Ethan's November Challenge, FIRE!!

[Moosez45]

Ok, I wanted to get this up, because its Halloween tonight, and I have two small children, and I won't be at home until late, so, here we go.

After a month off, we have collected ourselves a new years worth of Challenges to plague you guys with, and since my all time favorite thing to do in the woods, is to make a fire, we are gonna see what skills you got.

All tinder must be natural tinder, found or created in the woods. What does that mean? Means find it or make it. Not cotton balls, nothing that you cannot get outta the woods. Split and scrape dry wood, peel birch bark, cattails, natural tinder. Make it or find it. Enough on that, and if you have to ask if its OK for the challenge, chances are its not, so bear that in mind.

This is designed to Challenge you, not just be a walk in the park.

Here are your methods for ignition for your fire, and the order does pertain to the matter of how its done. Not saying you have to do all of them, but you score more points, the more you do.

Hand drill- Total master of the game, big points awarded for this one

Bow drill- Master it, it is good to have in the skills locker

Light refraction- use it if you got it, but you better know how and what you are doing, or its a waste of time. Be creative.

Flint and Steel- old ways are some of the best ways, and a personal favorite of mine

Ferrocium Rod- if you can't get it goin' with this guy, best hit the backyard, and learn, this is the most basic and best method (short of a lighter or matches) out there, anyone not mastered this method, needs to get to work.


Ok, the actual challenge part, create 5 seperate fires (they don't have to be large, just your tinder burning will suffice), using 5 different natural tinders, and at least 3 of the listed ignition sources.

You will need to provide at least 3 photos per fire, Before- show your BKT knife, ignition method, and tinder, Prepared- ready to light, and Fire- your completed tinder bundle on fire. You can have someone take the photos for you if you wish. Or you can do a video, of each, or all together, you choice.

No less than 15 pics, and no more than 20 per entry. Or your vid can't be more than 8 mins long.

Document what you are using for tinder, basically identify it, if you don't know, then find out. The information helps everyone. Tell us what method you are the best with, and the worst with. Its good to be able to identify your weak spots, and strengthen them up.

This is a Beckerhead contest, but with a little twist, if you are not a Beckerhead, go ahead and enter, a good show will get you a number. How's that for incentive? Oh, not sure if you want a number? Well, sometime in the future, we will be doing some contests that will be Beckerhead only, and Beckerhead Gold only, and what will be at stake? Knives, knives that no one will own yet, so think about it.

Safety is paramount here guys and gals, which means be careful, and make sure you are being safe.

Must be 18 to enter, you are responsible for your actions, no one else is, if you can't afford to replace it, don't break it or burn it. To enter in the contest, post "Beckerhead #xxx, I accept the Challenge" in this thread, no chatting. If you are not a Beckerhead, and you want to enter, just post "I accept the Challenge" in this thread, no chatting.

Contest will run until November 30 Midnight PST. All entries must be in before then, or you don't get to play.

1st Place wins a BK7, and the title of Firebug Beckerhead for the month of December
2nd Place wins a BK11 or BK14, your choice
3rd Place wins a Remora

So, here we go, into the cold months, and fire is as necessary as it ever was, or will be. Here's a chance to learn, practice, and teach, all in the same contest. Plus, winners get knives.

Lets have some fun and be safe.

Moose

 

[FAL'ER]

This challenge, I accept. #22

The tinders, Cat Tail, Old mans beard, wood shavings, Pitchwood & Birch bark.


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#1, Cat Tail W/ Flint & Steel

I gotta saythis is my first time working with this tinder and I didn't have much success with it initially. Wouldn't take a spark from a Flint & steel and The ferro rod(Going gear type) would only light it up for about 1 second.


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So, I made another fire with dry shavings and used that fire to Char this cat tail fluff. And that worked awesome, Just like char cloth except I had to blow on it a lot more to get the tinder bundle to ignite. In the picture below you can see the tin with some Blackened cat tail and some brown cat tail, the brown was caused by taking the tin out of the fire too soon and the fire I made was with the black fluff from around the edges of the tin.


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Newly recharred cat tail with a piece of an old file and some flint


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If you look close you'll see red in the blackened cat tail on the wood hearth, got it to take spark.


