Name: How to Build a Friction Fire Ember: Step by Step with Up Close Footage @nwprimate6416
Uploaded: 2026-09-18T08:17:00-05:00
Duration: 8 min 17 s
Description: How to Build a Friction Fire Ember: Step by Step with Up Close Footage

How to Build a Friction Fire Ember: Step by Step with Up Close Footage

NW Primate 2026-09-18 | How to Build a Friction Fire Ember: Step by Step with Up Close Footage

Hot Rock Fatwood Glue; Bacon and a Wooden Char Box

NW Primate 2020-04-08 | A lot of work for a little bit of glue. The simplest way to make glue
from pitch is to find an injured tree and collect the resin directly
from where it is leaking. I have a video showing that process that you
can check out if you’re not familiar with that process.

In many areas it is very easy to find trees leaking sap; but in my
little corner of the Pacific Northwest, maybe one in a hundred mature
Douglas firs will have a fresh wound where the sap is both accessible,
and not composed of at least 75% fir needles.

However, because fatwood stumps last decades there is an abundance of
resin soaked wood on the forest floor. I recently made a video showing
an efficient way to extract ounces of tar using a big metal can, but
have been thinking about ways to collect it without the metal.

I’ve tried setting pieces on rocks next to the fire and had reasonable
success with that method but decided to try sandwiching pieces of
fatwood between large flat hot rocks.
Because the rocks stay hot for so long the resin is very thin and hard
to scrape, but I’ve found that adding a bit of water cools it long
enough for it to get sticky and end up on the stick.
This is the second time I’ve used this approach and got pretty similar
results both times. While the amount of glue that results isn’t
impressive, there is enough there construct at least a half dozen
arrows.

Knowing I would be standing around watching hot rocks for a while I
heated up an extra one to use as a griddle and fried up some bacon for a
snack.

In keeping with the primitive theme I opted not to use my leather gloves
to move the hot rocks; instead using the abundant moss that coats
almost everything under the canopy. I first started using moss this way
to remove hot cooking containers from the fire and have found that it’s
very forgiving. A big handful of leaves works just as well, but
doesn’t stay together as well the moss.

It seemed a bit odd to make a video where the point is rendering sap
without a metal container and then start the fire out of an Altoids tin,
so I broke out my little cedar driftwood char box for this one, and
refilled and re-charred another batch of punkwood.

.
.
.

As for the particulars, I don't know the species of moss,
and can't recall the name of the plant I gathered from the riverbed for
twigs. The stone was a piece of quartz, the knife is an Ontario SP50. The stump was an old Douglas fir, the charming little rodent was a Douglas squirrel, the tinder bundle material was black cottonwood inner bark, the fire was composed primarily of hemlock roots and alder driftwood. The arrow foreshaft is red osier dogwood, the point is likely some form of steatite, and it’s wrapped in roadkill salvaged deer sinew. The char box is made from cedar driftwood, the punkwood came from a rotten big leaf maple, the ash brush was Pacific Silver fir, and the guy fiddling with all this stuff is named Brian.

Making a Slate Arrowhead + Stone Knives and Tools in Action

NW Primate 2020-03-09 | Some areas of the world are blessed with beautiful stones that break with sharp edges that can be knapped into shape and sharpened with pressure flaking; but in areas that lack these rocks grinding stones can be a very useful alternative.

I haven’t found any easily knappable stones in my little corner of the Pacific Northwest yet, but there is plenty of slate. I first started playing with this stuff a couple of years ago before I even knew what it was because sometimes it breaks with a jagged but usable edge. Eventually I found out that it was a form of slate, which has been used by indigenous people around the world for projectile points and tools.

It isn’t as durable as flint or chert, but it is a functional and workable option if you don’t have those available, or if you don’t yet have the skills to work with those materials.

In this video I try to show the process I’ve learned through trial and error of turning a raw piece of slate into a hunting point. Native people have used slate points to take animals as large as caribou and walrus. I will be sending a few to my buddy Ryan Gill from Hunt Primitive to test on some hogs and if he has favorable results I will do my best to take a deer with one this coming season; provided I can build a bow powerful enough.

An Important Word of Caution! The dust produced by grinding slate can be extremely hazardous to your lungs if inhaled. The tiny particles of silica can embed themselves in your lungs and do a lot of damage, in some cases permanent disability. You can read up on silicosis if you’re interested, but the important part is to make sure you always keep it wet when grinding it.

Slate varies a lot in toughness depending on the conditions in which it was formed. I can find pieces that will break in my fingers right next to surprisingly hard pieces that make durable tools, so look for the hardest pieces you can find.

In the first half of this video I select a piece of stone from the riverbed and go to work grinding it out using water, sand, and other pieces of stone I found nearby. An easier method is to break larger chunks of slate and select the shards that are already close in shape to the item you are looking to create, but I wanted to demonstrate that with patience you can create the shape you want from scratch.

For the first step, I like to use lots of sand and water and put my grinding surface on an angle so that splashing water up onto the sand pile at the top causes sand grains to continually pour down the stone, as they get broken up during the grinding process. I use this method and a fair amount of pressure to get the basic shape I’m looking for; in this case a triangle for an arrowhead.

Slate is made of sedimentary layers that can flake out on you during the grinding process, so I find that giving your piece a quick polish without sand helps to avoid this flaking when setting your bevels.

The bevels didn’t come out perfectly on this one, but close enough. These are achieved by lifting one edge of the slate to your desired angle and grinding away. Once it has the basic angle down, you don’t have to hold it, as it sits perfectly on the stone at the angle you want.

While any flat stone surface will suffice for grinding, shaping, and setting those bevels, you need something even smoother for sharpening. The best thing I’ve found for this is another piece of slate. I have made slate sharpening tools that are almost as smooth as glass; which produce a very fine edge, but for this demonstration I simply found another piece of slate and made it smooth enough.

Finally, to cut the nocks into the point, I found a softer piece of slate where I could see the fissures between the layers and split it to form a thin edge that I used to saw into the side of the arrowhead. It is counterintuitive but beneficial to use a softer piece for your saw as it is less likely to tear chunks out of the point where you don’t want them.

I can usually make one of these in about an hour, but filming is tedious; especially when my hands are covered in silt slurry, so a couple hours later I had a nice point that I set into a dogwood arrow shaft with pitch glue and stinging nettles holding it in place, and a final coating of fatwood tar to waterproof it and provide a little extra security. I have videos on making both pitch glue and fatwood tar on my channel that you can check out if interested.
In the second half of the video, I share some of my favorite slate projects so far to show the versatility of the material and the fact that it can be quite durable.

I will eventually learn to knap, but for now I’m glad to have this abundant resource to play with.

Making Tar from Fatwood - Natural Waterproofing

NW Primate 2020-03-05 | Making fatwood tar. This tar extracted from Douglas fir fatwood is an incredible waterproofing material that I’ve taken to using on my arrows to keep them from coming apart in the rain. I first started using this stuff over nettles fibers, but now that I’ve been playing with deer sinew, it’s even more valuable as it is much more susceptible to moisture, and it rains a lot here. This sticky goo has been used for hundreds if not thousands of years to waterproof everything from tools and roofs to the British Navy, and it played a huge role in society before the age of petrochemicals.

If you’ve heard the terms “tarred and feathered” or “pitch black”; this is what they are referring to.
The basic idea here is to extract the resin from thin chunks of fatwood using the heat from a fire.

I should start out by saying that this would be much easier with something like a paint can with a fitted metal lid (be sure to poke a hole in it first); but I didn’t have one available and have had success using a big coffee can and aluminum foil, so that’s what I used today.

There is a similar method of extraction using two cans, with one set above the other with a hole in the bottom, but this one is a bit simpler and uses only a single can with a couple of tins in the bottom to keep the charred chunks out of the tar.

I buried the can by the creek and built a fire around it and left it to burn for a couple of hours while I wandered around with the pup. Unfortunately, the shifting fire busted the aluminum foil and I assumed that the entire batch had burned of. The can was full of smoldering ashes so I used some moss and a big flat rock to snuff it out and was surprised to find that I had several ounces of beautiful tar at the bottom.

I’ll share some more primitive extraction methods at some point, but this way is hard to beat for efficiency.
How long and hot you cook it will determine how it sets up when it’s cool. If you kept it relatively cool during the extraction, it will remain a viscous liquid, but if you allow it to boil off the volatile turpenes you end up with a material that sets up hard and isn’t tacky; which is what I prefer for waterproofing fibers on arrows, but the runny stuff can be great for applying to wood; especially if mixed with turpentine or alcohol prior to application.

