Was out for the weekend with my son at my local ood and we managed to achieve a couple firsts for us.
First of all my son actually managed to get a fire going by using a flint and steel I'd bought from Dave Budd a couple weeks ago. I'd shown him how to gather the tinder, in this case some honeysuckle bark, showed him how to use the flint and left him to it. An added incentive for him was that a hot dinner depended on his success
well after a few mis-strikes and a grazed knuckle the spark caught on the char cloth and a couple minutes later we had a nice blaze going
My first was I got a flame going on my very first attempt at using a bow and drill. I'd made a drill and base board from a nice dry piece of Larch just as an experiment to see what it was like, the bow and hand block was from Beech.
Well I set to getting it going and after a couple false starts and a few rapped knuckles from when the dril flipped round and whacked me to my suprise I got smoke followed by a nice hot ember which successfully managed to transfer to my tinder and blow into flame!!! My son was suitably impressed with me but then promptly challenged me to do it again and he'd take pic's on his phone. Well I managed it again (jammy git I was!!) Only problem was his phone died on him at the critical moment as my tinder burst into flame so no pic of that moment but a couple of me hard at work and blowing into the tinder.
Just as a matter of note I found that Larch was a bit soft to use as a base board as the drill ate into it rather quickly and I'd have to carve a new hole for each attempt. So I've got some birch which I'm drying out at the moment which I'll give a go ion a week or so.
First of all my son actually managed to get a fire going by using a flint and steel I'd bought from Dave Budd a couple weeks ago. I'd shown him how to gather the tinder, in this case some honeysuckle bark, showed him how to use the flint and left him to it. An added incentive for him was that a hot dinner depended on his success
well after a few mis-strikes and a grazed knuckle the spark caught on the char cloth and a couple minutes later we had a nice blaze going My first was I got a flame going on my very first attempt at using a bow and drill. I'd made a drill and base board from a nice dry piece of Larch just as an experiment to see what it was like, the bow and hand block was from Beech.
Well I set to getting it going and after a couple false starts and a few rapped knuckles from when the dril flipped round and whacked me to my suprise I got smoke followed by a nice hot ember which successfully managed to transfer to my tinder and blow into flame!!! My son was suitably impressed with me but then promptly challenged me to do it again and he'd take pic's on his phone. Well I managed it again (jammy git I was!!) Only problem was his phone died on him at the critical moment as my tinder burst into flame
so no pic of that moment but a couple of me hard at work and blowing into the tinder.
Just as a matter of note I found that Larch was a bit soft to use as a base board as the drill ate into it rather quickly and I'd have to carve a new hole for each attempt. So I've got some birch which I'm drying out at the moment which I'll give a go ion a week or so.
