Hand Drill (!), Spoon, and Hike

F

Ferrousknight

Joined
Aug 7, 2009
Messages
251
First and foremost, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! This morning, I finally got a coal from a hand drill. I was using mullein on mullein. The drill was a long, fairly narrow stalk, stripped clean and rubbed smooth with a river stone. I don't think rubbing it smooth did anything to how easily I could spin it (compared to unsmoothed previous attempts), but it sure hurt my hands less. The hearthboard was the very base of an extremely thick mullein stalk split in half. The tinder bundle is some red cedar bark that I picked up while hiking last week.

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The coal is glowing nicely because it was breezy out. :D

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Normally my tinder bundle would have been bigger, but this well dried red cedar bark is very easy to blow into flame. In fact, I had previously been trying to make a coal carrier with some. It kept bursting into flame with every bit of wind instead of smouldering.

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Success!

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I should also add that I have not tried a bow drill in years and have in fact never made a coal with one (looking back, I had made terrible choices of woods and the drill had become polished every time).

Second up is my second spoon (after the one that got me this shiny gold membership :))

I batonned a chunk of seasoned tulip poplar off a log from the firewood pile weeks ago and started carving. I finally finished it up the other night. This has a mineral oil finish and is more decorative than anything. I really need to move to hardwoods so I can actually use them in the kitchen.

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I've been doing a bunch of day hikes lately. With the leaves gone, the pictures aren't quite as nice- so I only have a few worth sharing.

This is a big rock that I like to climb up on top of and rest. Apparently I'm not the only one, because a passing hiker and her father came up to join me. We ended up talking about good trails and the AT for quite a while.

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We're running low on fall foliage. Nearly everything is bare, but you see a little yellow once in a while.

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I am really not liking the early sunsets. It's just wrong that I have to head for my car at 4:30 lest I be out in the dark. On the other hand, it sometimes gives me nice pictures.

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Thanks for looking. :D
 
Great job on both counts.

Definitely the best sperm shaped spoon I have ever seen. :D

Dont take it as a bash, just immediately looked like a sperm to me. Fine work.
 
NDWoods said:
Great job on both counts.

Definitely the best sperm shaped spoon I have ever seen. :D

Dont take it as a bash, just immediately looked like a sperm to me. Fine work.
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Hah! I stared at it so long while working on it that it just never occurred to me. I see what you mean though. :thumbup:
 
Awesome man! Never heard of a mullein hearth and wouldn't have thought it possible given the pith, but you did it! Great job!

Also that is quite the spoon! Very fancy. I'd be worry of biting my spoon head right off because I usually get so hungry when I'm in the outdoors :) You clearly have quite a bit of carving talent!
 
Great Work on the hand drill!!! I worked hard on it all last fall and was only getting a coal about every tenth or more time I tried. That was a really nice coal too, congrats!
 
The pics are stunning of your spoon. The pic with the moon is awesome.

Great job on getting the fire with Mullein.

Bryan
 
Since no one asked.....What knife did you use to make everything? :p

Great spoon too :thumbup:
 
batosai117 said:
Since no one asked.....What knife did you use to make everything? :p

Great spoon too :thumbup:
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The little S30V blade on my Leatherman Charge TTi (very much uncomfortable) and a carving tool (same one I used for the spoon contest spoon) for scooping out the bowl plus a whole lot of sandpaper and emery cloth. I roughed out the hook on top using a round rasp that I believe is meant for metal. The small teeth cut very slowly, but didn't apply enough pressure to snap the wood.

I made another coal with mullein on mullein this morning. This afternoon, I switched to a white cedar hearthboard. There was a slight learning curve and it didn't catch quite as easily as the mullein hearthboard. I didn't keep the drill going long enough for the first hole, and partway through round 2, it wore through the bottom. Here's my setup after burning in the second hole, but before notching it:

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And as it turns out, I didn't cut the notch deep enough for the second hole and/or a fiber broke loose partway through and scattered some of my charred wood dust.

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3rd time's the charm.

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And the best part? I didn't once get a blister today. I blistered terribly the first two tries. I think that smoothing up the drill with that rock made all the difference.
 
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WOW!!! AWESOME!!! On the hand drill, that technique still escapes me
WOW!!! AWESOME!!! On the spoon, that thing is gorgeous

Cool pics, and great post. Leatherman for carving? Who knew. Keep up the great pics, techs, and posts, it really good stuffe.

Moose
 
moosez45 said:
WOW!!! AWESOME!!! On the hand drill, that technique still escapes me
WOW!!! AWESOME!!! On the spoon, that thing is gorgeous

Cool pics, and great post. Leatherman for carving? Who knew. Keep up the great pics, techs, and posts, it really good stuffe.

Moose
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I didn't say the leatherman was good for carving. I got a blister on my thumb the day I did the bulk of the rough shaping. It's just all I really have (I'm not carving with a BK7). Well, I got the mora #1 in between carving the spoon and posting this so I think that will do better.

And, thank you. I have a big post on some volunteer trail work to put up, but there are tons of pics and I'm still sifting through them.
 
Alright, so here's another variation on a theme. It's getting harder to do these as the drill I've been using is wearing down a lot, so I need to go stock up. I find it much harder to apply downward pressure and make the transition from smoke to coal.

Anyway, today I used a piece of true tinder fungus (chaga) as my baseboard. Due to the small size, I used another piece of wood to hold it still. For my first attempt, I cut a depression in the top hoping that it would be easy to light and a full notch would be unnecessary. Another way to do this would be to burn in two holes with some overlap. Now maybe a full notch is unnecessary, but it turned out to be for me with the now much shorter drill.

Here's the burn-in

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Not the best picture, but we have ignition!

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The best part about using chaga is that the baseboard will catch from the lit coal. It is extremely hard to put out (unless you use water). I spent several minutes trying to scrape and cut all of the coals from the chaga so I could save the piece, but every miniscule spark that lands back on it starts another burning white patch. I ended up cutting away a whole third of the piece to salvage the remainder.

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