This might seem like more work than its worth but the final product beats tree sap for my purposes. When heated it becomes very thin and runny, so I can apply a very light coat to waterproof fibers. It also makes amazing pitch glue when mixed with charcoal, but I prefer to save this stuff for waterproofing and use the sap from trees for glue.

The hatchet I used for this project was the excellent little Gibson Axe from ESEE knives. The foreshaft that gets covered with tar at the end of the video is red osier dogwood with a hand ground slate point, secured with pitch glue and deer sinew.

Slide Strike Method of Flint and Steel with a Silky Saw

NW Primate 2019-11-17 | Slide-striking flint and steel. This isn’t necessarily a better method; just a different one. Ordinarily when striking sparks off of carbon steel; either the steel or the stone is swung with force and the two glance off of each other creating the sparks. However, if your stone is sharp enough and you have a long striking surface; you can accomplish the same thing by quickly sliding the stone down the steel; much like you would with a ferro rod.

The biggest advantage I can see here is that the sliding motion is much less damaging to the tool that conventional strikes. Lots of my knives and saws have small nicks and dents in them from errant strikes; and sliding a stone down the edge essentially eliminates this. I made a lot of these slide-strikes in the process of shooting this video, and it actually smoothed out the previous chips that I had put in the spine with conventional striking.

It also creates less of the violent vibrations that can break up delicate natural char like punkwood; as there is no concussive force. It is also a relatively control motion which could save you from nicking your fingers along with the edge; but you could still slip and potential get cut by the steel.

The definitely works best with a long steel surface like you see on this Silky big boy. I was able to make this work with both a dedicated striker and a couple of my knives as well; but without the long strip of steel it is quite a bit more difficult; which probably negates the benefits.

I found it easiest to get a good stroke by holding the char up against the edge, as I didn't have to worry about stopping short to avoid busting my knuckles.

I used a piece of quartz for this video; but the sharper the stone, the better. Off camera I scraped the spine with shards of flint and obsidian and they worked even better than the quartz; so this might be even more viable for you if you have sharp flaky rocks like flint or chert in your region.

Too Thin for Bow Drill Cordage?

NW Primate 2019-08-17 | If you are setting out to make bow drill cordage, you are probably better off using the same amount of fibers to make thicker string, but this could be helpful if you already had cordage; whether natural or man-made that might not be durable enough to stand up to the rigors of ember creation on its own.

I’ve shown a method for reverse-wrapping cordage into 4-ply to make it tougher, but I love when I can make things simpler instead of more complicated; and this is one such instance.

There is nothing revolutionary here; I’m still doubling it over and twisting it, but instead of taking the trouble to reverse-wrap it, I just tied it into a loop and twisted it before wrapping it around my hand.

This seems to keep it together at least as well as making proper 4-ply cordage and the extra twists involved will make the cordage more flexible as long as you don’t over-do it.

This is some old nettles cordage that I made for fishing line; and it has stood up to four embers with this method so far. This set was a particularly troublesome piece of western red cedar driftwood that had more moisture in it than I expected. I had to use more speed and pressure than normal but the cordage still held up great.

Another big factor here is the multiple wraps around the spindle. This keeps the cordage from slipping, which abrades it and will lead to it breaking eventually. Tilting the bow so that the cordage doesn’t run over itself is just as necessary.

The natural cordage part of a natural cordage bow drill is the easy part. Making it work with your set is much trickier, so I hope this is helpful.

Natural Cordage Playlist
youtube.com/watch?v=CPfmLCFtoDI&list=PL40le7UYAHJUIVNryIaTl0P9A7I2ya69G

Hand Drill Fire with No Metal Tools

NW Primate 2019-08-16 | The “no-tools, on-site” hand drill ember has been a goal of mine for a couple of years now, and I’ve gotten close before but have never been able to make this happen before today.

I have made this work with a bow drill but that required a grueling afternoon of persistence. Everything came together in my favor today, and mother nature definitely set me up for success with hot dry weather and perfect materials sitting right next to each other.

I grabbed a dry willow stick that had been harvested by the river and placed on the rocks for me and other than smoothing out the tip and peeling away a bit of bark, it was pretty much good to go.

I noticed a really nice piece of cottonwood root that happened to have a fork in it that looked like it would save me the trouble of carving a notch; which is one of the more difficult aspects of friction fire without a proper cutting tool.

I used a poorly chosen piece of very brittle slate to start the divot, but when it crumbled I just let the spindle do the work and ended up feeling like I might just be able to pull this off.

After a couple of minutes of spinning that willow stick between my palms in just the right place, and a drop of sweat that almost ruined the whole thing; I had the ember that a friend of mine once called “the holy grail of friction fire”.

If you asked me to go out and make this happen again tomorrow I would put my chances of success at less than 50%, so I would still lean on the bow drill before counting on a hand drill; but I had the deck stacked in my favor today and I’ll take it!

Charred Hardwood Scrapings for Flint and Steel

NW Primate 2019-08-06 | I have started playing around with primitive archery, and scraping down the limbs of my new bow left me with big pile of fire-dried vine maple fluff that was so thin it would turn to powder if I ground it between my fingers.

Using the blade or spine of your knife to make scrapings from wood is a great option for catching sparks from a ferro rod, but I realized that I had never tried charring them so that they would take the much weaker sparks from flint and steel.

Knowing that the would likely shrink down, I packed my char tin full of them to the point where I could barely close the lid and cooked the tin over the flames of my little stove until the smoke pouring out of the hole started slowing down.

I was happy to open the tin and find a perfectly charred solid puck that while somewhat fragile, held itself together well. I used a piece of quartz from the riverbed and the spine of the ESEE Laser Strike to send sparks onto the puck and it caught immediately. Some materials that easily take a spark also burn up quickly, but this stuff seemed to smolder very slowly unless it received forced oxygen; which is a great characteristic for a charred material. When I did fan it with my hat or blow on it, it quickly grew into one solid ember that easily lit up a bundle of poorly processed cottonwood bark.

I have had good luck charring fine curls before, but they are much more delicate and smolder individually, where these scrapings acted as one giant coal. Some woods make thin scrapings like these easily and some respond better to curls, but if you have a scrape-friendly piece of wood or are making a bow this way, this appears to be an outstanding alternative to punkwood and charred bark.

I’m sure that I’m not the first to try this, but it was new to me. This material would probably be harder to char without a metal container, but I’ll play around with that soon.

instagram.com/nwprimate

Materials Used

Bow and scrapings: Green cut, fire-dried, big leaf maple (Acer circinatum)
Knives: Stainless Mora Companion and ESEE Laser Strike
Stove: Pocket Cooker
Tinder Bundle: Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa)

Bushcrafty Cooking On the Coast

NW Primate 2019-07-07 | Having fun playing with fire and cooking meat at the ocean. I didn’t set out to film this whole trip, so it’s just a collection of footage some great meals being cooked on the wild coastline of the Pacific Northwest with some critters and pretty scenery thrown in for good measure.

A quick note about heating up rocks... Damp rocks will usually explode when heated. This can be minimized by heating them very slowly over a period of hours, but they still have the potential to explode at any point. Because finding rocks without moisture in them is difficult in wet places, I prefer to heat them quickly; making sure to back away to a safe distance for 20 minutes to let them crack without the danger of being hit by shrapnel.

Heating more rocks than you need as a backup usually results in some usable cooking surfaces.

I suspect that some people will worry that the pork chops were undercooked. Pork only needs to reach an internal temp of 145 F to be safe, which doesn't necessarily mean it needs to be white and dry inside. We all grew up on chewy pork chops because the USDA used to recommend a higher temperature, so pink pork can look raw if that's what you're used to. I didn't bring a thermometer, but I cook a lot of meat at home using one and was confident that these had reached the right internal temp based on feel. They turned out perfect as far as I'm concerned, but no activity in this video is without risk, so please keep that in mind.

Questions, comments and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated. Here’s a list of stuff used in the video in case that's what you're interested in….

Knife: Ontario SP46
Saw: Bahco Laplander
Bow Drill Set: Driftwood lumber (western red cedar)
Bow Drill Cordage: Flotsam Crab Rope
Bow Drill Bearing Block: Naturaly Divoted Rock
Flint and Steel & Stone Knife Rocks: Unknown (feel free to share)
Tarp: Bushcraft Outfitters 10x10 Silnylon
Cook Pot: Stainless Zebra Pot 14CM

Music: Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans(Guitar)youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Pork Chops and Cornish Game Hen from Market House Premium Meats
eatmarkethouse.com

Making Pitch Glue in Clam Shells

NW Primate 2019-07-07 | Cooking up a batch of Sitka spruce pitch glue on the beach. I am relatively new to playing with pitch glue, and am beyond impressed with how well it binds materials together and how useful it is. Most people recommend adding animal dung or other plant fillers into the mix, but so far I have had great results just mixing the melted pitch with powdered charcoal from the fire.

