I've since moved past my issues with the ferro rod, I think. I've even gotten one fire started with charcloth! Thanks for all the help, you guys, I think I'm set for now. Practice, practice, practice!Quote:
Originally Posted by hunter63
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I've since moved past my issues with the ferro rod, I think. I've even gotten one fire started with charcloth! Thanks for all the help, you guys, I think I'm set for now. Practice, practice, practice!Quote:
Originally Posted by hunter63
I hope you would not rely on one item as you might lose it.
I carry a bIC Lighter in sandwich wrap in my pocket. A ferro rod and also a Magnesium Bar.
I also carry a camera negative film roll container filled with cotton balls saturated in petroleum jelly. I put one set in my pocket (the lighter), the ferro rod and petroleum jelly in bag and the magnesium bar on my knife sheath.
Just in case. I do this because in my area, I cannot rely on primitive fire making methods as the success rate is borderline.
When I go out, I keep the ferro rod in my pocket, but a large fire kit (matches, magnesium bar, lighter, charcloth, etc.) in my kit. If the ferro rod doesn't work out, I always have options, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokwan
Zack, your prep plans to have multiple types of fire starters and one relatively small Ferrocerium rod and blade (striker) on your person at all times and practice these methods is a very good IMO. If very small ferro-rod protect it from getting broken, vinyl tube or something. Years ago I was stuck twice with no fire starter and needed to borrow one in wet weather, extremely poor careless planning. Now I have multiple tucked around in my gear.
On a personal note I was semi joking with a outdoors friend about needing to practice "rubbing sticks" and he offered to blast a fire hose on me while I attempted "hand drill". Nice guy. For most of us that is an extremely frustrating skill to practice under ideal conditions. Bottom line if weather looks like it could get wet protect your tinder, gather and protect firewood and be very sure firestarter(s) are not lost or broken.
Thanks for the tips. The ferro rod is a good size one, but it's not too big. I have started a few fires with it, and I think I've got my technique down.Quote:
Originally Posted by TXyakr
I just read thru this thread again, lots of good ideas. 2 cents I might add that are obvious to most including Zack but might not be to some very new to fire starting.
1. BIC and similar plastic lighters are easily broken so protect them, I keep one in cook pot. Don't like to lend out once someone stepped on it while borrowing. Can theoretically still start a fire with empty lighter or broken if roller and tiny ferro rod still work but it is very difficult. Try with accelerant (pj) and cotton ball in an aluminum foil disposable roasting pan.
2. "Bird's nest" does not necessarily refer to a nest of a bird but bundle of kindling that can be easily held and blown to add oxygen after ember, sparks or char cloth etc has been placed in it. Then place on ground or logs if ground is wet, stack Twiggs around it etc (resembles very loose birds nest with ember as egg, see hundreds of YT videos).
Watched a "Pioneer" show on Nat Geo. Channel the "survivalist" lady had no char cloth with her flint and striker just sat there destroying most of flint into bundle of straw on ground. OH WELL! That's TV.
I saw that show to. I still don't know how she got that fire going the way she was doing it. I think it was a bit of movie magic personally. Like the camera man handing her a lighter. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by TXyakr
That coukd have been a really good show but it did kind of take a turn to the silly. IMHO.
I think it's a great idea to learn a primitive fire starting method like a bow drill. Having the knowledge and skill to start a fire with nothing on you is a huge psychological boost. That being said I always carry multiple fire starting methods when I go hiking, a bic lighter and cotton balls with petroleum jelly being my first choice. It's great to practice with all kinds of techniques in all kinds of weather, it only improves on your skill set. I like to go hiking to a lake not far from home. It's about 45 min up the mountain and I will ususally play around with different things when I am there.
I went hiking to a lake much further up the mountain. It was late July but I had run into snow about a kilometer from the saddle of the mountain and by the time I got down the other side to the lake I had been hiking for 8 hours, my boots were wet and I was sweaty. I wanted a fire to dry off and those are the times that you are going to start a fire the easiest and fastest way possible. A road flare would have been nice...or a flame thrower as some mentioned. I think I used cotton balls and petroleum jelly, plus a healthy amount of hand sanitizer lol. Whatever gets the damn fire up and going.
Building fires requires practice but it also requires patience. You need to gather all of the right material from tinder, to different stages of kindling etc. Nothing more frustrating than getting your fore going just to have it go out while you are running around trying to find more fuel to add to it. Preperation is key.
