Fire; blowing on it...

[Keith_Beef]

A little thing I found out this weekend.

The ground was wet, so I didn't really want to kneel down to blow on the glowing tinder to get it hotter, so I made a pipe.

There was an elder tree nearby, with several 1/2" diameter dead shoots sticking straight up from a near-horizontal branch.

Dead shoots are easy to spot (even in November, when there are almost no leaves left on the tree), since they are usually broken clean off at the tip, have no side shoots to them, and have little or no bark.

I took one of these, about 1/2" diameter and 15" long, and carefully cut through the wood *without cutting into the pith* about 1" from the thicker end. Them I took hold of the pith, and firmly but gently pulled it. This got me a nice long tube. Then I soaked one end in water, so it stood up to the heat a bit better, and used this to blow the glowing tinder into life.

The pith can be used to make fishing floats, or to demonstrate static electricity to (not so) small children.


Keith.

 

[Matt]

Although it is fairly rare, there have been cases of poisoning from elder especially using the shoots as blow guns - it's not life threatening, something akin to the irritation some people get to the berries.

Something to be aware of at least

I'll dig up the reference later if i can - its from a very useful little book called 'deadly harvest'.

 

[george]

if I'm using a fire bow I always seem to have a problem getting from the glowing ember to the tinder bursting in to flame bit, no matter how hard I blow, and no matter what tinder I use! I discovered a useful trick at the weekend that worked brilliantly though.

You may have come across the old metal tea bag thingys before - we had one kicking around in the kitchen drawer for years. you know the thing - a perforated metal ball about the size of a squash ball with a short chain on it that splits in to two halves. You fill it with loose tea, drop it in the pot and then take it out when your tea's ready to stop it getting stewed.

Well once I got an ember from the bow I transferred it to some tinder fungus, wrapped it a mixture of bog cotton and shredded birch bark, stuffed it in the metal tea bag thingy and whirled it round my head - it worked like a dream. The tinder burst in to flame after about 5 seconds!

The only problem was then opening the ball to get the burning tinder out, if I left it in too long it went out. It seems like when you're whirling it theres plenty of air gets to it but when you stop the holes block with ash and it goes out. I "modified" the catch with some pliers so I can flick it open with the tip of my knife - it works great. It's now a permanent addition to my possibles bag and my wife wants another one for herself.

dead chuffed

George

 

[Gary]

George sounds like you not holding your tinder bundle tightly enough when blowing - thats why your tea bag trick work because the tinder was compressed around the coal.

When blowing your bundle remember to keep feeding the coal - ie keep pressing the bundle in around it otherwise your coal ends up running out of fuel and burning away at empty air.