A stone with a natural divot made for a nice field-expedient mortar and pestle and some clam shells provided containers for gathering, carrying, heating, and mixing up the pitch.

I did have some concern that the shell might break as it heated, and did not like the thought of being sprayed down with hot pitch, so I heated it slowly; allowing the shell to warm up and transfer the heat into the sap.

I have been playing around with some primitive archery lately, so I used some of this glue to attach a very crude stone with an edge to a foreshaft, and this glue held it in place just as well as the Douglas fir based mixtures I’ve been using in my local woods. It is just a little bit tackier when cool, but I'm not sure if that is a property of the sap, or a function of the cooking process.

Here's a short video that shows how well this kind of glue holds up...
youtube.com/watch?v=oy5EY2LYi6w

Bark Cordage Bow Drill and Caveman Steak on the Coals

NW Primate 2019-04-05 | Using a knife and natural materials to get a fire started and cooking up some steak directly on the coals.
I have had some requests for a longer format video, so I included a lot more longer cuts than usual and did my best to show as much of the process as possible. Feel free to skip ahead if you get bored.
I made it relatively easy on myself, using the Junglas II from ESEE knives, and picking out a nice dead dry silver fir for the hearth and spindle. For the cordage, I peeled and braided some big leaf maple bark, and used a piece of driftwood fatwood for the bearing block, and shredded black cottonwood bark for the bundle
Big leaf maple bark can make some excellent bow drill cordage, but the weather has been unseasonably dry this spring, and I found it to be more brittle than expected. It still got the job done, but I did notice it begin to fray just as the ember was forming, so I scooted forward on the corage, and used short strokes on the undamaged section to finish it off.
That same dry weather meant that I could use twigs, sticks, and deadfall for the fire itself, instead of having to make curls and kindling.

It is easy to cringe at the thought of a nice juicy ribeye being dropped right into a hot fire, but when done right, this simple method produces great results. With a nice thick bed of hot coals, you can even do this on sand without worrying about getting grit on your steak. If you do it right the intense heat perfectly sears the outside, leaving the middle a delicious medium rare.

The guys from Market House Meats sent me a big box of meat to cook up outside and this beautifully marbled steak was the first package I opened, and I was not the least bit disappointed. It was amazing, even when cooked with this most basic of techniques. (Not a paid endorsement, outside of the awesome box of meat of course)

I didn’t use anything besides salt and coals and it turned out tender and delicious, despite a few fumbles and scorched wrists. If you get the coal size just right, a few may stick to the meat, but they knock right off, and the finished product isn’t nearly as ashy as you might expect. I did let the flames pop up a little too much which did result in a few areas being a bit blackened, but luckily my assistant didn’t mind one bit.

I haven’t posted as much here on YouTube lately, but if you are interested, I have been sharing a lot of fun projects at http://www.instagram.com/nwprimate

Market House Meats
markethouse.com

Knife: ESEE Junglas II
Bow Drill Set: Pacific Silver Fir
Bearing Block: Fatwood
Cordage: Big Leaf Maple Bark
Steak: Ribeye
Assistant: Lupo

How to Find Sparky Rocks in Your Area for Flint and Steel

NW Primate 2019-01-11 | Just start breaking rocks! The term “flint and steel” leads a lot of people astray; especially when they learn that they do not have flint in their area. All you really need is a rock hard and sharp enough to remove microscopic pieces of steel from your striker or tools. You don’t need a geology book, and you don’t need to know the names of the rocks you find.

Rocks tend to get smoothed over time, so breaking them to expose fresh edges will usually yield much better results than just testing them straight off of the ground. Riverbeds are great places to start your search as they often have piles of rocks and gravel that you can easily browse through. Quartz comes in many forms and can work very well; with the benefit of being extremely easy to spot and it is widespread throughout the world.

However, even if you don’t have readily identifiable quartz in your region, there are still likely to be stones in your area with the qualities that you need to make sparks.

In the first portion of this video, I walked along a riverbed for about a minute and half picking up rocks that looked like they might have potential. I intentionally disregarded the classic white quartz to demonstrate the variety of different looking stones that would make sparks.

I wasn’t picking rocks up at random, but you can start there. The more you experiment with rocks, the more you develop an eye for ones that are well suited for this. All of the rocks that I grabbed threw sparks, but some worked significantly better than others. Breaking a variety of rocks gives you options, and lets you discard the underperforming stones.

While riverbeds are great places to start your search, suitable rocks are likely waiting for you in the woods too. In the second portion of the video, I found a green rock that caught my eye and it broke with a beautiful sharp edge. I have no idea what kind of rock this was, and that’s really the whole point. Geology is fascinating, but people were using hard sharp rocks before we had any understanding of their composition or how they formed. If that interests you, then this will be even more fun, but don’t let your ignorance here intimidate you.

The third portion of the video shows a bunch of different stones that have worked for me over the last year or so and then ends in typical fashion with a fire and a goofy dog.

This video is a combination of some shorter videos that I’ve been posting on Instagram, so forgive me if you’ve already seen them there. For anyone that is interested, there is a lot there that doesn’t make it to YouTube, so feel free to check it out at instagram.com/nwprimate . You don’t need an account to see the photos, videos, or associated write-ups.

Music

Chaël - Sparks
youtube.com/watch?v=7kyQWkxsnt8
Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

3 Ways to Ignite Natural Char with Flint & Steel

NW Primate 2019-01-05 | Using natural materials for flint and steel is very rewarding, and comes with a lot of benefits, but it can be frustrating to use if you are used to char cloth.

Charred punk wood in particular can be very delicate and prone to crumbling when placed on top of the stone the way most people use char cloth, but it can be used this way with a light touch and some patience. Some punky materials are more durable than others so generally this first approach should be used with a solid piece.

The second method shown involves casting sparks (to borrow a term from my buddy David west) down onto the char, whether into a tin, or directly into your bundle. The disadvantage here is that the sparks have to travel further to strike the charred material, but with good strikes at the right angle, it can be a very useful technique; especially when dealing with especially fragile materials.

Finally, I show a hybrid approach, pinning the char up against the steel; whether that be a tool or striker. This seems to minimize the amount of fragmentation when compared with placing it on the stone, while still holding it close to the source of the sparks.

These are not the only viable techniques, but these are the approaches that work best for me; so I put together this video hoping it might be helpful to those that have struggled with using natural char, or encourage you to try using it if you haven’t already.

The char that I was using in this video was several weeks old and has lost a lot of its potency; likely due to absorbing moisture from the air, which is why you see sparks striking it long before the pieces start to smolder. Using fresher char and sharper stones will only yield better results.

Finally, please be careful if you choose to try any of these methods yourself, especially those involving sharp tools. It only takes a moment of inattention to really hurt yourself; so be careful out there.

David West’s Channel
youtube.com/channel/UCgAunVsQr42Tg1lTd45mkaA

Materials Used:

Charred Punkwood (Mix of Red alder and Big Leaf Maple)
Carbon Steel Striker
Riverbed Quartz
Silky Big Boy 2000
ESEE Laser Strike
Bahco Laplander

Music:
Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Trick for Striking Sparks Off Big Blades (Safety Stick)

NW Primate 2018-12-28 | Fire with a machete and a trick to hold the char next to the sparks.

I’ve been playing around with different methods of striking sparks off of big knives like this CRKT Halfachance and think I’ve finally settled on a favorite approach.

Any time you’re using a sharp-edged tool for flint and steel there is a risk of injury; but this method seems pretty safe to me. With this split-stick method, you can keep your hand well away from the edge, while still positioning the char right in the path of the sparks.

The sparks that come off of the back of this machete are much weaker than those you would get from a dedicated striker made of hardened steel, so it took quite a few strikes this time; but persistence usually pays off.

I tried this at least a dozen times with different tools before filming this and other than a split finger nail from an errant strike hitting the spine, it has worked beautifully every time.

Another option would be to put the char on a log and stand the blade upright; but I find that this hinders my swing and I am not able to generate as much momentum; leading to fewer sparks and the occasional smashed char.

