New handle on a Zebra billy can 5

When I was first getting into bushcraft it was commonplace to see people with kit that they had made themselves.  One of the commonest items was a billy can made from a catering sized baked bean can with either some bent coat hanger or similar such wire as a handle.  They worked perfectly well and were very inexpensive.

Nowadays there is a plethora of cooking pots on the market and a whole lot less greasy spoons to approach for their used bean cans and so like many people I’ve succumbed to buying a billy can.  I quite like the Zebra billy can (Jack Raven Bushcraft doesn’t have any connection with the manufacturer by the way.

They’re a solid pot and can be used in lots of different ways.  But I’ve always found the handle to be poor when it comes to using the pot with a traditional pot hanger, sometimes called a wagon stick.

They don’t sit well in the beak of a pot hanger so recently I put a new handle on a Zebra billy can with some bike brake cable and electrical connectors.  There’s enough room between the handle and the pot to get a junior hacksaw in and cut away the rivet.  You might need to knock out a piece of the rivet from the hole in the bracket.

Then I passed the brake cable through a pair of electrical connectors, through the hole in the bracket and back through the electrical connectors.  Lastly I tightened the screws on the connectors.

And then repeat on the other side.  Now the handle sits nicely in a pot hanger and I think it also makes the pot easier to pack away.

It works really well and so I then did the same thing on another 7!

We make pot hangers on plenty of our bushcraft courses, including our 5 Day Bushcraft Course; you can see plenty of photos from this course, and all of our others, on our Facebook page.