What Skills are You Working On? Bonus - List The Top 5 Skills You Want to Learn

[Sequanti]

Working on:

• Marksmanship
• Gardening (attempting it anyway)
• Household repairs (not always by choice)
• Creating multiple income streams
• Getting organized

Want to learn:

• Hunting & fishing
• Plant identification (both for food and medicinal purposes)
• Food preservation
• Reloading
• Wilderness/advanced first aid

[donaldj]

Awesome thread!

Accomplished since starting at prepping:

• Organization
• Food storage (3 months)
• Food prep: Dehydrating
• Simple household repairs
• Multiple income streams
• Potential main income increases

Working on:

• Martial arts (ongoing until the day I die!)
• Shooting skills
• Self-sustainable homestead (gardening, tree planting, "defensive" plant locations)
• Food storage (1 year)
• Earning my degree

What I need to start working on:

• Reloading
• Food prep: Canning
• Tactics and strategies (from a home, neighborhood, and local area perspective, for when/if SHTF)
• Hunting skills

[LJH]

Donald, degree in what field?

[donaldj]

Electrical Engineering.

I have 7 classes left. Plugging away 1 at a time!

[joeinwv]

...
carving utensils ( gonna get some pieces of cherry this week and try some)
...

I've been playing with this one for a little bit - first 3 spoons done. Nothing I would post a picture of... yet.
#1 - fail, in the fire pit
#2 - not bad, certainly usable, walls of bowl too thick
#3 - fail, usable but got too thin on bottom of bowl and have a thin spot
First was dry cherry and was hard to work. I have been using green poplar and sycamore since, as that is what I had a few sticks of... looking to improve over the weekend, just got a carving knife and a curved bowl knife - both Mora/Frost- from smoky mountain eknifeworks.com - was under $45 for the pair, shipped.

[Scramblin]

Working On:

• Marksmanship
  Hunting
  Fishing
  Creating a Permaculture garden
  Experiments in Aquaponics
  

Want To Learn/Do:

• Medicinal Herbs
  Create secondary income stream
  Buy land to start building a BOL
  Build good size home brew system (no better barter than Great beer)
  Welding
  

Fantastic Thread -

A full moon tonight.  Perfect time to set you intentions for the next month.

[Matt.T]

Want To Learn More (mix of skills and knowledge):

• Food Preservation & Storage
• Plant Identification
• Weather Forecasting
• Permaculture & Gardening
• Weapon Maintenance

[randizmo18]

Love the thread, great idea.

Current:
1. Genral Bushcraft/ Survival skills
2. Tactical marksmanship
3. Non-verbal communication/ Verbal Judo
4. Land Nav
5. Aikido

Want to start:
1. Kali/ Escrima
2. Learning spanish
3. Plant/ Tree identification for edible and medicinal
4. Tactical and Wilderness trauma medic
5. Repelling

[sheeplady]

Not expert ~ just doing the best I can.....

raising livestock~milking
sheep shear~spinning wool~crochet
baking/cooking
basic survival skills
gardening~food perservation

What to learn.....

spanish
wilderness med train
self-defense
plant ID~medicinal herbs
cheese/wine making

[joeinwv]

In no particular order:

flint knapping, kydex sheath / holster making, wood carving, traditional archery, bush craft shelter construction

Haven't found a source for flint yet...
Made a leather sheath, no kydex yet...
Wood carving - check, have made spoons, forks, wood spirits, etc
No longbow yet...
Bushcraft shelter practice - yes. 2/5 so far

[mossyback]

The top 5 skills that I need to learn are
1. Flint knapping
2. Primitive bow and arrow making
3. Gunsmithing/Gun building
4. Ham Radio
5. Herbalism

I am currently working on flint knapping, and herbalism and I am doing research on primitive bow and arrow making, and gunsmithing and gun building.

[holyokesurvivor]

1. Improve my plant ID and uses (I try to learn one or two a week and spend free time researching them. Much more memory retention than doing several at once.)

2. Homebrew  (might save some money in the long haul)

3. Primitive skills (another one I am constantly working to improve)

4. Fishing (never been reel  into it but would love to learn more) sorry that was a horrible pun

5. Meat preservation (salting, curing, smoking, etc. Just finished my first batch of venison biltong and it is AWESOME!!!)

[Mastoo]

4: Knot tying (know and love some basics but looking into lashings and more advanced knots)

I stumbled on a nice iPhone app - Knot Guide.  The freebie version was fine, but I liked it enough to splurge the $2.  My tomatoes look much better this year tied up with paracord and fancy knots.  I'm sure it will increase the yield :-)

[Greg1109]

I'd be happy with just two.  Patience and Organization.