A quick word of caution if you do try this… Keeping a firm grip on the handle of the tool is important when striking against the spine to makes sure it stays in position. You can still cut yourself on the spine of a knife or machete, so making sure you have a stone large enough to keep your fingers out of harm’s way is a good safety net; but you still need to watch your swing.

Materials Used:

CRKT Halfachance Machete
Split Willow Stick
Charred Red Alder Punk Wood
Western Red Cedar Driftwood
Western Red Cedar Bark
Quartz

Music: Luca Stricagnoli - Last of the Mohicans
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

40 Minutes of Flame from an Altoids Tin: DIY Natural Fire Starter

NW Primate 2018-12-05 | If you can’t get a fire started over the top of this; you’re in big trouble. This is just Douglas fir resin with some cedar curls and together this mixture lights easily and puts out a serious amount of heat. There is nothing too surprising about that, but I was stunned at how long it burns in the tin. I tried two full length burn tests after letting the tins cool and the sap harden; and the first tin burned for 41 minutes, and the second one burned for 36. The entire tin puts out hot flames until the last three minutes, at which point it is struggling and not much stronger than a candle flame.

Between the heat and burn time, you could definitely get even a very poorly prepped fire started by putting this underneath your kindling, and closing the lid to snuff it out once you are confident that your fire is stable.

If you let it burn down to the point where there is still resin in the tin, but all of the shavings are charred, it is much more difficult to light the next time. However, simply heating the tin and mixing in some more curls refreshes it and it should be good to go for the next fire.

The wood shavings serve two purposes. The first is to catch the spark and create the initial flame to melt the resin. The second important function is that the wood shavings act as a wick. Tree resins will burn on their own, but burn much better with flammable wicking materials mixed in. You can make this work with fresh sap by mashing it into your wicking material, but it works much better if you can liquefy it first.

I chose wood shavings for these tests, but shredded bark works very well in this role too.

I will still be carrying petroleum jelly cottonballs in my fire kits, but the fact that a tin can be restocked indefinitely with natural materials and perform this well makes this another good reason to carry as small tin like this one; and I haven't even started playing with glue yet.

I am a huge fan of fatwood too, but for the size and weight of a full tin of sap and curls, I’m not sure you could get the same heat output and burn time out of it.

I used Douglas fir pitch for these, but I am sure that you could substitute other conifer resins and bark or wood shavings in other areas of the country. I would love to hear how long your tin burns for.

Materials Used:

Altoids Tin
Douglas fir Resin
Western Red Cedar Shavings

Music: Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

How To Make Char in Your Hands for Flint and Steel (No Container)

NW Primate 2018-11-15 | While a char tin can be a very useful tool, there is always more than one way to accomplish a task, and you don’t necessarily need a metal container to make charred material. With conventional charring, the material is heated to combustion temperature in an oxygen-deprived environment, but that’s the not the only way.

If you make sure that your material is dry, you can also ignite it in the open air and deprive it of oxygen afterwards. There are lots of ways approach this without a tin. I have had good luck sandwiching smoldering material between pieces of bark and burying it in the sand, wrapping it in leaves, and have even made viable material in pieces of kelp.

Some of you may recognize this concept from a previous video. I rushed that one to help some friends who were participating in a challenge and was never very happy with how it came out. This idea is useful enough that it was easy to justify redoing it in case this version is more helpful.

This is about as simple as it gets. Making a somewhat airtight seal with your hands should extinguish the smoldering punk wood before it consumes itself. If you position it right, you won’t get burned, but any portion in contact with your skin will likely go out soon anyway, so you probably won’t get burned. My hands are pretty tough, but I’ve never come away with even a sore spot, much less a blister.

I’ve tried this at least a half dozen times now, and it’s reliable as long as you take care to dry out the punk before you char it. In this case I held it for almost exactly a minute in my hands to put it out.

Burying it works too, but you do risk adding moisture into it, which would almost certainly be an issue this time of year. You might be tempted to snuff it out with pressure, compressed sections of punk don’t take a spark as well; so depriving it of oxygen produce a better finished product.

If you’re not familiar with the utility of charring material, it will take a weak spark from a locally found stone and a piece of carbon steel. Being able to make charred material makes fire a lot easier than it would be if you had to rely on a bow drill. Of course we all have lighters and ferro rods, but we’re playing bushcraft here.

Thanks to Iz Turley and the participants in his Hardwoodman Challenges for introducing me to the concept of charring without a tin, and inspiring these experiments.

This was a piece of fresh gathered black cottonwood punk that I dried next to the fire. I used a piece of quartz from the riverbed and a carbon steel striker to light it up after charring.

Music: Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Pacific Northwest Emergency/Survival Fire: Make Fire in a Rainforest Without a Knife

NW Primate 2018-10-27 | The purpose of this video is to demonstrate how someone could reasonably build a fire in the wet temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest without a cutting tool.

Bringing even a small knife would make this process easier, but not everyone that goes hiking in these forests will be carrying one.

If you are watching this video, I hope you always carry a reliable way to start a fire, lots of flammable material (like petroleum cottonballs), as well as adequate, clothing, shelter, a cutting tool, and the other essentials. It is foolish to go out there without them.

With rain and temperatures below 45° F almost every day for half the year, hypothermia is a constant threat, and fire is often essential. Of course, the more you need a fire, the harder it will be to start.

The hills and coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest generally receive from 50 to well over 100 inches of rain every year; and with very few sunny days between October and June, there is almost no opportunity for drying. This makes finding dry materials very difficult without practice.

This is not a primitive skills or challenge video. My hope was to keep this simple and highlight two materials and some ways and for breaking them down. Our area is actually full of other amazing fire resources and I encourage you to check out my other videos if you are interested, but this is the most reliable approach for someone unfamiliar with bushcraft and survival skills.

I used a Bic lighter to start the fire because I feel that is the most likely item to be carried by someone that needs this information. Ferro rods have big advantages, but also take practice and fine tinder to be reliable. I love them both, but a lost day hiker or novice camper is much more likely to be carrying a lighter.

In this video I use copious amounts of fatwood. You can get by without it by taking the time to split down piles of cedar branches into thin strips by hand, but it is not nearly as reliable and can require a lot of time.

While I plan to make another video specifically covering locating fatwood in the temperate rainforests of this area, I do want to share a few suggestions here. Most fatwood in other parts of the world come from pines, but our forests are rich with old Douglas fir stumps from decades of logging.

The easiest way to spot it is to look for old stumps with sharp points, break off a piece by hand, and smell it. Douglas fir fatwood has a very citrusy aroma that smells almost exactly like lime candy to me. Some of it is a beautiful red color, but it can look almost identical to regular rotten wood as well.

The stump I used in this video was a good example of fatwood that might not be obvious to the eye, but the aroma is unmistakable. There are lots of old cedar and hemlock stumps out there that will not contain fatwood, but can still be a source of fuel if you can pull off strips of wood. With practice you will get an eye for spotting the fir stumps, and will likely notice them everywhere.

There are exceptions though, and sometimes fatwood can be hard to find. I do plan to follow this up with another video showing some other options, including the cedar branch splitting and splitting wood from downed cedars without a knife.

Even though this is the easiest way to get a fire in my area without a knife, even a small folding knife would make things so much easier and improve your chances of success. While I hope that the information in the video is helpful to some people, the real lesson is that this is an unforgiving environment, and you need to carry the necessities to keep yourself warm and dry.

Music

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Bow Drill Tip: Tilting The Spindle Can Make a Big Difference

NW Primate 2018-10-17 | Generally speaking, drilling straight down into your hearth is a solid strategy, but some subtle adjustments to the angle at which you position the spindle can go a long way toward avoiding frustration and convincing difficult sets to produce embers.

When you first start drilling into a new divot, the dent that the spindle tip rides in is usually pretty shallow, and this can make it prone to jumping out at the notch. Tilting the top of the spindle toward your body angles the tip away from the notch and can help prevent this common problem.

Once the spindle is well seated, adjusting your spindle so that it sits approximately vertical and perpendicular to the hearth will make it easier to drill while you build the dust pile, as the friction will be concentrated on the tip of the spindle, making it easier to turn, and easier for you to work the bow.

You can often just add speed and pressure at this angle to ignite your dust pile, but you can get an extra advantage by tilting the top spindle slightly away from your body. This helps to better direct the hot dust into the notch, and also points the hot tip of the spindle directly into the dust pile.

Years ago a friend suggested to me that it is contact with the spindle tip that actually ignites the flammable dust, and this has proven to be a very valuable insight. I don’t know if this is always true, but looking at it this way has helped my success rate immensely.

You can picture it lighting through contact like an old car cigarette lighter.

