I've decided to go back to basics as I feel that I slightly got ahead of myself. I also, for some strange reason, didn't start with matches... I'm not quite sure why. But the important thing is I've realised I was going ahead of myself and I stepped back and principle is all that matters. So I went out in the garden for the day with the idea of creating fire solely by the most basic method of making fire: matches. It transpired that cotton doesn't actually catch but disintegrates upon contact with match flame, so I couldn't make a fire at what I'd consider the most basic level, with a match and cotton wool. The next best thing I could do was to light a fire by match and birch bark. I wish I could have lit the cotton by match as I'm trying to get down to the simplest most domestic way of creating fire, but obviously only sparks work against cotton, which would mean using the firesteel. Anyway, so I made a smaller fire by match and by birch bark. I told myself that I'd scale everything down and make everything simpler, so I made a smaller platform and worked with two smaller handfuls of birch twig kindling. Obviously the fire was lit with ease. The problem of fire maintenance still remains, however, although I think I'm getting better at handling my kindling. It's not all bad, really, I'm getting very comfortable with fires and have made several of them now.
As you can see in the video the flame rises up through the kindling well and there is a rapidly accelerating plume of smoke. I let the flames consume the kindling for a little longer this time before I put on a handful of pencil thick fuel. That's as far as I went. As I said, I wanted to keep everything basic today, so I only worked with that small amount of fuel. The fire roars for a few minutes and, with added oxygen, dances through the slightly thicker fuel. But as the seconds go by the platform turns to ash. That's the main problem I'm having with my fires. You can see in the video that the platform and kindling turns to ash very quickly and there is then no structure whatsoever to the fire, rendering it an incoherent mess. I'm not convinced it's supposed to do that so quickly as the point of the platform is to create a base of sustainable embers.
[video=youtube_share;xIB1HOKQZYk]http://youtu.be/xIB1HOKQZYk[/video]
Thoughts?
Edit: I've decided I'm not nearly as ready for the flint and steel as I had thought. It was nice to try it at the meet, but I think I'm going to spend a few more months with matches and firesteel and get to grips with fires until I start on the ancient methods.
I also made a crude but effective prototype of a Mears' bushcraft pot hanger and practiced some carving. It's made a little differently than the one you see in Ray's pot hanger feature video, particularly the surface on which the hanger sits. I really enjoyed making this project and I improvised a little bit as I only had a distant shot of Ray's enlarged version to draw from. I'm getting better at making hooks, better than the tent pegs I made at camp recently, anyway. This is actually my first bushcraft contraption with multiple components.