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Booshway
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You said an "hour". Even on the edited survival shows on tv it looks like a real chore. I tried once, won't say impossible but is really borderline. Flint and steel is 10,000X more efficient. Never tried the fire piston thing. Need to, I can make them, might have something marketable there.
 
Posts: 1487 | Location: Mountain Home, Arkansas | Registered: 08 October 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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I watched a good demo on friction fire at a rendezvous last week. I tried it, worked good. Didn't take any where near an hour.
 
Posts: 507 | Registered: 14 August 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
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quote:
Originally posted by Rifleman1776:
You said an "hour". Even on the edited survival shows on tv it looks like a real chore. I tried once, won't say impossible but is really borderline.


When I said an hour, that was my first time trying this, making several attempts. The only training I had was reading about how its done and watching a couple of videos. During each attempt, I learned what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong. This does take time and effort to become proficient. So far sage is my favorite wood to use. With a sage bow drill set I can usually have an ember in under a minute and fire in another minute or so. Conditions will affect your success though. If everything is wet and/or the wood you are using is not ideal, it will be more difficult. Don't give up after trying it once. It is far from being borderline impossible. If I can do it anyone can.


quote:
Originally posted by Rifleman1776:
Flint and steel is 10,000X more efficient.


A lighter and a gas can are even more efficient. For that matter a scoped .30-06 is more efficient than a flintlock. Big Grin Most primitive skills are not very efficient. I enjoy using a flint and steel too but what do you do when you are separated from them? I have read several accounts in fur trade era journals of people being separated from their gear, some even losing all of their clothing. You can lose your gear but your knowledge goes with you everywhere. The more knowledge and skills you have the better off you will be. That's why I want to learn to make my kit using a discoidal stone knife and cordage I make myself. No steel knife or rope/550 cord. IMO that's the ultimate primitive test, to be able to survive using only what's available in nature.

quote:
Originally posted by Rifleman1776:
Never tried the fire piston thing. Need to, I can make them, might have something marketable there.


There is a market for fire pistons. There are at least a couple companies manufacturing them. I'd be interested in seeing the pistons you make.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: pab1,


Experience is the best teacher, hunger good sauce.
Osborne Russell Journal of a Trapper
 
Posts: 212 | Location: SW Montana | Registered: 17 December 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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ya,me too....


Beer is proof that God loves us,and wants us to be happy-B. Franklin
 
Posts: 2014 | Location: Oreegun Territory | Registered: 24 March 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
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I have been pondering a friction method, that I saw on a reality show. I think it is worth considering. It was two guys with a 4 ft piece of bamboo, across another piece of bamboo, and they sawed it like a two man cross cut saw. They didn't seem to be pushing down , and it put out huge heat and lit up their fire in about two minutes. I wonder if I could do it alone, and the motion is like sawing a piece of lumber. Smaller stick, of a dry peeled pine, with a good base with air hole.
 
Posts: 51 | Location: kalispell montana | Registered: 23 September 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
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That's a fire saw. I have not tried it yet. I have read that in addition to bamboo, rivercane and elderberry will work.


Experience is the best teacher, hunger good sauce.
Osborne Russell Journal of a Trapper
 
Posts: 212 | Location: SW Montana | Registered: 17 December 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
Picture of Notchy Bob
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I have not tried fire by friction or a fire piston, but I expect I will. All of this information is good.

I have been using flint and steel for a number of years, to the point the I don't even bother with matches for campfires any more. One advantage is that a breeze will fan the flame if you're working with flint and steel, but the same breeze will blow a match out.

I just finished reading Noah Smithwick's Evolution of a State, and he described using "a few grains" of black powder to help things along when starting a fire. I've yet to try that, though.

I have been using GI cotton flannel cleaning patches from Brownell's to make char cloth. These work about the best of anything I have tried. I have also experimented with punk, which is just rotten wood fragments. You heat it in a can just like char cloth, to make sort of a rotten wood charcoal. It will catch a spark but it's a little harder to handle than char cloth because it is virtually weightless. If you blow on it, you blow it away. The experiment continues.

I live in Florida, and natural tinder is fairly abundant here. When Spanish moss dies, the gray fuzzy stuff disintegrates, leaving thin, curly black fibers. This makes first-rate tinder. Wallace & Hoebel's book on the Comanche people mentioned their use of Spanish moss fiber for tinder. I know Spanish moss grows in Texas... The plains Indians must have collected it during their travels and raids behind the Pine Curtain of east Texas.

Palmetto fiber also makes superb tinder. It is a little more troublesome to gather than dead Spanish moss, but it is abundant here and not that difficult to collect. An old trade musket pulled out of the Suwannee River a few years ago was found to have palmetto fiber wadding under the ball, so this is a historically correct multi-purpose material.

I have heard that dryer lint works as tinder, but I have not tried it. I prefer working with traditional materials when feasible. It's just a personal preference. One store-bought and possibly semi-traditional material that I have tried is jute. Both Home Depot and Lowes carry jute twine. Unravel the cordage and pick the fibers loose, and you have tinder that is second to none. If you carry a coil of jute twine around with your other plunder, you have the means for tying and binding as well as a supply of tinder. I don't know what was used for the cordage that was wrapped around the tobacco "carrots" of the fur trade, but wonder if it might have been jute. I doubt it was discarded, and suspect it may have been re-purposed after unwrapping the tobacco. Indians were the original American recyclers, long before recycling became a fad.

