11.5 seconds! But I will come back to that.
I have been testing out some new drills.
Firstly teasel
This grows on a wild piece of ground that I have access to and I have cut a few stems and kept them in a shed there and occasionally try them out on the hearthboards I have there - elder and sycamore. Never had any joy. So I took some home a few weeks ago and stored them in the warm and then tried them out today on pine hearthboard. Firstly I tried it out gently with my usual ambling pace. The sign of a drill that will work is that once you get it up to smoking heat then it is really easy to keep it smoking before you put lots of energy in for a final burst of pressure and speed. Anyway it worked really well and I soon had a coal. More than that I got a real load of smoke from it like I have got from another favourite of mine - rose (more of that in a minute too).
Then I had a go at speed drilling. First I tried 4 passes and got a very good coal nicely at 16 to 18 seconds. So, the challenge of 3 passes. (I do cool it off between attempts so previous heat should not be a significant factor). First attempt - success in 13 seconds. Then a couple of failures before making a new depression.
This time I got a live coal in 11.5 seconds! My timing method remember is to look at the digital stopwatch facility on my watch that is laying next to me, wait till ~~.00. or ~~.30 seconds appears and then lean back to the drill and start drilling. I then drill the 3 or 4 passes before unbending and looking at the timer again. So more precise timing may have got it at 10.5 or 11 seconds, who knows.
On some attempts I partly filled the notch with previously made punk. On these occasions I did not succeeed. I only succeeded with a completely empty notch. I suspect that the sudden filling of the notch with hot punk allowed an updraft of air to fan the punk and allow it to catch quickly.
Attempts with two passes are not successful to date. A drier day in the summer might help?
Rose
A different story here. I have previously used some lovely straight lengths from a rambling rose in my garden and found excellent hand drill properties. This time I had harvested some nice straight lengths from some genuine wild English Roses growing on the rough ground previously mentioned. They turned out to be quite different. Firstly the wood was amazingly hard and difficult to cut. Once stripped and dried the first drill (about 1.2cm diam) would only produce smoke with significant effort and a coarse punk that even a match had a little difficulty lighting.
I tried again with a thicker stem. About 1.7cm this time. The punk was better but it remained hard to get smoke and I completely failed to get a coal.
I will dry it out some more and try again but I suspect I have found that different varieties of rose are not equal in their hand drilling properties.
