Making fire hasn't been the same for me since learning to make and use a bow drill a few years back. Making fire, and then using fire to make other tools or perform certain essential tasks, is the skill I have practiced the most over the past few years.
This afternoon, my son and I made a fire, heated a rock in the fire and used the rock to boil water, using a coal-burned bowl as the basin for the water (you can see some of the steam coming off the water). We used birch bark and a nest of tall dried grasses from the yard as tinder and gathered the fire wood from around our snow-covered yard.
Pictured:
-- a bow drill set I made this past summer (cedar), except for the bow, which I made this afternoon using a stick found in my yard and some cordage I had previously made out of artificial sinew (I don't have any real animal sinew and don't have enough dogbane to make much cordage)
-- coal-burned bowl (cedar) that I made a while back
-- RC-3 - my general use knife; an ESEE-6 was also used in making this fire
-- cast iron fire pit, in which to build the fire (at my son's suggestion), so as to not alarm our non-fire making neighbors
(Side note: unable to find much cedar in our local woods, two summers ago I bought some non-treated cedar fence posts and cut and split them into smaller pieces for practicing skills with my kids and teaching their Scout troop and friends how to make a bow drill set and coal burned bowls - it is a great wood to learn on and practice with.)
Keep warm.
This afternoon, my son and I made a fire, heated a rock in the fire and used the rock to boil water, using a coal-burned bowl as the basin for the water (you can see some of the steam coming off the water). We used birch bark and a nest of tall dried grasses from the yard as tinder and gathered the fire wood from around our snow-covered yard.
Pictured:
-- a bow drill set I made this past summer (cedar), except for the bow, which I made this afternoon using a stick found in my yard and some cordage I had previously made out of artificial sinew (I don't have any real animal sinew and don't have enough dogbane to make much cordage)
-- coal-burned bowl (cedar) that I made a while back
-- RC-3 - my general use knife; an ESEE-6 was also used in making this fire
-- cast iron fire pit, in which to build the fire (at my son's suggestion), so as to not alarm our non-fire making neighbors
(Side note: unable to find much cedar in our local woods, two summers ago I bought some non-treated cedar fence posts and cut and split them into smaller pieces for practicing skills with my kids and teaching their Scout troop and friends how to make a bow drill set and coal burned bowls - it is a great wood to learn on and practice with.)
Keep warm.
) we cut willow switches and pushed them into the pile of snow about 15-18 inches deep to determin the depth of the shelter walls. This way you can shape the interior in a uniform fashion, ensuring the walls were equally thick. I also shoved a willow switch through the middle of the shelter to the frozen groud so that i could determine where the center of the snowpile was. This would assist me as i hollow the quinzee out. Once it was hollowed out we used the snow fromt he inside of the shelter to build a windbreak and also we made the entrance facing some brush so the wind would be broken even more. I dug a trench in the middle of the shelter for the cold air to collect in while we were sleeping. there were two sleeping pads in the shelter and a small shelf for candles and glowsticks. Once inside the shelter we used the snowclaw and our backpacks as the door, which worked really well as we had no issues with wind or drafts all night.I cut an airhole with the junglas and lit a cigarette to see what the air movement was like in the shelter and upon seeing we had no issues with airflow we then crawled into our emergency bivy bags and went to sleep.