The organization alone would help me make/find time to have everything else fall into place.

[bluprint]

Learning right now:

General gardening

Hope to learn soon:

Sweating copper pipe

keeping rabbits

aquaponics

solar power

[ZenGunFighter]

Skills I'm working on?

1. Leadership. just got elected to be chairman of the local Crime Stoppers. I've been a leader of a number of small groups over the years. This is an incredibly hard skill to do well. Still working on it.
2. Construction. At this moment, I'm taking a break from building a closet for my wife. Built a mortise and tennon bed last week.
3. Gunfighting. Just took 'Urban Rifle' by DTI. Came home and have continued to work on what I learned. Constantly honing the pistol skills too. Not just shooting, but dynamic gunfighting
4. Instructing. Only so much I can do myself, its good to be able to bring others up to speed. Just took DTI's Instructor class. Spent a day learning about teaching women. Been instructing for 25 years, but I'm still working on doing it better and better. My students deserve no less.
5. First/Self Aid. My weakest skill. Been through some basic classes, done some studying, just started incorporating apply aid in with the gunfighting training.
6. Driving. I don't just drive. I've been to EP classes and road racing classes. I 'practice' every time I drive. Situational awareness, thinking a head, looking for outs, picking the line, operating the vehicle smoothly.
7. Fire making. When I grill, I use wood from the yard rather than charcoal briquettes. I use primitive starting methods.
8. Bow making. Learned to make a stick bow last year. Have made several on my own since then. Have a stave curing right now.
9. Communications. this is a weak one. Wife and I got our ham licenses last year, got nice handhelds, but haven't really learned to use them. Need to figure out how to use the repeaters.

Those are some of the skills I'm 'working on'. I have varying levels of ability in them, but even the ones I'm very good at, I'm still working on.

[Veritas]

My tomatoes look much better this year tied up with paracord and fancy knots.  I'm sure it will increase the yield :-)

LOL. I can just picture it

[Dymmesdale]

My top 5:

1. Beer/wine brewing
2. Bowhunting
3. Gardening/composting
4. Chainmaille jewelry
5. Solar/wind energy

[Westonian]

My top 5 in no particular order:

Homebrew
Construction
Gardening
Fermenting Foods
Primitive Skills

[Griz]

1) Gardening
2) Knot tying
3) Dehydrating
4) Bushcraft skills
5) Lockpicking

There are many others, but these are what I'm focusing on right now.

[NWBowhunter]

Like to learn

Welding
Sailing

Working on

Gardening
Food preservation
 

[Malamute]

Great topic.

(1) small but scaleable skill/product that can be done at home for cash income...extra money on the side to start with but get it good enough to where i can quit my city job.  this is by far the top item on the list

(2) simple building techniques that any real adult human should know but which I'm shaky on mainly because i've been too dumb/lazy to develop them and secondarily because nobody ever taught me they could be important.  Pursuant to this I have done some straw bale wall building, plastering, replacing roofing shingles.  I am building a hobo stove right now.  I would like to make small structures as well, this means learning how to make simple sound foundations.

(3)  gardening/home food production.  Everything I said in (2) applies to this as well.

[sailorjerry]

1. Fire Starting
2. Archery
3. Black Smithing
4. Hiking/Camping
5. Trapping

[endurance]

1)  Permaculture--Currently working on it, taking workshops, reading, and of course experimenting
2)  Herbal and homeopathic medicine--Just learning now what plants to plant, but no clue on what to do or what to go next
3)  Fundimentals of gunsmithing--Don't need to be able to take a billet and transform it into a gun, but would like to be able to fix and upgrade most of what goes wrong most of the time
4)  Ham radio--Just the basics to get licensed
5)  Cooking--Really learning to make the most out of the garden and forest bounty
6)  Food preservation--Mostly need to learn about proper freezer prep (blanching & such) and canning.  I'm already dehydrating a reasonable amount of my garden produce
7)  Coaching/Teaching--A life long skill I continue to try to build on
  Being a better husband--One of my greater challenges, but I'm sure trying my hardest

[PistolWhipped]

Top 5 working on

1) Knife Fighting
2) Knife Throwing
3) Fitness (ala Backpacking)
4) Primitive Weapon Skills
5) Primitive Survival Skills (such as shelter and fire making)

Top 5 To Learn

1) Trapping and Snares (younger (step)sister's boyfriend is a trapper though, so I'm in luck)
2) Edible Plant Identification (and prep)
3) Herbal Medicine
4) Knot Tying
5) Archery

Next 5

6) Knife making
7) Advanced First Aid
Lockpicking
9) Primitive weapon manufacture (Bows, throwing spears, etc)
10) Tracking (besides the very basic)

Top 5 Teaching Skills (I try to teach at least as much as I learn)

1) Cooking & Food Preservation
2) Field Marksmanship and Hunting
3) Basic First Aid
4) H2H fighting (stepsister's BF saw me send a heavy bag weighing more than him flying with an elbow strike, and told me he NEVER wanted to get hit by me)
5) Gunfighting (and avoiding it through intimidation)

And does drinking count as a skill?  One can never be too good at it.

