Hi all,
So thought I'd share an experience I had recently at the Royal Norfolk show, where I was helping Dave Watson from woodland survival crafts do friction firefighting demos. There was another local guy called martin who was there to help demo too. We did bow drill and hand drill, and I did a few bamboo fire saw demos too, but maybe my technique isn't that good, I find it exhausting!
Over the two days I got through two base boards with two or three embers per hole. Just shows how often we were doing it! I learned a LOT from both dave and Martin and really refined my bow drill technique and learned the floating hand method on the hand drill.
On the first day it started raining heavily just after lunch. We had a lot of people saying 'Ha bet you can't start a fire now!' Our main response was 'if your willing to wait, I'll show you'. The rain didn't stop the fires, and if anything was more impressive, as everybody thought we would stop!
Anyway after 5 or 6 successful demos I decided to really challenge myself. It was one thing to get an ember with slightly damp materials...and entirely different with soaking wet and muddy. So I left one of my sets in the rain for about two hours just in the mud with rain coming down directly onto the top of the board and drill.
After it was satisfactorily sodden I shook the rain off and got to work. I knew I needed to dry the wood out first by drilling with very little pressure, so away I went, nice smooth action light pressure. After a few minutes, I started to add pressure little by little. Whisky Smoke was already rising and some light dust forming, so I pushed on, gradually adding more pressure, keeping the same slow steady rhythm. After about 5 minutes of this I figured it was time to go full pressure, and in about 1 minute of steady action I had my ember!
As you can see by the picture below, the ember hadn't formed in quite the expected place, but I think it's because my dust pile got a few direct drips off my shoulder in the process, and where the ember formed was more under my body which protected it more. I could have improved the dust collection by widening my V cut into the base board.
I simply piled the dust onto my glowing section to get it going nicely, before moving it to the damp grass, which took after a few minutes of long blows.
I CHALLENGE YOU!!! To get your kit wet and give it a go! It's very rewarding!
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So thought I'd share an experience I had recently at the Royal Norfolk show, where I was helping Dave Watson from woodland survival crafts do friction firefighting demos. There was another local guy called martin who was there to help demo too. We did bow drill and hand drill, and I did a few bamboo fire saw demos too, but maybe my technique isn't that good, I find it exhausting!
Over the two days I got through two base boards with two or three embers per hole. Just shows how often we were doing it! I learned a LOT from both dave and Martin and really refined my bow drill technique and learned the floating hand method on the hand drill.
On the first day it started raining heavily just after lunch. We had a lot of people saying 'Ha bet you can't start a fire now!' Our main response was 'if your willing to wait, I'll show you'. The rain didn't stop the fires, and if anything was more impressive, as everybody thought we would stop!
Anyway after 5 or 6 successful demos I decided to really challenge myself. It was one thing to get an ember with slightly damp materials...and entirely different with soaking wet and muddy. So I left one of my sets in the rain for about two hours just in the mud with rain coming down directly onto the top of the board and drill.
After it was satisfactorily sodden I shook the rain off and got to work. I knew I needed to dry the wood out first by drilling with very little pressure, so away I went, nice smooth action light pressure. After a few minutes, I started to add pressure little by little. Whisky Smoke was already rising and some light dust forming, so I pushed on, gradually adding more pressure, keeping the same slow steady rhythm. After about 5 minutes of this I figured it was time to go full pressure, and in about 1 minute of steady action I had my ember!
As you can see by the picture below, the ember hadn't formed in quite the expected place, but I think it's because my dust pile got a few direct drips off my shoulder in the process, and where the ember formed was more under my body which protected it more. I could have improved the dust collection by widening my V cut into the base board.
I simply piled the dust onto my glowing section to get it going nicely, before moving it to the damp grass, which took after a few minutes of long blows.
I CHALLENGE YOU!!! To get your kit wet and give it a go! It's very rewarding!
