Tinder curls (May hurt 56K'ers)

[Simon E]

I recently bought myself a Fallkniven A1 and after using it to do some extensive limbing on some pruned trees I fell in love with it. Dispite being sharp, its not exactly cut out for carving or other fine work. This led to some concern about making fine shavings from the heartwood of split logs in the event that I find myself in this situation.

While I was playing out today I thought it would be easy to make acceptable tinder if the wood was scored first.

Here are the components for the experiment.

Fallkniven A1
Fire Steel
Split of Cherrywood

Here you can see the scores made with the point of the knife.

The pile of shavings with the Fire steel for size reference. This was taken from the rather hard heart wood.

Softwood is a doddle, here is a typical shaved roll.

Reverse twist the roll and you get something like this.

A small pile of softwood shavings which will burn for about 30 seconds.

So, if you are out and about and only want to take a single 'do-all' blade, the A1 might be a nice choice.

 

[gregorach]

Looking pretty good. Can you light them directly with your firesteel?

 

[Simon E]

Yes, quite easily in fact, not as easily as say grass, but it usually averages out to 2-3 strikes for a live flame.

 

[Ogri the trog]

Simon,
Thanks for the heads up, not about the knife (though it is a nice example) but of the pre-scoring idea to make the multi-roll shavings, I'd never had thought of trying that method. :You_Rock_

ATB

Ogri the trog

 

[Simon E]

Added some google video, the quality is naff because I tried to make it accessible to all. Anyone with 128K Broadband should be fine.

This was done using a peice of Pine.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1618781026416227624

enjoy!

 

[Bigman]

I didn't realise it was as easy as that.

 

[SiriusB]

Oooh very nice, looks like a good sized knife too. Might get me one once I know how to sharpen properly. My new Frosts Mora arrived today so I shall be abusing it as soon as I lay my grubby mits on some wet and dry.

SiriusB

 

[Simon E]

SiriusB,

Its so easy to sharpen a Fallkniven (Or any other convex for that matter) it almost feels like cheating. Fallknivens from the factory have a tiny secondary bevel. I usually just sharpen that into the convex and havent seen any performance loss and its much easier to keep shaving sharp in the field.