SHINY SIDE UP

A material of many uses

- Paul Donovan

We’ve all cooked a Sunday roast in tin foil (more correctly aluminium foil), but there are of course myriad other uses we can put it to. In my opinion, it is almost up there with the likes of duct tape and zip ties, so a roll is always in my camping and survival kits.

Vessel for boiling water

Purification of water is obviously important to make it safe to drink. The easiest way of doing this is to boil it. But what happens if you don’t have a suitable container? Well, you can fashion one from a length of tin foil.

Just form it into a bowl or rectangular shape.

If you put this directly on hot coals, it will boil the water but will fall to pieces when you lift as the heat will have made it brittle. Better to fill the receptacle with water and then put in hot stones. Preheat these in a fire (take care not to use any which will explode), and then gently add them to the water until it begins to boil. You now have safe drinking water.

With care, you can use the container a number of times before it eventually falls to bits.

Make a camp oven

With a full roll of tin foil, you can fashion a cooker. Make a tube of foil to the desired diameter – best to use the foil doubled over to add rigidity. Make a lid for it, and you have an oven. Put some coals inside the tube, set whatever you want to cook on top and put the lid on. If you really want to test your cooking skills, make some holes about a third of the way through which you can skewer lengths of wire or metal tent pegs. Set a pot on these supports, and you can bake biscuits or a small cake.

As a reflector

If you cannot boil water, or have a commercial filter, you can still purify it. All you need is a clear glass bottle (or plastic if you are desperate), a piece of tin foil, and a few hours of sun.