Drying hearth board 'by' bow drilling.

[Rabbit leg]

If I can't get an ember outside with wood I have just found, then I take it home and dry it out. I can then usually get an ember no problem.

This means that the wood needs to be drier to work in the field. And not because of wood type or bad technique.

Has anyone tried drying the wood by bow drilling slowly? Depending on the moisture content I would assume it would take over an hour of slow drilling. But that is just a guess.

The smaller the pieces the faster it would dry.
I am hoping that others have already tried this, to save me wasting lots of hours experimenting.

 

[Toddy]

When I demonstrated firelighting day in day out, the boards were left in a cold shed overnight. They got damp, they really did.
If they were reburnt in though, as a kind of preview to the main demo, I found they worked. If I didn't do that, they were a damp squib.
It's amazing how much heat you can generate by bow drilling, but you can go a bit too far and fire harden the hole, and then you have to scrape it back again from the polished bits before it works.

I admit I haven't tried from sodden wet wood, I usually manage to find something like elder that splits really easily along it's length and use the inner side.

Interesting to hear how others manage

M

 

[Rabbit leg]

www.primitiveways.com/fire_damp_materials.html

This article is interesting to read. But they make it sound so simple and quote 'minutes'.

I've done 'minutes'. Next step 'hours'.