Just a bit of firestarting fun

foxyrick

foxyrick

British Pork
Joined
Dec 26, 2006
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2,254
...Tinder??? Why not just use the wood?

I've done this one a few times and it's never failed yet. You just need a dry piece of wood; battoning might help if its wet. Probably not a good method if it's raining and blowing a gale, but otherwise...


First, get a clean, flat, dry edge of a stick. The wood I used this time was battoned from some really nasty-hard stuff I found. No idea what it is but it's hard!

Slice an edge of wood to get it reasonably flat.

Using the knife edge perpendicular to the flat, scrape backwards and forwards to build up a little pile of very fine shavings. Not cut curls like a feather stick; much finer.

Then just add a few thin slices to the mix for larger fuel and a strike or two from a ferro rod does the rest.

There's four short movie clips of this in action in my office - it's raining again and I don't want to go outside. I cut the bit where my wife shouted, "What are you up to, it's noisy?" Little did she know what came after the scraping...

Please let me know if these clips don't work. They are a bit naff; my digital camera only does 30 seconds of 320x240. I can't even upload to youtube at the moment because my ISP is playing silly beggars and blocking my bandwidth! I'm kicking them out next week. Anyway...

First three clips - scraping the wood and getting a pile:

http://www.lord-fox.net/bf/MVI_4061.mpg


http://www.lord-fox.net/bf/MVI_4066.mpg


http://www.lord-fox.net/bf/MVI_4067.mpg


Final clip - man makes fire:

http://www.lord-fox.net/bf/MVI_4073.mpg


And a picture showing the pile of shavings, just about:

fire1.jpg
 
nice. i find that with the thin edges i put on my knives i can sometimes slightly roll/dull the edge scraping hard woods. that's why i am happy to spend a minute or two squaring and sharpening a section of the spine of my knife for scraping (also good for smoothing the grip portion of a walking stick or smoothing out a wood object)
 
siguy said:
nice. i find that with the thin edges i put on my knives i can sometimes slightly roll/dull the edge scraping hard woods. that's why i am happy to spend a minute or two squaring and sharpening a section of the spine of my knife for scraping (also good for smoothing the grip portion of a walking stick or smoothing out a wood object)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I find that on some of them. My NWA Forum knife didn't mind this treatment whatsoever. No roll or noticeable loss of sharpness after enough scraping for a couple of fires. However the spine isn't as sharp and I've not got around to sorting it out yet.

The Fallkniven has a sharper spine and throws sparks more easily with the 'push short and hard' method I tend to use. It's the first time I've done the scraping with it though, and it did suffer just a little rolling. A quick stropping sorted it out though. I did think the VG-10 would have taken it in its stride though.

Funny, but it hadn't occurred to me to use the spine for making the shavings :confused: I've just tried it with the Fallkniven and it worked, though not quite as well as the edge. Well enough to do the job though and saves rolling the edge.

Thanks Siguy :thumbup:
 
I've been a woodworker since I was 14.... that's nearly 36 years now! Using scrapers on wood is old hat to me - you actually end up with very fine shavings (if you get dust, it's because the scraper is dull!).

Why am I telling you this? Because I feel like an idiot for never thinking of doing what you've done! It seems I never let my woodshop knowledge translate into my outdoor adventures, especially since, when making fire, we're dealing with wood! duh...

Very good post. Thanks for that :)
 
StretchNM said:
I've been a woodworker since I was 14.... that's nearly 36 years now! Using scrapers on wood is old hat to me - you actually end up with very fine shavings (if you get dust, it's because the scraper is dull!).

Why am I telling you this? Because I feel like an idiot for never thinking of doing what you've done! It seems I never let my woodshop knowledge translate into my outdoor adventures, especially since, when making fire, we're dealing with wood! duh...

Very good post. Thanks for that :)
Click to expand...

I got the idea when I was making some wooden scales for a SAK. I scraped them smooth and noticed the nice pile of very fine shavings and thought: that looks very flammable...

Seconds later it was aflame!

It wasn't the first time I had scraped wood either though, so don't feel too bad.
 
Cool, I've done that a couple of times myself. A little harder to light than fatwood, but lights all the same.
 
very cool... :thumbup: a friend and i, were just doing that last night with some fatwood...:D
 
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