I exaggerated the angles a bit to make them clear for demonstrations purposes, but this isn’t watch making, so close enough will often get you there.

One word of caution is that tilting the tip into the pile at the end does put extra stress on material at the edges of the notch, so a blowout of the hearth is possible. Knowing your materials and managing the forces you put into the set can usually mitigate this enough to make it a non-issue, but knowing this ahead of time may help.

There are other reasons you may want to tilt your spindle that I didn’t cover here. I find it very useful for methods like the two-hole/keyhole hearth, no-notch hearth, utility drilling with a spindle, and managing issues with a set to direct forces away from weak points in the hearth when working with poor materials.

Keeping your spindle perfectly vertical is simple and easy, but keep in mind that adjusting your angle can be very helpful in some circumstances.

This is just as useful (if not more so) for the hand drill, where the margins for error are slimmer, and small adjustments are more likely to make the difference.

Please pardon the amateur graphics. I know they’re cheesy but I think it is worth including them in videos like this in the interest of clarity.

Materials Used

Bow Drill Set: Western Red Cedar Driftwood Hearth & Spindle; Fatwood Bearing Block; #36 Tarred Bank Line Cordage.

Music:

Chaël – Sparks youtube.com/watch?v=7kyQWkxsnt8

Using Feather Sticks and Curls for Tinder Bundles

NW Primate 2018-10-15 | A few different ways to use feather sticks as your tinder bundle. Lighting them with a lighter or ferro rod is pretty straightforward, but using them to turn an ember into flames can take just a bit more finesse.

Obviously the finer you can make them, the easier this will be for you, but they don’t need to be perfect. The biggest problem that people run into is having the ember fall through the curls. The solution to this is prepping them so that you create a platform of curls that the ember can rest on.

Regardless of the bundle material, the more of it you can get in contact with the smoldering ember, the better your chances of success.

Using two feather sticks side by side allows you to make a platform with one, and hold the ember in place with the other. The sticks act as a handle that both keeps your fingers away from the flames, and makes it easy to swing the bundle in long arcs to bring it to flames. This is a great method for kids who might be intimidated by the thought of burned hands.

If you aren’t able to keep your curls on a stick, or need to dry them in your clothing, balling them up into a conventional tinder bundle and making a divot for the ember can work extremely well. I generally prefer waving my bundles instead of blowing on them, but you can use either approach with any of these strategies.

However you choose to set up the bundle the addition of some punk wood can make things even easier. I set up one feather stick as the platform, and put down a base of powdered punk, followed by the ember, more punk and another feather stick. The extra heat and burn time provided by the punk is a great way to improve your chances of ignition. With the right materials and a light breeze, you might not have to do anything else.

There are other ways that I didn’t show here, but this is a good start. The curls in the demonstrations by the river were western red cedar, which is a material especially well suited to this role, but you can do these same things with any species that will produce fine curls for you.

The weather was nice and I was intentionally working with ideal materials for the purposes of demonstration, so I included examples from more realistic situations.

Your curls don't have to all be fine, but the better you get at making them, the easier the better this works. None of this is necessary when other dry materials are available, but being able to create your own dry tinder bundle material in any weather conditions is a skill worth practicing.

Music

Chael- Dawning youtube.com/watch?v=LMdISqH-JNo
Luca Stricagnoli - Last of the Mohicans youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Make Better Charred Punk Wood: Open Tin Char Method

NW Primate 2018-10-06 | While you can cook punk wood and other natural materials in a closed tin using the method popularized for making char cloth; it is not always the best approach.

I have been getting a lot of questions and requests for videos about how I make the char that I have been using in my flint and steel videos, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to share this alternative approach that works very well for me.

In some cases, putting your material into a closed tin and cooking it over the flames is the best approach, but there are a lot of advantages to open tin charring; particularly with punk wood.

My understanding of the science behind charred materials, carbonization, and how this stuff actually works is rudimentary at best but you don’t necessarily have to heat material in an oxygen deprived environment to make it suitable for catching sparks. Materials that are snuffed out via oxygen deprivation can work even better.

The basic idea is to get some punk wood smoldering to the point where it flames up; letting those flames char the outer portions of the material, and then depriving it of oxygen. In this case I used a weak ember from a bow drill set, but an ember from an existing fire works the same way.

Why is this sometimes superior to simply cooking it in the tin? This is where my understanding of the science fails me, and I can only speculate based on what I have seen and what I have heard from others. There is some disagreement about whether or not material can be over-charred, but I believe that this is a real factor and one of the reasons that people struggle with natural materials.

Char cloth tends to be more forgiving, but in my experience cooking punk wood, bark, wood shavings, fungi, and lots of other local materials, letting the tin sit on the fire too long usually results in an inferior or unusable final product. If I do cook natural materials in a closed tin, I have the best results when I remove it long before the flames stop shooting out the vent hole.

David West has put forth a theory that soot build-up may be a factor as well. The idea there being that if a tin is not well ventilated, soot and other particles are not ejected from the tin and collect on the charred material, creating a coating that can interfere with the sparks landing.

I don’t know if this is true, but it does make some sense to me, and could be one of the reasons that the open tin approach works so well.

Besides making the material more likely to take a spark, charring in this fashion also leaves more of the material (fuel) intact, resulting in embers that last longer and burn hotter. Material cooked in a tin seems to be consumed in the process and is much less likely to be able to produce flames without the addition of tinder material. Different species will have different properties. The black cottonwood punk I used here is great at taking sparks, but is somewhat resistant to flaming up. Cedar punk charred in this fashion will often produce large long burning flames with just the addition of oxygen.

I have to stress how important it is to give the material plenty of time to smolder if it is damp. Gather more than you need because some of it will be consumed in the drying process. You might notice in the footage that during the drying process it will initially catch flame with forced oxygen, but the moisture in the materials puts it out quickly. Only once it is dry enough to catch and hold flames is it safe to put the lid back on. Remember, if it is dry to begin with, you can light it with an open flame, snuff it out, and skip most of the smoldering.

This approach also leads into the philosophy of the perpetual char tin. For the sake of efficiency I shot all of this in one sitting, but realistically, you could gather new punk wood each time you needed to make a fire, and the act of drying your new batch not only refreshes your tin, but also replaces the conventional tinder bundle for turning your embers into flames to light your fire.

I shot quite a few long takes without cuts showing the process over and over again to demonstrate both how consistent it is and how easily this material will take a spark. I can’t say that I always get ignition with one strike, but a combination of practice and a better understanding of materials has made that a much more frequent occurrence.

I have to thank the great members of Bushcraft USA for introducing me to the idea of open tin charring, and so many other nuances around flint and steel.

David West Channel
youtube.com/channel/UCgAunVsQr42Tg1lTd45mkaA

Materials:

Punk Wood for Char: Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa)

Bow Drill Set: Red Alder Hearth & Spindle, Fatwood Bearing Block, Vine Maple Bow, #36 Tarred Bank Line Cordage

Music:

Sappheiros - Lights
youtube.com/watch?v=kzeQK45StRo

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

The Power of Proper Prep: Spark to 5 Foot Flames in 2 Minutes

NW Primate 2018-10-05 | Proper preparation makes all the difference. If you take the time to stack the deck in your favor, a fire will all but light itself. This was a fun exercise to demonstrate the power of proper prep and ideal materials. In this case, I chose some ideally charred punk wood to take the spark and poured lots of it into a big pile of western red cedar curls. I got lucky and had sparks land on the first strike.

After that it was hands-off and all the footage is in real time.

I set the fire up so that the breeze would blow the resulting flames into a pile of shavings, fine split kindling, and progressively larger pieces of split wood.

I had the benefit of a beautiful day and a nice breeze, but this level of prep will get the job done in just about any conditions that nature will throw at you. The breeze made this especially easy, but you could accomplish the same thing by fanning the char with a sit, hat, or even a slab of bark.

In general I prefer to throw kindling over top of the flaming tinder bundle rather than building a pre-existing fire structure but the point of all of this is to show that if you put in the work ahead of time selecting and processing the right materials, the rest is almost automatic.

I used a piece of western red cedar driftwood, which is probably the easiest wood in the world to process down into kindling, so making this pile only took about fifteen minutes. If you are using tougher wood it will take longer, but rushing isn't the answer.

Most fires fail before they are ever lit. Making sure that you have more than enough quality tinder, fine kindling, and progressively larger fuel on hand is what makes the difference between success and failure when it has been raining for weeks.

I set this up as an ideal demonstration, but I have included links to more realistic demonstrations as the end of this video that you can check out if you're interested.

