Fire piston mod.

[Brixton]

Before any of you go "Oh no not Brixton whingeing about his fire piston again"
I have actually done something that works.

I have had problems with my fire piston

First I couldn't get it to work at all then with advice from folk here I did get it working reliably if I used charcloth. or pre-singed tinder fungus.
Secondly I had a problem with the amount of charcloth/tinder to put in it. If I put in too much it wouldn't work at all but if I put in too little it seemed to get sucked out of the recess.(and flew away if I was using the piston out doors).
This was boring as I could see my potential roaring fire/cup of tea floating off into the sunset.

I needed to do something about this.

After much pondering on the sanity of my plan and worrying if I was going to trash £60.00 worth of tool I did the following.

step 1 I made a pokeing stick out of fuse wire to remove ember from recess
step 2 I took my Dremel and the smallest drill bit possible and drilled a roughly 15mm. deep hole in bottom of recess.
step 3 I inserted a dressmaking needle into hole
step 4 I cut the excess needle off flush with end of piston rod with my Leatherman.

Now I can put a small amount of charcloth in the recess and use my piston outside without the ember flying away on the breeze as it's retained by the needle. Then I pick it out with my wire and introduce it to a larger bit of tinder fungus.

Works every time.

Result very happy Brixton. "Hoorah!"

I really really like my mod.

However.

I AM NOT RECOMMENDING YOU DO THE SAME.

I will not be held responsible if you do this and it turns out to be crap for you.

 

[Ogri the trog]

Well done Brixton,
You followed the ideal of my signiture,
You Improvised with the tools you had, and the materials that were available
You Adapted your existing equipment, and to the new situation
And you Overcame the annoying habit of some trivial thing to constantly get you down.

Well done again.....now if I could just come up with such simple fixes for some of my problems.

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[Jeff Wagner]

Very ingenious. One word of caution however. There is a cross hole through the shaft directly behind the tinder cavity. If you drill through the cavity into this hole you may experience loss of compression or cut through the gasket causing it to come unwound.

 

[Brixton]

One word of caution however. There is a cross hole through the shaft directly behind the tinder cavity. If you drill through the cavity into this hole you may experience loss of compression or cut through the gasket causing it to come unwound.

Oh bugger
Oh well too late to undo it now

 

[Jeff Wagner]

I can always replace the piston shaft if necessary. All is not lost.

 

[Schwert]

Or possibly remove the needle stub, put a bit of epoxy in the tiny hole and put the needle stub back. If the needle stub transects the hole for the gasket string you would need to shorten it though.

I break off pieces of fungus that sort of need a bit of a wedge into the piston recess to keep it in place. I have lost a few but most stay wedged.

 

[oops56]

Well epoxy to hold pin is o k in this day & age But i like to keep it like the old days maybe pine pitch to keep it in.