A few months back I remember trying out the fire plough for a few days and managing to produce a few embers using a weathered piece of dead sycamore I think it was. Recently I collected a variety of woods to experiment with (lime, horse chestnut, hazel, willow, poplar, western red cedar). Most of these woods were seasoned from freshly cut wood before being put to the test. I found that with the lime and horse chestnut, I couldn't even begin to create heat, as no matter how hard I tried right from the get go, the woods would glaze over and polish. As for the other woods, no embers. I've been getting loads of smoke and huge piles of useless flakes of charred wood. It's a curious phenomenon which I haven't seen with any of the drilling methods, these large "flakes" of disintegrated wood, instead of that nice fine powder we're after. Anyhow, I have some well seasoned sycamore now to try again and I'm hoping it'll work like it did last time. The fire plough is a tricky beast!
Has anybody anything to share on this topic, woods you have had success with?
Has anybody anything to share on this topic, woods you have had success with?
