Making Fire with Bamboo Sparks!

Today I stumbled across some research performed by Ed Read on the use of bamboo to make sparks, similar to flint with steel, but bamboo instead of carbon steel. Then I found this video of him demonstrating the use of bamboo with a piece of flint in which he lights up a piece of charred cloth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afu4SJxNMcY

This came as a huge surprise to me. I thought many of you will find this as amazing as I do.

And here's a brief video of Ed making sparks with bamboo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULjBFddXN6Q

Here's a link to more info:

http://bushcraftusa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4010

See post # 13 for Ed Read's own explanation:

http://bushcraftusa.com/forum/showpo...0&postcount=13

Excellent research Ed! Thanks for sharing it with us. I'll need to begin experimenting with bamboo!

That's pretty amazing. I would never have thought bamboo could be used that way. Gotta love a learning moment. Thanks for posting that!!!

That is pretty cool. In the first vid it looked almost as if the char cloth was being lit via friction and not sparks. If that is the case, I wonder if other woods (I know bamboo is a grass) would work. This calls for some 'sperimenting.

Glad you liked it as much as I did. Yes, it seems to open yet another path to fire: The use of friction to ignite charred cloth.

Like most of the rest of us, I've never personally seen the sparks made by bamboo. But the second video shows that some light is being produced along with the evident heat that is sufficient to ignite charred cloth. It seems reasonable to use the word "spark" to refer to flashes of hot light. The best proof would be to determine whether small fragments of the bamboo are actually being burned as they're broken off, as in the case of carbon steel.

Quartz will flash when scratched by another piece of quartz, but there's not any heat associated with the light. I use the word "flash" to refer to that light since there's not any heat. I've personally made this type of flash. This is called the Triboluminescent Effect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLkIoB5Iv5o

Definitely some 'sperimenting needed in this area. Even if there's not a spark, but yet the friction is sufficient to ignite the charred cloth, that's very valuable knowledge.

Static electricity. Where's my balloon?

I thought the tribolumenescent effect was what happened after the tribe smoked peyote.