Materials Used

Sparks: Carbon Steel Striker & Quartz
Char: Black Cottonwood Punk
Tinder, Kindling, Fuel: Western Red Cedar Driftwood

Knife: ESEE Junglas II

Music: Fresh Fallen Snow - Chris Haugen youtube.com/watch?v=t31zd-T8gKg

Flint and Steel Strike Angles & Wet Wood Fire

NW Primate 2018-09-26 | Change your angle, and stop flipping your char tin. When you start out doing things the wrong way, it can be hard to change. Muscle memory is a double edged sword, and can make things easy if you ingrain the motion correctly, but it can also be very hard to break if you learned a poor technique in the first place.

When I was first learning cast sparks down onto char, I did what seemed obvious and held the striker directly over the tin and swung the stone downward, hopefully stopping myself from over-swinging and hitting the tin. I got better at not hitting it, but still flipped it over all the time, often sending my char onto the wet ground.

Years ago few knowledgeable BCUSA members suggested changing my strike angle from vertical to horizontal, and I tried it but still found it difficult. What seems to be working well for me now is an angle somewhere in the middle.

Whether standing or kneeling, getting my body over the tin shields it from rain or snow, and allows me to swing my arm in an arc without having to stop it short. This type of long swing results in more sparks per strike and it is easy to adjust patch of the arc so that an overstrike does not contact the tin.

This isn’t perfect, and I still flip my tin using this method (as you can see in the first shot), but the more I practice it, the less often I screw it up.

Pardon the cheesy animations, but my goal was to make the idea as clear as possible for people that don’t read the description.

Someone on Instagram nailed it when they said it looked like a cheesy infomercial! I didn't do that on purpose for comedy, but now I wish I had.

A piece of metal screen is great insurance for those times that you do screw it up, so check out that video if you are interested but missed it.

Holding a piece of charred material on the stone and swinging the striker is probably the most reliable method of all, but some materials like delicate punk wood and pith are too fragile and require that the sparks be cast onto them.

There are other methods including pinning a piece of char down with your striker that can work, but I find that one in particular to be very difficult as it severely limits my range of motion when striking.

You don’t have to use a tin to take advantage of this body position and motion though. Char can be placed on a dry surface, in the lid, or directly into a bundle and sparked the same way. There are enough advantages to striking directly into the tin that I will likely dedicate a video to that topic in the future though.

Special thanks to the BCUSA crew for introducing me to the idea of horizontal striking. A bit more of a slope seems to work better for me, but play around with different angles and you'll probably find one that works best for you.

Tools and Materials Used:

Carbon Steel Striker
Altoids Tin
Candy Tin
Charred Black Cottonwood Punk Wood
ESEE 6
Western Red Cedar Driftwood (Tinder Bundle, Kindling, Fuel)

Music:

Jebase - Relax
youtube.com/watch?v=IiMHMhqUDYo

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Making a Bow Drill Notch With The Spindle

NW Primate 2018-09-21 | Another alternative bow drill technique. I have made a few videos featuring what I like to call a tunnel or side-hole hearth, but I have been wanting to make one showing a variation on that for a while. The basic idea here is that you can drill the tunnel with the spindle, rather than carve it out with a knife.

Instead of using up energy and material driving a full thickness spindle through the wood, I thinned it out into a drill bit tip with a taper so that it could slowly widen out the hole into a cone shaped tunnel.
The main advantage to the tunnel hearth is that it can be used on a stick or piece of wood that might not be wide enough to accommodate both the divot and a notch. It also seems to make for easier embers with soft material; possibly because heat is being trapped in the tunnel and bringing the dust up to a higher temperature.

Edit: Gary Minick was insightful enough to notice another advantage that I forgot to bring up here. The fact that the hearth is getting cut via friction could potentially serve to dry out and preheat the material even before the main drilling begins; which could be very helpful with damp wood.

This could also be very useful if you wanted to try a “no-knife” bow drill set; though you would probably be more efficient using two spindles made from round sticks; with a thin one for the tunnel and a thicker one to go for the ember.

However, I always like to mention that the classic v-notch is by far the most reliable method for me, but a tunnel hearth seems to be a close second; and I am much more likely to be successful with it than other alternative approaches like the key-hole or two-stick methods.

The first time I tried doing this was a couple of years ago with the hand drill, and for some strange reason I ended up with an ember when I was drilling the tunnel. This has never been repeated, so I think it was just strange fluke, but keep your eye out for that and don't dump the dust around the rim if it's still smoking.

I actually had to film this video twice, as the first time I apparently didn't hit record when drilling the tunnel, so I had to reshoot the whole thing, but I included the drilling footage from the first shoot at the end of the video; just because it is so fun to watch those embers squirm out of the tunnel.

The set and curls were made from Western Red Cedar, with a Douglas fir bearing block, and #36 bank line on a vine maple bow.

Credit to Arleigh on BCUSA for introducing me to the idea of the tunnel hearth.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

Windproof Char Tin Upgrade! No More Spilled Tins or Flying Char

NW Primate 2018-09-14 | If you have ever flipped over a char tin, or had the wind pick up and blow all of your embers away; you know how frustrating that can be. I got a great tip in the comments of a recent video where Carl S. suggested adding a piece of metal window screen to the tin to contain the embers.

I thought that sounded like an interesting idea and filed it away thinking that I might stop at a hardware store to buy some eventually. Then, less than a week later my eyes spotted some garbage sticking out from the forest floor that just happened to fit the bill perfectly. This was a unique set of circumstances as a major flood happened here about fifteen years ago, and the river took some houses from upstream, smashed them up, and distributed them through the woods.

While you might not be lucky enough to run into this material in the woods, it is a cheap and very worthwhile upgrade to your char tin. I opted to cut the corners for easy folding and set mine up as a cover that sits over the top of the char. I imagine that you could cook the char with the screen, but that may put undue wear and tear on it, so I like the idea of adding after the charring process.

Thanks Carl S. for the fantastic idea! I didn’t have the luxury of a windy day for testing, so I recreated some seriously stormy conditions by fanning it with a kneeling pad. Without the screen, the tin would have been empty by the second gust.

The real surprise was how well it protected and held the char during some simulated tin flips. This might not be a traditional method, but it sure would be an asset if you were every counting on your char tin for fire.

I played around with several batches of char using the screen, and it never seemed to interfere with the ease of getting sparks to land. For the first batch shown in the video, I used a combination of western red cedar punk wood and black cottonwood punk wood. The cottonwood tends to be more willing to take a spark, and the cedar is prone to flaming up, so this was a great combo to use to get flames up to ignite the tinder through the screen. Of course you could always remove the screen, and put a piece of smoldering material into your bundle if you needed to be efficient with the material.

Music:

Fredji- Endless Nights
youtube.com/watch?v=KePN7-dF_lw

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

The Easiest Material to Light with Flint and Steel?

NW Primate 2018-09-05 | Make Amazing Natural Char from Plant Pith

While charred punk wood is the standard for good reason, I have been playing around with charring the inner pith from certain plants and it seems like it takes a spark more easily than anything else I have tried so far; char cloth included.

If you are not familiar; the pith is the spongy center found inside of some plant stalks and it has a similar texture to Styrofoam. While searching for hand drill spindles, I have noticed that some stalks seem to decompose in such a way that the pith easily separates from the outer wall.

Elderberry is especially prone to this, especially if you can find old nascent growth shoots from last year that did not survive. I have gotten better at spotting these gems, but it still takes a bit of trial and error.

If they snap off clean, they are probably not ideal, but some of them feel soft and squishy, which is a great sign that they will be easy to peel. With these special shoots, it is easy to pick the outer wall off with your thumbnails and get nice long pieces.

You can accomplish the same thing with lots of different plants including mullein and salmonberry, but you may have to use your knife to get rid of the outer wall.

Have you ever tried charring the pith from any plants in your area?

Like anything else, this material has pros and cons. It will take even the smallest spark and spread quickly, burning hot in the process. With few exceptions, it usually seems to light up on the first strike. The downside is that because it is so light, it both burns up quickly, and is susceptible to blowing away.

Any piece that starts glowing will burn itself all the way through, so you need to act quickly to get it into your tinder bundle, or have a coal extender standing by.

Putting a combination of this stuff and some punk wood into the same tin would likely be an outstanding option; with the pith taking the spark with ease, and spreading to the punk for longevity.

Because this stuff is so light and fully, it chars very quickly. I only left the tin on for about three minutes this time. You can see that not all of it charred completely black, but it all works beautifully. I did lose a few pieces to the breeze before I even started striking, so you do need to take care to manage the wind when using this material.