[DrJohn]

Here are my top five that we are working on:

1. Sustainable Gardening
2. Plant identification / Wild edible foraging
3. Full family marksmanship with rifle, pistol and shotgun
4. Reloading
5. Purchasing property for a BOL/Hunting camp

My top five to learn
1. Ham radio
2. Herbal Medicine
3. Wine / Spirit making
4. Alternate Power (solar, wood gasification)
5. Meat preservation techniques - salting, smoking, jerking, etc

[Adam B.]

ladieu wrote...

Here are my top 5

    Bicycle Repair
    Auto Repair
    Digital SLR mastery
    Plant Identification
    Beer/Wine making

I know we live in the same city (I actually found a programmer interested in potentially developing that site I had emailed you about awhile back btw... once I get some other things out of the way and can devote some time to it).

However, I worked in bike shops from the time I was 16 to when I was done with art school at 20 yrs old and am quite handy with the DLSLR part of the equation if you have questions there.

Plant Identification is something I've become very interested in learning more about myself. Preferably by someone who can show me first-hand LOL not so much by trial and error hahaha... I came across a huge field of blackberries and blueberries one day while camping and had a blast filling containers and started thinking I should make a google map (or another marked up map) of places I find with regularly harvestable goodies that I can visit through my many travels and share with others (don't mind sharing because I know most people are too lazy to do it).

Auto repair would be great since I have so many mechanics in my family. However, I don't have any place to actually DO any real work on my vehicles. When I have a garage someday (and if I can keep it from being filled with bicycles that is) I will definitely be interested in knowing how to tear down and rebuild cars, especially Jeeps.

I have a few friends who make beer. Always seems like a lot of money, time, etc. I have too many hobbies as it is but am also a knowledge junkie.

I honestly should have taken up all the opportunity I had to hunt when I was a kid. My entire family hunts, including the women. but I wasn't one who could sit still and keep my mouth shut for hours on end so my family hated taking me with them. I really want to know how to process a deer well and butcher animals because hey — if god didn't want us to eat the animals he shouldn't have made them taste like meat.

[JohnDoel]

Currently working on
Marksmanship
Map + Compass
General and Winter Bushcraft
Knots (I really like the swiss seat)
Bowmaking and Fletching
Fitness

The five I would specifically like to learn right now
Homebuilding (including wiring and plumbing)
Hunting and Tracking
Reloading
Bartering
Lockpicking

[Peregrine]

1. Medical
     first aid certification
     CPR certification
2. Gardening
     container gardening
     starting seeds
     saving seed
     semi-automatic irrigation
3. Livestock Management - rabbits
     daily care
     medical care
     breeding
     slaughtering
     butchering
4. Food Storage
     pickling
     high-acid canning
          bonus: pressure canning
5. Auto Maintenance
     oil change
     brake pads
---------------------------------------------
While this is the order of importance, it's probably not the order that I'll end up learning them. I chose this order because, other than the medical training that may save a life, the rest should end up either saving me money or not costing a lot to learn. Hopefully, then I'll be able to afford the tools that are necessary for doing some of the later ones, like getting a sewing machine for sewing. Some, like refreshing my Spanish or learning Access should be useful as job skills, and I already have the programs, so I'll probably work on them sooner rather than later. I also added my measures of success, so I'll have a way to tell when I've gotten to the level I want to achieve. A few are a bit vague and I'm sure they'll end up changing a bit as I gain more understanding.
---------------------------------------------
6. Sewing
     jeans
     khaki pants
     t-shirts
     button-up shirts
     underwear
     bras
          bonus: sul backpack
7. Spanish
     Rosetta Stone #1
     Rosetta Stone #2
8. MS Access
     household database
     library database
     prep/skill database
9. Navigation
     reading the land
     orienteering
     geocaching
     pacing
10. Basic Construction (through volunteering for Habitat for Humanity)
     framing
     insulation
     finishing walls
     hanging windows
     hanging doors
     roofing

[spooky-1]

1. I just finished a wine making class (excellent)
2. want tocontinue to weld (just finished a class there too)
3. would love to learn how to make a long bow (local guy know show)
4. want to take gun fighting classes (victory tactical is close by)
5. would love to learn how to fly helos (at a loss here)