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Blew on this bad boy for about two minutes to get it to go, lots of smoke. Oh and Charred cat tail fluff smells like cigarettes.


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Took a lot of blowing to get this to flame but when it went I almost burnt my eyebrows off. That tinder bundle is made up of thin, dry wood shavings.


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#2, Old Mans Beard W/ Ferro Rod
It's a moss we find hanging on trees out this way. It had been picked about a week before trying to light it up. This was my first time trying to use this stuff just by itself with no stick or twigs wrapped up inside of it. Not an easy time, flint and steel was a no go, ferro rod was a no go because the molten globs just kept falling through the weave of he OMB. Still working on this one.


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That ferro rod kept igniting the wood shavings but the Old Mans Beard never did light.


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I tried packing the Old mans bear tighter and used my light my fire, No Joy there. I had charred some of this Old mans beard also and again nothing


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#3 Bowdrill, Failled attempt
I had a hell of a time with the bow drill. I don't know if it's the geometry of the cuts I made, the type of wood, could be the paracord, though I see people using it all the time. This is my white whale. I think I'm gonna buy one of those pre made and tested ones and try to reverse engineer it, as a confidence booster. It's not my first time failing at this.


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#4, Pitchwood, Fatwood W/ a Magnifying glass

I'm not gonna even front like these are new pictures, I took it this last April, We don't get hardly any sun at all this time of the year out this way. I'm putting it up to show that when there is sun I can make a fire with it.


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The components with the shaved fatwood.


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Smoke, yep.


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Fire from a large magnifying glass and pitchwood


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#5 Birch Bark w/ Light my fire ferro rod
It took a few strikes to get it to go but it was pretty easy overall


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Done
I'd say over all I probably spent 6 or 7 hours collecting materials and experimenting with different tinders and ways of igniting them. I felt the full range of emotions on this one. I did drink plenty of water during this contest.

 

[clich]

Ok first up the Ferro rod. 2 fires, 2 different tinders. One is the "hair" on top of feed corn husks. Brown, stringy, very dry and very ignitable. The other looks like milk weed but i could be wrong. Its white fuzz and thin stalks make it a very good tinder. Each took a spark after a few scrapes on the rod with the spine of the bk11.

Toolbox you remember the bk11 right? now it will act as my garage fire-pit for this part of the challenge.

stay tuned for light refraction and bow drill video with my silky smooth voice overs....

 

[ocnLogan]

I accept this challenge.

 

[Cobra281]

I accept this challenge.

 

[dallastxco]

I'm not a beckerhead, so getting a number is a huge motivator!!!
Thanks for the opportunity!
I'm in!

 

[SaturatedShadow]

BeckerHead 091 accepts the challenge.

 

[iahunter3]

I'm out, Burn ban in place here.
Beckerhead #93

 

[Murphnuge]

Withdrawn.

 

[pokesalad]

"I accept the Challenge"

 

[redmech]

I'm in. I love fire, have Becker blades, and would love to get a Beckerhead number.

Here are a few of my fire entries,

Here is a youtube video with the shaving sharp new BK7, first fire is flint and steel and cattail materials, and second is ferro rod and fescue seed heads. I had edited out part of the video where I was using my BK11 on my piece of chert. It was throwing good sparks, just couldn't catch them very well. Ended up using my steel striker. The fescue seed fire scared away my 5 year old girl, can kinda see that in the video, she likes going out with me.

[video=youtube;uAJrUkambgs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAJrUkambgs[/video]

The First is a hand drill, with Yucca as the spindle and American Sycamore more for the hearth board. I used a piece of punkwood to catch the coal, and then used punkwood, and blew it into a flame.

Here is where the punkwood came from, when I snapped the pic I dropped a couple pieces and that is the fuzzyness in the picture.


Ready to make the coal.


The Coal.


Here I have put punkwood all around the coal.


Here I've blown the coal into a flame just using punkwood. I've had heard of this and had never blown punkwood into a flame, I blame JCL-MD, he inspired me to do it that away. Worked really slick.


Another fire, this is a split wood fire using hedge, lit with a ferro rod.

Here is the dried out hedge and the newly stripped BK7


Here we have some split wood and shavings


Here she is finally lit, took quite a bit, and had to add extra hedge puff balls. The really fine stuff.