Materials Used

Pith: Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa)
Tinder Bundle: Black Cottonwood Bark (Populus trichocarpa)
Stove: Pocket Cooker

Music:

NOWË – Horizon youtube.com/watch?v=g845F6ORCOc
Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar) youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

How to Clean a Small Fish with a Big Knife

NW Primate 2018-09-02 | An easy way to clean a small fish with a big blade. While the argument between fans of large and small blades rages on, I maintain that it is easier to do small knife chores with a big blade, than it is to do big knife chores with a small one. Of course I recognize that you can gut a trout with your thumbnail, so this isn’t the best demonstration, but having gutted scaly fish like perch fish with rocks and shells; I can tell you that a large knife is a lot easier.

This should work equally well with any piece of sharp steel like an axe, hatchet or machete and is much less awkward they trying to manage the tool in your hand.

After gutting, rinsing, and pinning the fish to a stick; I tried an experiment that I’ve been curious about for a while. Could I cook a trout on a twig stove without a frying pan? I got off to a rough start getting the stove going, but eventually got it together and did my best to position the fish properly over the heat.

One problem with small stoves like this is that it can be difficult to maintain a consistent heat output, so the fish spent time alternating between being smoked, burn, and cooled, with short periods of nice medium heat. By the end there was a pretty good layer of soot on the skin, but the meat itself cooked nicely and tasted great. One side was a little underdone, but I don’t mind that and would call this a success not worth replicating.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

Knife: ESEE Junglas II
Stove: Pocket Cooker
Char: Charred Punk Wood
Stone: Mystery Rock
Tinder Bundle: Western Red Cedar Boughs & Unknown Lichen Species (Old Man’s Beard)
Fish Skewer: Scouler’s Willow

Music

Fredji - Endless Nights youtube.com/watch?v=KePN7-dF_lw

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

You Blew It! youtube.com/watch?v=m5RtlpXsl8k

You Blew It Bad youtube.com/watch?v=VCCC6XN-wfQ

Soaking Wet Bow Drill Set: Drying Through Friction

NW Primate 2018-08-31 | I left this bow drill set submerged in the creek for about twenty minutes before pulling it out and going to work on it. The point of this exercise is to demonstrate the power of using friction to force moisture out of the wood. The basic idea is that the heat created through light pressure drilling vaporizes the water, drying things out enough to produce an ember.

The tricky part is finding the right balance of speed and pressure to create enough heat to dry the set, without removing too much material. Having two divots ready is very helpful for this as you can alternate between the two to dry out the set as a whole, without drilling too deep into either divot.

I have done this numerous times over the years and the first bit of dust created is the consistency of wet oatmeal and should be discarded so that the paste doesn’t end up transferring water into the pile of dry dust that you will eventually create.

This took about thirteen minutes from the time the set was pulled from the water until the ember first started showing the red color that indicates that it is able to survive on its own.

While this demonstration is great for highlighting the fact that you can dry out sub-par materials, it can be a bit misleading in the fact that in nature, damp wood can hold more moisture than dry wood left to soak for a while in the creek. While the principle is true and the lesson is valuable, this doesn’t mean that you can disregard dryness when searching out materials. A more practical way to view this is as a confidence booster in wet weather. Knowing that you can dry a soaked set makes a few rain drops hitting the hearth seem like much less of a hindrance to success. When it counts, find the driest wood you can and protect it from moisture to the best of your ability.

The first time I tried this…
bushcraftusa.com/forum/threads/friction-fire-tip-preheating-the-set-without-a-heat-source.173422/#post-2965255

Lonnie from Far North Bushcraft & Survival has a great demonstration of this exercise on his channel.
youtube.com/watch?v=4IR_CvF3-8U

David West has a playlist full of videos on this topic as well.
youtube.com/watch?v=HhXd7rYmLrY&list=PLkoXX8XsMW3lZEP_PF0eMdaiJOg2ABhoS&index=2

Daily practice videos and photos posted at instagram.com/nwprimate

Materials Used

Hearth and Spindle: Grand fir (Abies grandis)
Bearing Block: Fatwood
Bow String: #36 Tarred Bankline
Knife (not shown): ESEE 6
Tinder Bundle: Black Cottonwood bark (Populus tripocharpa)
Music:
Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

As always, questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

Make Better Char Cloth: Twist Before Charring

NW Primate 2018-08-17 | An easy trick to help you make better char cloth. One of the many reasons that I prefer charring natural materials instead of cloth is that while it is easy to light, the thin sheets don’t have a lot of burn time or heat to them, where a smoldering piece of punk wood packs a more energy. Charred cotton catches a spark better than almost anything else, but can be a challenge to use with less than ideal tinder bundle materials.

You can get the best of both worlds by twisting the material in a quick reverse-wrap before charring. This gives you a much thicker ember to work with, and you can break off as much as you think you will need to ignite your bundle and snuff out the rest in your tin.

I used a black t-shirt for this demonstration, which isn’t ideal as it doesn’t look all that different before and after charring but it is what I had available.

As with anything, there are some downsides to this method. On advantage to using flat sheets of cloth is that they sit so nicely on a flat stone, where these pieces of char require a bit more finesse to hold in place without crumbling them. The final product is a bit brittle, so you may find conventional char cloth easier to use during the sparking stage.

This method also uses quite a bit of material, although I only twisted one of the strands that I cut; but if you were in a situation where you were cutting your only t-shirt; it might make more sense to be more efficient and use small squares to conserve the material.

So far I have only tried this with t-shirt material, but I expect it should work equally well with denim. I may also try braiding some cloth before charring it just for fun, but I’m not sure I there would be any advantage.

I have honestly only made a few batches of char cloth in my life, so I am no expert on the cooking process, but I like to remove it before the smoke stops coming from the hole in the tin and have always had good results with that approach.

As with all things bushcraft, there really is nothing new under the sun. I thought this was an original idea but after trying it I did some searching online and found an old post on the BCUSA forums by my buddy Coryphene where he recommended this same thing. I'm sure others have tried this as well, but I still wanted to share it in case it is helpful.

Materials Used

100% Cotton T-Shirt
Metal Charring Tin
Pocket Cooker Stove
Mora Clipper Stainless
Red Alder Curls Tinder Bundle
Carbon Steel Striker
Quartz

Music

Take Me to the Depths - Midnight North
youtube.com/watch?v=DnwenwQ8hJM

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Sturdy Basket from Brittle Bark

NW Primate 2018-08-15 | While I am not opposed to using bark from a living tree under the right circumstances, fresh bark isn’t easy to peel year-round, and with the abundance of downed trees in the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest; I wanted to see if I could make a field-expedient sturdy container using dead bark.

It was easy to get a nice semi-circular section of bark from a dead hemlock, but when compared with fresh peeled living bark, it was obviously very brittle. For reinforcement I wrapped it up with some trailing blackberry vines and used them to cap the ends. While working on this I realized that this might be an easy solution for a crawfish/minnow trap by simply leaving it round and adding a funnel to one end. A project for another day perhaps.

I two-strand twisted some of the vines for a handle strap and the whole thing ended up being very sturdy. Adding leaves keeps the rotten bark off of whatever you might be gathering, and keeps things from falling through the holes in the end. I filled it up with rocks, gravel, and sand and shook it up and tossed it, and it held up great with only a small crack. I didn't get a good shot of it, but the two woven caps are secured together underneath the basket to make sure that they don't come loose and fall off. The entire vine portion could probably be refitted to a new piece of bark without too much trouble if necessary.

It would be easy to add a couple of leaves and vines to close it up to travel with once you fill it with whatever you gathered.

The whole project only took about forty minutes and the materials are available year round, with only deep snow being the exception, but I imagine it wouldn’t be difficult to use cedar withies as a substitute if the vines were inaccessible. With a few minutes spent gathering materials, this would be a very easy campfire project, as you don’t need to use sharp tools or the ability to see fine details while you’re putting it together.

As you can tell, I prefer the quick and dirty approach and "good enough" usually works for me, but I'm sure someone with an eye for aesthetics and more patience could make a much nicer version.

Materials Used:

Western Hemlock Bark (Tsuga heterophylla)
Trailing Blackberry Vines (Rubus ursinus)

Entertainment provided by Dryocopus pileatus

Knife: Mora Garberg Stainless

Music: Fredji - Endless Nights
youtube.com/watch?v=KePN7-dF_lw

Fishing with a Primitive Kit : Thorn Hooks & Natural Cordage

NW Primate 2018-08-12 | This was my first attempt at putting together a fishing kit with locally gathered natural materials. The line is made from stinging nettles, the leader is fireweed, and the hooks are vine maple shanks with Nootka rose thorns attached to them with nettles fibers.

