Fire by hand drill

Fire by hand drill

Saturday 16 July 2011

Firesteel failure

Hi all,
I was out practising my wet weather fire lighting.
I made a load of feathersticks from hawthorn which was a bit punky and didn't split or feather well. Then I moved on to hazel which was much much better.
All split with my knife and a baton.
I then found the dry spot under a tree and cleared the earth and preped the fire site.
Got my firesteel out, made a preliminary strike with my knife spine and SNAP! The firesteel broke in two.
I still managed to use the little stub left on the handle but the switch went from easy to hard!
Lesson learned allways bring at least two fire sources.
I love experiences like this. Its were the best learning is done.
Go out and make mistakes and all sorts of magic will happen.
Cheers
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

4 comments:

Mo said...

Another excellent post. You are so right on the mark. The saying "when you lose, don't lose the lesson" comes to mind.

Another is "Some men learn from books, others learn by watching. The rest have to pee on the electric fence themselves."

Hopefully we all learned from your experience.

"One is none. Two is one."

Keith said...

A REAL fire steel won't do this, but as you have discovered, a ferrocium rod will!
Long live the tinderbox :).
Regards, Keith.
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/

Back Creek bushcraft said...

That's a good experience, and improvising with what's left is how I learn.

Stay safe
Bob

Andrew Boe said...

Thanks all and thanks for following my blog.