I am really like this BK7.

Video to come once youtube gets it uploaded, then will add one more fire once I get it figured out what to do and the time to get it made up.

 

[paperairplane]

#58 - I am in... as Beavis would say "Fire FIRE FIRE"

 

[Psyop]

Im in sounds fun

 

[trailbum]

I accept.

I am new to using a ferro rod so here goes.

First is birch bark with ferro rod.
The birch bark didn't want to light, so I scraped some maple shavings to take a spark.
Started in daylight finished at dark.

Maple curls w/ ferro rod.

Ferro rod and dry grass.
This one lit pretty easy.

Ferro rod and pine shavings.
Worked really well after I scraped the knife down the side of the pine branch.

Bow drill.

Lots of smoke and a tired trailbum.
Still working on this one.

 

[NixKustoms]

BH #51

I accept the challenge


I spent some time with my son doing this challenge. It was for sure a learning experience.


The collected tinder.
a chunk of fat wood; a piece of alder wood; some ceder bark; birch bark; some tall grass; a couple dead heads off my wifes flowers; and a couple more seed pods (almost like a dandy lion).

First off the grass.
My son helping

Change of venue because I couldn't get the spark to sit in the tinder ball; but I got fire from it.

The seed pods.

I couldn't get a pic of the fire I got from it because when the spark hit it it went up like gas.

I'd recommend this stuff, but one would need a lot of it and something else to keep the flame going.

Ceder bark.

This stuff works great and one could even grab some off the tree and use it directly; I have many-a-times.

Fat wood, pitch wood, lighter wood (whatever you wanna call it)

If you can get some, find some, or know how/where to find it. I would recommend this stuff above all other natural tinder.

Did somebody say bacon?????

Birch bark.

I could not get this stuff worked enough to take any spark from any of my steels. This bark was kinda old so I don't know if that made a difference, but it took off on an open flame. This one was a fail for me.

Alder wood.

The shavings took off pretty quick. If the wood is entirely dry when you find it out in the bush I would say use it; shave it to make some small stuff then feather it to give it something a little more for the flame to grab onto.

Dead head flower.

Another fail on this one. It might work well as a spark catcher to bring to another tinder ball, or bird's nest. Other than that though, it would not catch fire by itself.



Burning the left overs.

Thanks for the challenge!!!!!!!!

 

[TheAznInvazn]

Sounds like a good time!
I'll be up to try this out!

I'm in

Quick question though
Does light refraction include magnifying glasses?

 

[FCFER]

#125 Accepts this challenge!!

 

[loudbay]

I'm a big BKT fan and have been lurking for a while. Of course, secretly wanting a BH#. I'm in for sure.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[pokesalad]

I'll start things off here. Here is my first fire method. I used Hickory as my tinder. This was my BK2's first time out so she is a little camera shy. I shaved down some curls of Hickory onto a leaf. I also used the edge and scraped a bit into the pile. I ended up taking them off the leaf because the whole thing kept moving and it got really annoying. I used my crappy LMF ferro rod to get things going. I am definitely going to get a different ferro rod but this was my first so there is always a learning curve. Also this is only the second time I have started a fire using a ferro rod and I have never even attempted ANY of the other methods but I want that Beckerhead number so watch out here I come!

Fire #1 = Ferro rod and hickory shavings (curls)

Ok Time for the next fire. I attempted this a couple days ago but had no luck. I gathered a pile of cattail fuzz and got it to smoke but that's all it would do. I remembered seeing a bird's nest in a bush I chopped down last week so I went and found it and put some of the remaining cattail fuzz inside it. After about 30 minutes of trying to get it going I was about to give up but a small breeze kicked up and she just started getting a good smoke to it. I blew on it a little harder than I had been and she just got hotter and hotter and the next thing I knew i had flame. I am learning that I actually need to give these fires quite a bit more air than I thought would be practical. I guess I just need to learn to read the fire better. Anyway this was my first fire using a magnifying glass and it wasn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be but I do think I could do it again if I had to. Sorry for the green pool but it's that time of the year and I don't cover my pool.

Fire #2= Magnifying glass and cattail fuzz in a bird's nest.

 

[whereismyclock]

#134 will give it a go