The birch basket is an expedient way to make a water-tight container. One may never need take the bark from a living tree except in dire circumstances for often times birch is available on the ground with the wood rotted out. The birch basket, or any other type of bark that you may find capable of folding such as cedar, will provide excellent containers to carry water, supplies, collect maple syrup, or boil water in with rocks.
First, find a down birch log and score a cylinder out on the log. Cut the scoring through and remove a cylinder.
Next is to remove any wood that has managed to stick to the bark to fully reveal its pretty pink-red color.
Cut a diagonal slice from each of the corners. This will all the bark to be folded.
Begin to slowly fold the sides upwards to meet with a second side.
Wrap the edges and punch a whole with either an awl or a knife when the two sides are joined.
Fit a twig through to secure the folded bark together.
Proceed to do the same with all sides.
From here, any tears or holes in the bark may be mended with pine pitch. To further add stability and shape to the basket, a rim may be sewn on. This basket is simple to make and is a quick solution to not having a container to boil water in during a survival situation.