"New" firestarting technique

Jaeger

Jaeger

Joined
Feb 27, 1999
Messages
543
I caught part of a segment of a show called "Wild Things" last night. A film crew was in some remote village in what I believe was South America.

They showed (very breifly) one of the villagers starting a fire for a feast. The man had what appeared to be a wooden pole suspended over some tinder. He had what looked like a length of cordage maybe a yard long with a wooden handle on either end. He had the cordage slung under the pole and was rapidly pulling it back and forth, burning a groove in the pole. That's all I could see. It then went to a shot of the man blowing the tinder into flame. You could see several grooves burned into the pole from prior use. I've never seen or heard of this technique before. Is anyone familiar with it?
 
Its called the Fire Thong, which sort of sounds like a burlap G-string to me!

We tried for two years to get this to work with North American materials, with no success. Rattan seems to be the key for the thong.
 
It is the fire thong and I have only heard of a few guys getting this thing going. I hear Rattan is the best material for doing this and for us non-natives would probably take a whole lot of practice. I have heard guys try bamboo with no luck and lots of materials found in North America, once again with no luck.


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Yol bolsun,
Jamie
 
around here in the north west I carry some cotton balls dipped in bee's wax or vasoline. it just takes a spark from a commercial flint and steel to get it started and burns about 20 minutes. I also carry some miners carbide(keep it sealed) for starting fire in very wet conditions and a couple of film canisters with machined pieces of magnesium.
Originally posted by Jaeger:
I caught part of a segment of a show called "Wild Things" last night. A film crew was in some remote village in what I believe was South America.

They showed (very breifly) one of the villagers starting a fire for a feast. The man had what appeared to be a wooden pole suspended over some tinder. He had what looked like a length of cordage maybe a yard long with a wooden handle on either end. He had the cordage slung under the pole and was rapidly pulling it back and forth, burning a groove in the pole. That's all I could see. It then went to a shot of the man blowing the tinder into flame. You could see several grooves burned into the pole from prior use. I've never seen or heard of this technique before. Is anyone familiar with it?
Click to expand...



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Ron
 
I've seen similar methods used in the Northeast. The familiar one is the firebow, where the thong is stretched out with a bow.
This lets you use one hand to work the thong.
A number of soft woods will work with this
method.
The harder alternative is to just spin a
small branch between your palms! I've seen
several people who can do this consistantly
with gathered materials on demand (if the
day isn't too wet). The best material for
this seems to be Goldenrod, or something
similar.
I can do the firebow thing, but I've never managed the sticks between the palms. There
is a reason why any culture that had steel, used flint and steel!
There are a number of pamplets out on all
of these methods, for the buckskninning crew.
Ragnar
ragweedforge.com

"A knifeless man is a lifeless man.." -old Nordic proverb
 
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