A bit of a reminder, even though you have practiced making fire the primitive way, please do not be sure that it can be done every time as it depends on the natural resources available in the area, weather conditions, and also altitude. Do not be over confident as when it fails, you lose the confidence which is never good in survival situation. Make sure you have something that works.
i agree tokwan having the skill sets of fire makeing is indeed important but one
must also remember that calories consumed doing it the old way , that is if your not
a expert at it than in a real survival situation modern methods are a must i,d say.
i have a small survival pouch a condor m16 utility pouch it has stormproof matches.
wetfire.a mimi bic,a 3/8thsx4in firesteel,and a push frictionfire steel device great for tight
places when needed and can it send out a shower of sparks.7.00 at wally world .
Yep..I am now to the extend of carrying a couple of road flares myself.......so that I can send out a signal to let people know where I am and at the same time, make a fire...hehehehehe...now where the hell is Hunter?
I have a fire starting kit, and sparks readily ignite dryer lint, and cotton balls. When you're out in the woods look for old stumps that the loggers cut the trees from, a lot of these have very pitchy sides and an ax or a hatchet will cut pieces of this off in a hurry, a knife can shave off pieces of those and when set on a ball of cotton or dryer lint, will catch and you'll have a nice fire. Works for me every time.
Work if the three were pine....and you can find lighter pine, or fat wood in the stumps.Quote:
Originally Posted by scumbucket
You are correct, works well even if wet....the resin will burn like crazy.
went out in the grove again today rubbed 2 bics together just kiddin used charcol and twigs aand some strike anywhere matches.
9,degrees at 10am but did go up to 18,degrees. those coals are stiil hot as i post cause i just came in a few minutes ago. i made some coffee
and hungout with the dog awhile in the tent it was nice and i,ll be back out tomorrow to do breakfast.
Have fun! Good to hear another success story!Quote:
Originally Posted by hayshaker
Now that is funny, I don't care who you are......Quote:
Originally Posted by hayshaker
I'll extend the same offer to anyone that needs/wants fat wood as I did to Zack.
PM me if interested.
Have gallon baggies of shavings, "matches", and chunks.
everyone talks about FATWOOD whats wrong with skinnywood? not that i,m PC or anything.
Don't have the "skinny" on skinny wood......just fat wood.....
In order to generate enough heat to have an exothermic reaction calories must be expended. There is simply not enough caloric content in skinny wood to generate the required amount of excitation to result in combustion, therefore fatwood is called for.Quote:
Originally Posted by hayshaker
Okay..let me try on slimwood.
LOL!Quote:
Originally Posted by crashdive123
That has got to be the most well thought out scientific reply I've ever read!
Yeah. I'd have to give that response this week's wordsmith award. I thunk you hit the sweet spot on that one.
No ship?........Quote:
Originally Posted by crashdive123
I did trade with him recently. Everything went great, in my opinion. I did end up sending him my end of the deal (a bunch of birch bark) a little late, but after all the snow we had not too long ago, I figured that I should let it dry out. Anyway, I'd recommend trading with him in a heartbeat! I'll trade some river-birch bark with any who wants to experiment or get a new type of tinder. Just PM me!Quote:
Originally Posted by MrFixIt
You know swapping out various types of tinders, drills, hearth boards and what not sounds like a cool idea.
I have been playing with hand drills lately. Horse weed on willow didn't work. Horse weed on red cedar produced the dust and smoke. But, I think we lack the technique yet. Brazilian Pepper on red cedar produced dust and lots of smoke. I have some dog fennel drying for a spindle. I got lots of smoke on some dried out strangler fig for a hearth last night. But, I burned right through it with the horse weed spindle. I may go out and get some black elderberry for a spindle this weekend.
While we are out gathering these materials, we could gather enough to barter for other materials which may be very common in the areas you frequent. And swap that for something that you don't often have time to go gather at the appropriate time or isn't even available in your area. But, you would like to experiment with it anyway.
I've got fatwood too. I just lit a fire with some type of birch that was bought at a local grocery store. A guy at work built a very nice fire pit out of arched split stone and made matching benches all the way around. But, he couldn't get a fire started with any real wood. Just those lighter logs. LOL
So, I showed how he could process a log down very easily and get all he needed from it to start his fire and get the bigger pieces going. I used a lighter and the birch bark put out a similar black smoke like lighter knot.
Sounds good to me Batch. I have access to tulip poplar, cedar, hickory, pecan...the list goes on.
And River cane is abundant in my area, could even set up a swap for crafting materials.
Thanks for the kind words Zack. I will say the same for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zack
I now have enough birch bark to make a canoe!!
It sounds like you got the package. Sorry it was a little late, but at least it was dry. If you run out, I've got plenty more!Quote:
Originally Posted by MrFixIt
You might need to open the tinder bundle more. I had the same problem, but the more oxygen the better. Good Luck!
