a very different copy of this book. The one shown on the page is the original, and has the actual images included. I'm returning this now and buying the proper book.

If I could of given a lower rating than one star i would have. Quite frankly the book sold by this particular publisher borders on fraud. There is no artwork. Which makes this book a pointless book of text, without any redeeming value. While Beard's orginal work is a fine example of this type of work, the company that published this edition hasn't a clue. Highly recommend you don't purchase this edition of Beard's work you will be sorry. Any edition of Beard's, other than this edition will be a worthly addition to your library.

Like all the other 1 star reviews who got this book after 2010, i recieved a cheap rip-off computer print out. every paragraph says to refer to (Fig. x) but there is not a single picture in the book. yet now where in the description does it say this is a computer printed out copy. I mean the i can handle the cheap computer printed pages, but the lack of photos makes building very difficult.

My, how we've changed over the years. In the classic book Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: And How to Build Them, D. C. Beard covers the wide array of possibilities for building your own dwelling out of nothing but materials provided by nature. This was originally published in 1914, and I think it's more interesting to observe the changes in culture than anything else.

Daniel Beard became fascinated with cabins and such in 1864 when he exhibited a saddleback cabin scaled down to size for him to carry to the fair. He sold it for $7.50, which was a major disappointment to him, as he thought it worth much more. That started him on his journey to sketch, document, and build just about any type of natural dwelling you can think of. He starts out with how to make a soft sleeping platform using pine boughs. From there, you have half-cave shelters, fallen tree shelters, and teepee-like structures. By the end of the book, we're dealing with full-scale houses, obviously beyond the skills of the boy scouts he tends to target in the first half of the book. But even then, the emphasis is on using logs and axes to accomplish most of the work.

Most of these skills are lost on 99% of Americans, and sending out a group of boys to build even the simplest of these structures would likely turn into a disaster. But back when this was written, it was pretty much assumed that most boys had basic scouting skills and would be able to build some of these shelters in just a matter of hours, or at most a couple of days. He even has them building hogan shelters built into the side of a hill and designed to last a considerable time. These days, we'd likely freak out because the kids had an axe or a shovel in their hands... And building a shelter covered by sod? But what if it collapses??? Needless to say, we wouldn't fare well if forced to rely on our own skills to survive without our comfortable houses.

If you're an outdoors-type person and you want to work on survival skills, this would be an interesting way to start out. Or if you're just looking for how much we've changed (or regressed) in the last 100 years, this'll point out many areas that fall into that category.