How to make an offgrid bushcraft diy lantern

Hello everyone and welcome. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Alabama. Now living the prepared lifestyle you're you know prepared for the days when it's dark and you have severe weather uh you know hurricanes things of that nature and a flashlight isn't always an option just like the light on your cell phone isn't always an option because there have been instances even here where I live where we've had you know tornadoes come through uh things of that nature and the power was out for like a week or so and you're not able to use you know your flashlights run out of batteries your cell phone battery runs down things of that nature. So today I'm going to show you how to make a lantern just out of like some scavenge materials uh that you could carry around outside. I know like inside you can use candles things of that nature but with this lantern it's kind of semi-weatherproof so you could carry it outside uh things of that nature kind of like back in the old days when they used you know the oil lamps things of that nature. The materials that I'm going to use for this project can be scavenged. I'm just going to use a wine bottle, a large soup can, an aluminum coke can, and a little tuna can and just you know some hand tools. I'm not going to use any power tools so let's get started on the project. All right so for tools I've got a pair of needle nose pliers that have cutting docks in them, then a pair of sheet metal snips, then just a regular old screw vise, then there's my tuna can, a piece of aluminum wire, a nail to put the holes in there for the handle, a glass cutter, a scorer would be a more appropriate term, then just like I said a regular coke can and a wine bottle. All right so now that I've got my jig kind of put together so that it would kind of keep things square I'm just going to take my glass cutter or scorer more like it and I'm just going to put it on there and I'm going to work the bottle back and forth so I start getting a good cut line across it. I've got my top line scored and my bottom line scored. I'm going to keep scoring these until I get to the point where I felt my lighter will start cracking them. Then I'll be able to submerge it in cold water and kind of tap around a little bit to remove the top and the bottom of the bottle. I got my glass cut and as you can see it's not exactly perfect but it'll do for what I need it for. It's a thick glass though I know that. Now that I've got my glass cut I'm going to take my soup can and I'm just going to cut a window right through here so that the light will reflect through it and I'm going to put a reflector behind the glass. All right so there's our window cut in the soup can and I'm just going to take a file and kind of knock some of the sharp edges off of it. For the reflector I'm just going to use a soft drink can and I'm just going to cut it around the top and the bottom and then I'm going to slit it down the middle so that I'll have a flat sheet of aluminum to work with. All right so now that we have our flat piece of aluminum I'm just going to take a scotch brite pad and kind of polish it up. Yeah you can see how reflective this is and I'm going to take and just kind of gauge how wide I want this piece and then I'm going to mark it. So I'm going to go about halfway around from that one point and just kind of mark it like that. Who knew aluminum cans could be so useful? So that's about how I want it. I'm just going to set the whole assembly in like so so you can kind of see where I'm going with this. Now I'm going to take my little tuna can and I'm going to put some notches in it so that it'll rest on the outside and kind of hold it up like so. I'm just going to take and bend these out a little bit. I'm going to take my top and just kind of set it in there and I'm going to use the tabs to kind of hold it in place as well as keep the candle kind of on center like so. Now that I have my four notches cut in the top I'm going to take this spike nail and I'm just going to drive it through in several locations so that my flame will be able to get oxygen. All right so we got our holes put in the top. It's just going to kind of fit down like so. Next I'm going to take and put two holes in the side of the can so I can make me a handle out of some aluminum wire. Now I'm just going to take my handle and I'm going to go from the outside in on both sides. So now we have our our handle. Now we have our completed lantern. All right for my light source I'm just going to use a little candle. I'm just going to pop that in there and light it up. Then we're going to put everything kind of back together. And there you have it. Let's see how much light she puts out in the dark. Now as you can see it puts out quite a bit of light. So there you have the DIY lantern. Now I do understand it does take a little bit of work to make this lantern. Like scoring the glass things of that nature. And that's why you go ahead and you pre-make it from just you know scavenged parts or even you know when you're cooking dinner or whatever set a can aside. You know things of that nature or you know a wine bottle sitting in the back of the fridge. Take it out. Use it. And this will help build on your bushcraft skills and save you money rather than go out buy a lantern and batteries fuel what have you. You can use this. You could probably cook off this lantern as well. And the reason why I say that when I was testing what type of light source to use candle whatever. I used some wax and cardboard pucks that I had made out of a beanie weenie can and found that it was way too hot for the lantern. So that's when I swapped over to just a regular old scented candle that you know was kind of laying around or whatever. So anyway that is my spiel on the DIY lantern. And again this adds to your bushcraft skills and things of that nature. So anyway we'll see y'all next time.