It's not primitive but it works great.
0000 steel wool will take a spark and burn like nobody's business. Stick a piece of it inside some dry tinder and if you've got the rest of your kindling ready you'll have a fire with one spark. Hold it and blow into it like normal and then set it under the kindling.
Alan
a ferrorod is primitive?
This is an old thread, anyway for the sake of answering the question
anything very dry and fluffy usually works
Very dry grass, sometime certain very dry leaves, certain Bark processed finely. Birch bark, scrape the inner bark into a fluffy power that work with ferro rods.
Fat wood is simply resin impregnated Pine.
failing all of that a cotton ball, for longer burn times a cotton ball with Vaseline inside.
And also dryer Lint works.
In another life I was a teacher. For two years I taught 9th grade science to kids with learning/reading difficulties. We did a lot of "hands on" science. As part of a larger lesson, we used fire making to learn about surface area and volume in chemical reactions. We used bow/drills, trenches, and flint and steel (actual flint picked up in the parking lot and 1/4 inch steel rebar). We tried all the usual suspects including cotton balls, dryer lint, bird nests and an assortment of natural tinder. From those very informal tests we found that dryer lint was the lest effective in catching and holding a spark long enough get a flame. Cotton balls were so so but required a lot of work. There was one group that had their fire going almost immediately. They were the ones using the 0000 steel wool. I was 45 years old at that time, had been camping and starting camp fires for 35 of those years, and had never even given a second thought to the idea that steel wool would burn. It burns, and it burns very well. The manufacturing process that creates steel wool uses a lot of oil. The tiny fibers are coated with a thin film of oil and it is actually the oil that is burning and I'd imagine the steel does some oxidizing as well. Steel wool stretched from one pole of a battery to the other will begin burning also.
We never did get a fire started with the bow/drill or the trench. Those methods require a perseverance and dedication to the task that was not present in my classroom. But they did provide excellent demonstrations of how friction generates heat.
Oh, the final exam for our project was cooking and eating hot dogs and marshmallows.
Alan
I spent ten minutes writing a post. When I posted it a message came up on the screen that didn't stay long enough for me to read. It began "Thank you for posting. Your post ….." then it went off and my post was gone….
Alan
That may have been the spam software, nothing to do with you..... sometimes send posts to moderators to review....Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan R McDaniel Jr
After 10 posts a lot of that stuff stops getting in you way....
You are close...try again.....
Yep, it went to moderation. That happens from time to time when you have less than 10 posts. The post is now visible to all, and you shouldn't run into that issue again.
If you do, it's Rick's fault.
Thanks. That's 11. I'm home free now!
Alan
And a good post it was...Good teaching tool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan R McDaniel Jr
That experience reflects most of these attempts.....and results are pretty much alike.
It's tough to collect natural material and components.... in the wild, under all conditions in all locations....that work.
I like trying as many methods as I can....but I don't plan on depending on the real primitive ways ...unless I have to.
If you have to bring materials with you, dryer lint cotton balls, changa, fuzz sticks, fat wood......along with flint, ferro rods, steels, steel wool, para-pord, roller skate bearing for the bearing block....for bow drills
to get it to work...many people will not consider this a primitive methods...
Fact is,... early man carried his favorite gear, and methods with him for this reason......The same was we carry a Bic, Zippo, and road flares.
Just good to know different ways.
Dang it. Now I have to go delete one. And I'll bet my ice cream melts!
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/21/340...7c5_z.jpg?zz=1
Nice Teaching Alan,
that sounds like an awesome class, far better than any science class I attended.
I am rather lucky Where I live, the year round conditions make for awesome natural tinder
we usually have a dry arrid climate most of Southern africa, and our normal grass found anywhere, even elephant grass, works like a bomb, one spark from a ferro- rod On that grass gets you a flame very fast... we also have various trees whoms bark is very dry and fiberous, which well is good for cordage and tinder.
I have hardly found a place in South africa that I cant find something that will catch light with a ferro-rod, the only issue is if It has rained and things are damp and wet that it doesnt work, although slighty damp works okish with bow drill, just you really have to have a big coal and blow slowly for long, the coal dries out enough of the surface of the tinder for it to form even a bigger coal, eventually igniting.
I been practicing a lot with bow drill and yeah i have managed to make a set in the Magoebaskloof jungles of tzneen with materials I found there and got it to work, didnt have a roller blade wheel, but use my friends knife that had a bow drill divit..
we managed to get a fire rather quickly with that.
But yes, most primitive people would not just make a set on site or find the flint,etc
they generally always carry around a set that they always use from materials that they collected and processed beforehand... and take that.