Slipform Stone Masonry
With Builder and Author Thomas J. Elpel
Video Companion to Living Homes

      Want to build a stone house? It's easier than you might think! Slipform Stone Masonry brings to life the nuts-and-bolts of the slipforming process featured in Tom's book Living Homes.
      Slipforming is the process of using forms on both sides of the wall as a guide for the stonework. The forms are filled with stone and concrete, then "slipped" up the walls to form the subsequent levels. Slipforming makes stone work easy even for the novice.
      In this unique video, Thomas J. Elpel and Robert Taylor build an insulated workshop out of stone, demonstrating the building process from site excavation right through to putting the roof on and finishing the inside. Working through the month of June in Montana, they brave the rain and snow, gusting winds, searing heat and stunning rainbows to bring this project to fruition.
      The video is designed as a companion to Tom's book Living Homes. The principles of design and construction are out-lined in the book, enabling the reader to create dwellings customized to their own unique situations. In this video you will see just one application of those principles, but in vivid detail from start to finish. With both the book and the video you too will be able to design and build in a way that is completely unique to your own Vision. November 2001. 1 hr. 50 min. Click here to order on DVD.

Volume One
Three Days at the River
with nothing but our bare hands

      No knife. No matches. No food, sleeping bags or other gear. Join Thomas J. Elpel and 13 year-old daughter Felicia for this extraordinary primitive camping experience in southwest Montana. In the cottonwoods along the Jefferson River they demonstrate all the skills required to meet their basic needs, starting with nothing but their bare hands. Skills include:

• Shelter: Grass sleeping bag on hot ground.
• Fire: The cottonwood root bowdrill set.
• Water: Boiling water in found bottles and cans for purification.
• Edible Plants: Cattail Roots, stinging nettles, rose hips, burdock, mustard greens and milkweed shoots.
• Fungi: The edible tree mushroom.
• Meat: Porcupine--killing, skinning, butchering.
• Cooking: Shishkebabs and hot rock stir-fry.
• Tools: Discoidal stone knives and digging sticks.

Volume Two
Mountain Meadows
camping with almost nothing but the dog

      With little more than stone knives and the dog, Thomas J. Elpel and cousin Melvin Beattie venture into the Rocky Mountains to survive with whatever they can find and improvise from their surroundings. Among the wildflowers, wildlife and scenic meadows of southwestern Montana, they demonstrate all the skills needed to meet their basic needs, including:

• Shelter: A debris shelter with hot rocks.
• Fire: The mullein on sage handdrill set.
• Water: Purifying water with Aerobic Oxygen.
• Edible Plants: Sweet cicely, wild sunflower, dwarf huckleberry, musk thistle stems and "artichokes", brook saxifrage, rose petals.
• Meat: Ground squirrels--killing, skinning, butchering.
• Cooking: Cooking on an upright rock slab.
• Tools: Glass-knapped knives & the jo stick.

Volume Three
Mountain Lakes
a survival fishing trip

      With little more than a flint & steel kit and a copper drinking cup, Thomas J. Elpel and daughter Cassie trek five miles back into the Rocky Mountains for a few days of fishing, fun, and survival living. Among the spectacular lakes and mountain peaks, they demonstrate all of the skills required to meet their basic needs, including:

• Shelter: Rock and log shelter with a fire.
• Fire: Flint & Steel Kit + Making char cloth.
• Water: Drinking from mountain streams.
• Edible Plants: Wild onions and glacier lilies.
• Meat: Mountain Suckers-fishing by hand, snagging by hook, plus fishing laws.
• Cooking: Cooking fish on hot coals, plus steaming wild vegetables in a stone oven.
• Tools: Tin can knives, plus forging the nail knife and making a pine bark pot.