Tow is usually cited as a very traditional tinder, but I have had mixed results with it. A recent head-slapping revelation was that some tow producers, for reasons known only to themselves, treat their product with fire retardant. If you have found yourself blowing and blowing an ember into a wad of tow that refuses to catch fire, wondering, "Now why don't she light?", that may be the answer.

Keep those fires a'burning, boys.

Notchy Bob


"Should have kept the old ways just as much as I could, and the tradition that guarded us. Should have rode horses. Kept dogs."

from The Antelope Wife
 
Posts: 333 | Location: Florida | Registered: 24 May 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Jute catches fire real well but burns away quickly. Mixed with cottonwood or cedar bark it is a combination that works very well. I tie my bundles with jute for the purpose stated by Notchy Bob. I believe tobacco carrots were wrapped with hemp. Regarding fire retardant tow, I had some that I later discovered was treated with retardant that I tried to use in a timed event, with very embarrassing results. Tow can be depended on to turn your fingers yellow as a lifetime smokers.
 
Posts: 507 | Registered: 14 August 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
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quote:
Originally posted by scoundrel:
Jute catches fire real well but burns away quickly.


Cut jute into 6" (+ or -) lengths and put it in melted paraffin. Pull it out and lightly run your fingers down the length of it to remove the excess liquid. Set it aside and let it cool. When you are ready to use it, separate the fibers as much as possible (you want a ball of "fuzz"). It will burn quite a bit longer than untreated jute. You can carry a bundle of them any time you go out. They are light and hardly take up any space.


Experience is the best teacher, hunger good sauce.
Osborne Russell Journal of a Trapper
 
Posts: 212 | Location: SW Montana | Registered: 17 December 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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Well are you trying to improve your "bird's nest" of tinder to catch fire better, or are you still working on your lowest tech skill set? I ask, as you mention wanting to advance your know-how on fire making, without something like a flint-n-steel set... but now you're mentioning using a modern, petroleum product to help catch the fire. Big Grin I like to keep a candle stub from a beeswax candle to help catch the flame when I'm fire starting, myself.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
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Still working on primitive fire making skills. Wink Just recommending a way to extend the burn time of jute. Paraffin was available in the mid 1800s so depending on what period you are interested in it could still be correct. Big Grin

This message has been edited. Last edited by: pab1,


Experience is the best teacher, hunger good sauce.
Osborne Russell Journal of a Trapper
 
Posts: 212 | Location: SW Montana | Registered: 17 December 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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Hi All! It's been a few years...the gap started when I couldn't log on and I quit tryin.

In the meantime, starting bow drill friction fires has become a passion of mine. Since October 2013 until Jan 1 2015 I used something like 150 different wood combinations.

And no, it doesn't take an hour unless you are just learning. Most of my embers are created in less than three minutes, probably half in less than a minute (I don't time them...I'm busy with the bow!).

Hand drill takes a bit more of a challenge to master. I have created about 14 embers using just the hand drill and hearth, on only two wood combinations (yucca on yucca, and yucca spindle on western red cedar hearth).

Believe it or not, only the Native Americans of the far north used bowdrills, from what I understand. The rest of them used just hand drills. A TIMED start to finish hand drill fire was created in EIGHT SECONDS by an Apache, timed by a cavalry soldier.

I've had to take a break from bowdrill lately as I managed to injure a knee (warranting two surgeries), and I can't really bend my knee to get into a stable position for using it without having to relearn a bunch of stuff (nevertheless, I have made a few bow drill fires 'left handed' since then).


"I thought when you said you chased tornadoes, it was just a metaphor."
--soon to be ex-fiance in Twister
 
Posts: 247 | Location: Boise | Registered: 12 November 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Mix jute with shreaded cottonwood or cedar bark, or just leave the jute out. Graduate fine to coarser on the bark. Flint and steel or friction, pistons and such are too modern. Practice at home before you actually need the skill.
 
Posts: 507 | Registered: 14 August 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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I've been playing around with a bow drill I can get a coal at times but no fire yet.


The best thing about owning a dog is that someone is happy when you get home.
 
Posts: 959 | Location: Alabama | Registered: 09 December 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Luckily here in PA we have a fungus that grows on dead hardwood trees. It resembles a large clam shell. I used to know the name but I forget more them I remember anymore. Any how I char this and It is difficult to put out once it catches. I stick with flint and steel, or if I forget them a hard rock and the poll of my ax. At my age and physical condition a bow drill could give me another heart attack.
 
Posts: 353 | Location: Pocono Mts. in PA | Registered: 12 June 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Chaga. Grows on about one birch tree in a thousand it seems.
 
Posts: 507 | Registered: 14 August 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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B Stanley,
Try this. Once you form a bowdrill coal, let it sit for a minute or so. This gives it time to change from a pile of burning dust into a solid ember/coal so it won't fall apart when you dump it on the birdnest. Don't be afraid to compress the nest some around the ember, as you want that 'contiguous fuel' to be there to nurse the fire, and it will also aid in using the heat to preheat the fuels and dry them out. If your tinder is "good" (meaning you could light it with char cloth with a flint/steel spark in it), that should do it. If that fails, dump the ember onto charcloth in the bird nest. PM me for questions, or post them here.


"I thought when you said you chased tornadoes, it was just a metaphor."
--soon to be ex-fiance in Twister
 
Posts: 247 | Location: Boise | Registered: 12 November 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hivernant
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I've had the best luck with a willow drill, and a sage hearth, and a stone bearing block.


"I don't know where we're goin', but there's no sense bein' late." Quigley
 
Posts: 104 | Location: The Beehive State | Registered: 12 April 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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