April 2020
Time to make: 1 hour each
Finishing: 1 hour
Original design: Philmont / Bill Macfarlane
One of the symbols you can see in almost every patch, slide or any Philmont item is the brands. Heck, you can even brand something you own like a hat, a belt, a piece of leather or a mug (as long as it will take the heat). Now I'd only had seen the cattle (bar P and backward S) and horse (/ and backward S) on most of the Philmont stuff but recently I saw a brandable plastic mug with the Philturn brand from one of our Philmont crew trainers. (Yes, a brandable mug! (It had really thick plastic walls.) After doing some research, I found out that the original name of Philmont Scout Ranch was Philturn Rocky Mountain Scout Camp and this brand (the combined T and P) was the original cattle brand.
So this was an easy set of slides to make! I started with an old weathered board from a broken pallet and cut them into a reasonable size allowing for the broken parts to remain on the slide. I traced out the brand onto the board and cut the brands into the wood. Once the cuts were made, I used a soldering iron to burn the cuts to look like brands. On some of the outside edges, I roughly rounded the wood and then charred them with a lighter. Finally, I finished them off with a couple of coats of Poly.
Bonus!! While looking up
brands in New Mexico I discovered an additional Philmont brand at Raydo.