Once again we attempted fire. Inventing fire is hard. Really hard.
It's not that I expected it to be easy, hundreds of former military guys make lots of money telling accountants, and weekend warriors how to make fire from twigs, sticks, and magnifying glass lenses in outdoorsy experience camps and survival seminars. Even their demonstrations don't work out well sometimes, and they have the luxury of modern fire starting equipment.
Still, I had thought that two
resourceful guys with plenty of
internets behind them would surely sort out a fire bow or some kind of flint spark by now. If
Unk'nuk could figure it out thousands of years ago just by messing around with sticks, you'd think two fairly handy people who already know what to do could
execute such a seemingly simple task. Right now our only major accomplishment is the creation of Gross-Rope: the rope that's covered in gross.
We did get much closer. Mark fashioned a much more solid and smooth stick using some stone tools, we put way more curve in our bow and just started producing smoke when our old dried bark string let go. The rest of our time was spent making a new string and trying various other bows. The challenge now seems to be in
getting the proportions right for keeping the string in good tension without compromising the bow. I have high hopes that we will see some
success soon, but if we don't were going to have to hit the store and get us some flint I think.
Until we make fire there isn't much we can do.
Until then we are just following in the
shambling footsteps of
Unk'nuk.
Yesterday Mike and I got together as a team for the first time. Our objective was to build a fire. We took thin strips of bark from young branches of the basswood tree and weaved them into a rope. We weaved 3 strips together into twine, then 3 twines together into the cord for the fire bow. We found a stick to use as the spindle, a flattish bit of wood for the base, and a rock for the top of the spindle. We then made a little fire bundle out of dried bits of bark and dead leaves.
I started with a deer skull I found out in some hunting grounds a few months ago. I smashed it on a rock to split it in half. I then used the tooth section of half-skull to saw through a small branch on one of my basswood trees. I stripped the bark off and braided it to use as twine. I cut a slightly larger branch for the handle. I used the braided bark twine to bind the tooth section to the handle. I tested it out - it was bound pretty tight but it had some up-and-down movement. I used some more strips of bark to loop over the top and secure it better. 