Fire saw with sunflower stem

[Galemys]

I saw this over at paleoplanet, with a link to a short video:

http://p081.ezboard.com/making-fire...lanet69529frm65.showMessage?topicID=229.topic

Never tried sunflower but it looks a lot easier in the video than my own bamboo fire saw efforts. Now why isn´t there one single garden in my neighbourhood with sunflowers this year?

Tom

 

[Greg]

I saw this over at paleoplanet, with a link to a short video:

http://p081.ezboard.com/making-fire...lanet69529frm65.showMessage?topicID=229.topic

Never tried sunflower but it looks a lot easier in the video than my own bamboo fire saw efforts. Now why isn´t there one single garden in my neighbourhood with sunflowers this year?

Tom

That looks very good and alot less effort than the bow drill method.
All I need to do now is go and chop my mate's 8ft Sunflower down and dry it out..

I wonder if it would work with a dried yucca flower stem?

 

[Stew]

I wonder if it would work with a dried yucca flower stem?

Give it a try and let us know!

 

[Greg]

I have never tried a fire saw so I don't know what I would use for the saw?

 

[British Red]

Another bit of stem Greg.

Yukka makes a great drill but I'm not sure if its hollow enough for a saw

Red

 

[rich59]

That was impressive! It doesn't look easy though.

 

[Galemys]

I have never tried a fire saw so I don't know what I would use for the saw?

The guy in the video uses a piece of wood. I don´t have any experience with sunflower stems but expect them to be a bit weak.

Tom

 

[leon-b]

The guy in the video uses a piece of wood. I don´t have any experience with sunflower stems but expect them to be a bit weak.

Tom

You'd be suprised how strong sunflower stem actually is, mine snapped in the wind and i played about with it a bit and it seemed very strong
leon

 

[rich59]

I noted that it looked like the guy in the video was in a hot, dry environment that must help a lot.

I have tried sunflower as hand drill and it was too fragile for me.

I also thought his intensive blowing after the rubbing was interesting. It was as if he didn't get a coal made of powder but perhaps got a bit of the stem to glow and needed blowing to expand it.

Which side of the stem did he rub? It looks like he rubbed the outer/ convex side.

Why did he use the wood that he used?

 

[Stew]

Why did he use the wood that he used?

The wood he used was black locust but he says he also tried "juniper, elderberry and cherry with success"

Elder is one we're probably all familiar with and can get hold of easily enough.

I suspect the wood in this case isn't too critical as I agree with you that he didn't appear to get a coal.

If you look at when he rotates it towards the end to show us the 'coal' there doesn't look to be one there, just glowing and burnt stem.