Woodworking: crooked knife, chisel, rasp. All very portable.
And a bit too much to carry, but easy to store at campsites –
Cookware: cast iron pan, dutch oven.
I find Dave Canterbury’s 5 Cs and 10 Cs minimalist kit contents useful:
-Primary 5 C’s: cutting tool, combustion tool, cover, canteen, cordage
-Secondary 5 C’s: candle, cloth, compass, cargo tape (e.g. duct tape), canvas needle
The candle I used to undervalue, but using it for light, fire extender, wax/fat as a sealant, all good uses. During my outdoor living, the candles became much appreciated, and can be made primitively too.
Might also consider a whistle.
I categorize my gear in the following categories: Everday Carry (EDC), Bug Out Bag (BOB), I’m Never Coming Home (INCH), Shed, Cache, and Supplies. I start with those categories before I work down to the finer details. EDC is what I keep on my body when I go outside, BOB is the grab-and-go 3-7 day survival kit, INCH includes heavier gear like shovel and ax heads and seeds, Shed is the kind of tools you can’t just carry everywhere, Cache is small stuff that can fit in buryable containers for dispersed storage, and Supplies is like stored food & water, etc. I can give detailed lists for all of those but I just wanted to mention the categories v. contents idea.
Other people categorize their gear around meeting certain needs, like in the list at the beginning, e.g. “Cold Climate Winter Travel”. That’s a good method too. Also worth considering is active v. passive items. Fishing rod versus a fish trap, for example, demonstrates that.
Sidenote:
For a purely primitive Cache, I would seal and bury a clay container with pine pitch that contains: natural tinder, bow drill kit, wooden whistle, a few obsidian knife blades, pine pitch sticks, a minimalist first aid kit (e.g. dried medicinal fungi, charcoal for poisoning, cayenne powder for bleeding), bone fishing hook, dogbane cordage or leather strips, a stone wedge for wood-splitting, and some dry seeds or nuts for bait or food, pemmican in leather envelope if possible. Can probably think of more stuff, but I think that’s a decent start that covers a lot of ground.
Imagine stashing a dozen of those in memorable locations along the most common routes. That combined with the ability to make a debris shelter and you’d be off to a great start.
