BK2 permanent firedrill modification (pics)

[DerekH]

Well, I ran into some SERIOUS frustration with my noob bushcrafting today. paracord and natural sticks seem to give more trouble than nylon rope and dowels It seems that the force of splitting a 9" cedar log was enough to dislodge my bicentennial beauty, but for the sake of testing I superglued it back in over the JB weld. Perhaps my spindle wasn't narrow enough, or the cedar not dry enough, but it KEPT jumping out of my recessed quarter. Glad I'm ordering micarta handles sometime next month anyway. As soon as smoke started to happen and the friction really caught on, POW, the stick flew off my paracord laced bow.

So maybe bowfires won't be necessary since we're not cavemen and all, therefore out of agitation I decided to try out my swedish firesteel for the first time. When I use the back (spine?) with 90* angle of my knife almost NO sparks fly. I tried over and over. I got pissed off and decided to use the sharp edge (it was rather dull anyway, I think my first efforts at learning to sharpen have done more damage than the splitting logs possibly) and there was a SHOWER of hot sparks. So what am I doing wrong with the back of my knife that is creating such sparse sparks from the firesteel?

Today was awfully cold, windy, and humid and I guess I'm learning from mistakes if nothing else

First up, awesome thread. It is great to see new blood trying things their own way and getting out there and using their stuff.

Last question first, the spine isn't squared on your knife. Once the coating is removed, the spine has a bit of a roundover, and needs worked back to 90° in order to create a sharp enough edge to throw sparks. All of mine get the spine squared and squared hard. It is also useful for making fine shavings that will light with a firesteel if your spine is squared. On a BK14, 11, or FFG 16 the angle is less than 90° so you get an even sharper spine, but only once you really smooth out that face of it.

The socket thingy you are trying to do with the quarter is cool, but I don't think a dented quarter is going to stick too well to anything. Since that end of the spindle needs to be as sharply pointed as you are comfortable with, I would go smaller and use something else in place of that quarter. One of those popout disks from a wiring box at Lowe's or something would work great, and half the time they are laying around on the ground anyways. Just dent it in, and then take a really low grit sandpaper to the back to rough it up really well. More surface area on the back makes for a better hold with any adhesive.

If it were me, I would use something like one of these:

Stainless steel drawer knobs, should be something similar available at your local hardware store.

Since they have a threaded hole in the back to go into a drawer, you could chuck them into a drill to sand off the excess material you didn't want, and to polish the face to be as smooth as it could be. Would take a bit of work to remove all the excess material, but if done right you could theoretically leave the threaded hole and make it attach to a handle scale with a screw instead of just gluing and hoping for it to hold.

 

[LG&M]

It takes a little practice to keep the spindle in the socket. While you rethink your handle divet try using a shot glass to get some practice and " the feel" Also I like cotton wood give it a try if you have any.
Derek's knob idea is good you could use a screw from the other side.

 

[retrobass]

Thanks for the solid advice and words of encouragement guys, today was so frustrating I just wanted to beat shit with my BK2 (fortunatley its pretty durable )

DerekH, Will a bench vice and flat file work for squaring the spine, or do i need to bring it to a machinist? I'll be looking for some drawer knobs in grandpa's shop, I'm betting there's SOMETHING out there that will work. I feel like my main problem, by far, was the lack of depth and acute angle to the quarter allowed it to jump out. I guess I ought to work on shotglass method, but I've already made fires with dowels and glass, really want to crank one out with nothing more than knife, paracord, and whatever I can gather from the woods here. Until reading up some today I didn't realize that the top of the spindle was meant to be small (though it makes perfect sense now that I think of it, to minimize surface area and in turn friction). These factory handles are likey shot, but I figure if I can ever get some kinda rough prototype to work and work well then I'll be able to drop that into micarta as soon as I get some.

Thanks guys

 

[Killinumsoftly]

I saw a guy grind down a spoon and put that in his blade handle and it worked awesome

 

[Tanto63]

I don't think the spine of the blade is edgy enough to get a spark. You might have to file the spine a bit to get a good edge.

 

[Brew-Jitsu]

I love the SST drawer knob idea, and the quarter is quite clever. I'm wondering how feasible this would be on the tweeners given the smaller area to work with.