Took some time today to practice the hand drill, I've not done this for ages and my hands are very much out of condition resulting in a nice blood blister appearing on my left palm.
Despite the blister i managed to get a few embers with the Yucca set that was kindly sent to me by Michael in the USA (2nd from top in the photo), in fact this is the best set I've ever used as i got an ember in less than 30 seconds on the two occasions i used the Yucca set today,
the rest of the time i was using Elder drills on either Clematis or Sycamore hearths, whilst it is a lot more work than the Yucca to produce an ember it is possible, but you certainly need the muscle memory to be right to do it time after time, i do hasten to add that not all the holes you see in the hearth boards pictured were created today.
All i need to do now to now is to re-accustom my hands to the hand drill method again, then regain and rebuild the muscle memory in my arms, harden my palms up again, even though they are full of callouses already, they are in the wrong places for fire lighting with the hand drill and then, well start lighting fires i guess.
.
Despite the blister i managed to get a few embers with the Yucca set that was kindly sent to me by Michael in the USA (2nd from top in the photo), in fact this is the best set I've ever used as i got an ember in less than 30 seconds on the two occasions i used the Yucca set today,
the rest of the time i was using Elder drills on either Clematis or Sycamore hearths, whilst it is a lot more work than the Yucca to produce an ember it is possible, but you certainly need the muscle memory to be right to do it time after time, i do hasten to add that not all the holes you see in the hearth boards pictured were created today.
All i need to do now to now is to re-accustom my hands to the hand drill method again, then regain and rebuild the muscle memory in my arms, harden my palms up again, even though they are full of callouses already, they are in the wrong places for fire lighting with the hand drill and then, well start lighting fires i guess.
.
