A Portable Toolkit

Box of rocks and antler billets

There's going to be a lot of packing and hauling rocks around over the next few weeks.  Tomorrow I have an Open Minds demo for high school students at The Rooms in the morning and then the first of this week's flintknapping workshops at MUN in the evening.  Most of the rocks, tools, and reproductions that I carry around to demonstrations and workshops fit into rubbermaid containers.

Reproductions and raw materials

The rubbermaid boxes are by far the best containers that I've found for hauling rocks around.  Taped or zap-strapped shut, they work just as well on airplanes as they do in the back of the car.  I like them better than buckets, because it so much easier to get at stuff on the bottom of a flat box than at the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket,  plus they're stackable.  I can sharpie my address right onto them so I don't have to worry about shipping labels coming off.

The ski bag is awesome for harpoons

I was a little stuck on how to haul around spears, arrows, bows, and harpoons for quite a while, until I finally visited some ski shops in Calgary and picked up a ski bag.  The ski bag is perfect for the long awkward stuff that won't fit in a box and I haven't had any problems shipping the bag through the oversized luggage drop off at airport.  I do have one spear shaft that's too long to fit in the bag and that I probably won't ever try to take on a plane, but its good enough to toss in the car.  

I can travel with a lot more reproductions thanks to the oversized bag.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast