I decided to do a full blown fire using a friction kit yesterday. Usually when practicing, I get a coal and call it done but there was a good lesson in doing the actual fire.
We gathered our kindling and fuel and made a nice tipi design. It had rained an hour earlier so we had to dig for tinder but eventually found a mixture of pine needles and oak & beech leaves for the bundle.
The kit was black willow for a spindle, norway maple for a fireboard, a stone socket and a bow made of an oak sapling with paracord-like cordage. It already had an impression burned into the fireboard and the notch was pre-carved. We got a nice coal in about a minute with surprisingly little effort.
The folks with me were new to this and excited as we let the coal grow. I plopped it into the tinder bundle. I added some paper wasp's nest to the tinder from my kit and blew the bundle into a flame. Easy, huh?
Then the fun started. I messed up getting the fire to the firepit, didn't add more tinder and it went out. No worries, another coal came quickly. But I didn't have any good tinder left by then and it went out before the tinder could flame up.
The next 45 minutes were spent trying to get the kit to produce another coal. The fireboard hole wore out, the cordage broke, we lost good tension on the bow, the spindle squeaked, went flying and needed to be made pointier up top. The peanut gallery offered
helpful suggestions and matches.
Time to play the ace in the hole. I dug out some tinder fungus and we gathered out materials one final time. This time the coal went onto the tinder fungus. Our now less than optimal tinder took some time to go but we made that coal last long enough to get the fire.
We gathered our kindling and fuel and made a nice tipi design. It had rained an hour earlier so we had to dig for tinder but eventually found a mixture of pine needles and oak & beech leaves for the bundle.
The kit was black willow for a spindle, norway maple for a fireboard, a stone socket and a bow made of an oak sapling with paracord-like cordage. It already had an impression burned into the fireboard and the notch was pre-carved. We got a nice coal in about a minute with surprisingly little effort.
The folks with me were new to this and excited as we let the coal grow. I plopped it into the tinder bundle. I added some paper wasp's nest to the tinder from my kit and blew the bundle into a flame. Easy, huh?
Then the fun started. I messed up getting the fire to the firepit, didn't add more tinder and it went out. No worries, another coal came quickly. But I didn't have any good tinder left by then and it went out before the tinder could flame up.
The next 45 minutes were spent trying to get the kit to produce another coal. The fireboard hole wore out, the cordage broke, we lost good tension on the bow, the spindle squeaked, went flying and needed to be made pointier up top. The peanut gallery offered
helpful suggestions and matches.Time to play the ace in the hole. I dug out some tinder fungus and we gathered out materials one final time. This time the coal went onto the tinder fungus. Our now less than optimal tinder took some time to go but we made that coal last long enough to get the fire.