Because the wooden hooks float, I made up some small stone sinkers to pull them down into the water.

I had no trouble getting bites using worms for bait, but the fish were very good at stealing it from the hooks, despite me securing them with a length of nettles fiber.

Every fifth bite or so, I would hook one momentarily only to have it come loose. Eventually the thorn on my first hook failed, so I switched to a slightly more aggressive one and found a better way of securing a portion of a worm onto it.

After close to four hours of trying and at least a dozen lost fish, I was finally able to land a small trout. The real lesson here is to carry hooks and line with you, as they weigh and cost next to nothing and work so much better. Between making the set and trying to catch the fish, I probably had seven or eight hours invested in catching one little trout.

I didn’t film the actual making of the set because this was my first attempt, but will be playing with different designs in the future and will try to show as much of the process as I can.

If you are interested, you can see close up photos of the set at…
instagram.com/nwprimate

Materials Used:

Hooks: Vine Maple (Acer circinatum) Nootka Rose (Rosa nutkana), Stinging Nettles (Urtica Dioica)
Line & Leader: Stinging Nettles (Urtica Dioica) & Fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium)
Rod: Big Leaf Maple (Acer Macrophyllum)
Bait: Worms (Lumbricus terrestris)

Music: NOWË - Realize
youtube.com/watch?v=WZsJ9Q4PyVY

Strong Rope from Blackberry Vines (Brambles)

NW Primate 2018-08-10 | 30 feet of strong utility rope made from trailing blackberry vines. To say that these vines are common in the Pacific Northwest would be an understatement and anyone that has spent any time off-trail in the temperate rainforest has probably tripped over them. They make fantastic lashings and binding material year-round as their rubbery texture means that the material grips itself and binds tightly.

They get somewhat brittle in the winter, but from spring to late fall you can also braid or twist it for strong cordage and I have had lots of success using this stuff for bow drill cordage.

Here is a video using the same material for bow drill cordage.
youtube.com/watch?v=CPfmLCFtoDI

Today, I wanted to try making some strong utility rope so I gathered up a bunch of it and braided it together with three vines per strand and ended up with 30 feet of some really strong stuff. It couldn’t quite support my weight (175 lbs) but it came close and held up well to some abuse testing with help from my assistant.

These vines often grow in pairs, with two vines sharing the same root system. If you want to be as efficient as possible, you can pull both together just by applying pressure, but I prefer to harvest just one of the two vines to give the plant a chance to survive. You can detach one of them with a quick twist, or by stepping on the vine where you want it to break. Don't collect all of the vines from the same place and you have a very low impact cordage option that is very versatile and easy to work with.

These are very easy to work with if you have gloves, but it isn't difficult to knock the thorns off with a stick and a careful pinch grip. Even with the extra time setting up shots with the camera, it only took about two hours to make thirty feet of this stuff, so it is a great option for some strong rope in a reasonable amount of time.

The length of the vines is a mixed blessing, as they allow longer section without splicing, but they are also easier to tangle up so you end up spending a lot of time sorting out the ends. Because the vines are tapered, it is easy to splice them in at the perfect thickness to match the piece that you are laying it alongside, or replacing.

Materials Used: Trailing Blackberry (Rubus ursinus)

Music:

Chaël - Sparks
youtube.com/watch?v=7kyQWkxsnt8

Pyres - Broken Elegance
youtube.com/watch?v=rq4QX7ZZvMY

Trick for Using a Folding Knife as a Flint & Steel Striker

NW Primate 2018-08-05 | From a practical standpoint, the real value in learning flint and steel is being able to use tools that you might be carrying to start a fire. Using a dedicated striker is great for practice and saving wear and tear on your tools, but it is important to understand that it can be considerably more difficult to use a piece of steel that wasn’t necessarily designed for this purpose.

A carbon steel folding knife as a striker can be a great option that serves as an emergency striker, but they are often shaped so that only a portion of the spine sticks up further than the handle. This not only means that there is less steel to strike, but you will probably end up beating up the handle with the stone as well. With a knife like this Opinel, striking the other direction would likely damage the locking ring.

Rather than opening the blade and risking cutting yourself or having the lock fail, lifting the blade up and putting a small twig under it will keep the edge covered while keeping the spine elevated enough to strike. It may seem counterintuitive, but I have had the best results putting the twig in parallel to the blade. While it will split a little, it creates a wedge that holds firm in the slot. Putting the twig in oriented perpendicular to the blade usually results in a snapped twig.

This likely puts more force on the hinge than leaving it closed, so there is potentially more risk of damaging the tool than there would be if you left the blade completely closed; but it is certainly safer for both you and the knife than it would be to use the knife completely extended.

The steel on most knives is not as hard as you would find on a dedicated striker or old file, so as I mentioned; it can be much more difficult to get a spark to land, but it can be done with the right rock and some persistence. The piece of quartz that I used was very crumbly so I would get a few really nice sparks and then the stone would fail.

It actually took three or four attempts with the stones exploding and the charred punk wood crumbling before I got a spark to land, but the footage was washed out in the sun and didn’t really add anything to the video so I chose to omit the Yosemite Sam moment this time.

The other thing I wanted to highlight in this video was the ease of gathering dry flammable materials in riverbeds this time of year. The heat radiating off of the rocks can be intense and just about any twig you find in the debris pile will be dry enough to use as kindling.

I found some dead fir boughs with the needles still attached, which can be almost as good as birch bark or fatwood for turning small flames into big ones. In order to pack this material densely enough to use it as a traditional bundle, you need to add a lot of material. Because of the dry conditions and the fact that I was using a little twig stove, I didn’t need three foot flames so I opted to make a small twig bundle with it that I used to fan the in into flames and transfer them into the stove.

Materials Used

Knife/Striker: Opinel #8 Carbone
Stone: Quartz
Char: Charred Black Cottonwood Punk Wood
Tinder Bundle: Dry Grand Fir Boughs & Needles
Kindling: River Debris Twigs
Pan: Bromwell Cold Handle Stamped 6”
Stove: Pocket Cooker

Music: Rêveur - PEYRUIS
youtube.com/watch?v=PGOVmQOrLSU

Making 4-Ply Twisted Bow Drill Cordage & A Hang Fire Ember

NW Primate 2018-07-30 | Turning 2-ply cordage into 4 ply for extra strength and durability. While I still prefer braided cordage over the traditional two-strand twist, you can greatly increase the toughness of a piece of twisted cordage by folding it over on itself and twisting it again.

The first thing that you will notice is that the muscle memory you built up twisting cordage will be useless, as twisting in the same direction that you used to make it in the first place would only unravel it. This means that it will feel very awkward at first, so if you are going to go through the stage of training your fingers; then here’s a trick you can use to make it easier.

I first learned this from David McIntyre (of Alone) on the Bushcraft USA forums. It is not much different than the classic technique, but by twisting the two strands multiple times, it allows you to rotate the main cord two or three times with each pass; making much quicker work.

David actually uses this method to make the initial two-strand twist, but I haven’t been able to get consistent results with it on the first pass, but it works great for me when making four-ply.

Check out David’s video for a more in depth demonstration and explanation of this approach…
youtube.com/watch?v=Y3dFyJ80CUQ

The more consistent in thickness your cordage is, the better they will join up, but I have found that with this method, the two don’t have to match perfectly to make a nice piece of rope. One key is minding the angle of the “Y” created by the two strands. The goal is to keep that angle the same with each twist, and keeping everything taught makes a big difference.

Rolling the finished product on your thigh and then putting a bit of tension on it really does a good job of locking everything together. Some people are able to make cordage exclusively by thigh rolling, but I haven’t been able to get the hang of that yet.

So why take the extra time to double it over and re-twist it instead of just using more material in a classic two-strand twist? That was my big question too. My experience confirmed what I learned from David; the fact that it is doubled over and twisted again keeps the fibers more secure and results in a more durable finished product.

If done right, you end up with a piece of rope that is much more than the sum of its two halves; especially in terms of resistance to abrasion; which is a key factor in good bow drill cordage.

This stuff was cottonwood bark, but this method works well with all sorts of natural fibers.
You can see that when I was testing it out with the bow drill set, I wrapped it around my hand but also gave the section that I was about to use a few extra twists to keep everything tight. I obviously had plenty of cordage to spare, but wanted to show how little damage this stuff takes when it is twisted tightly together like this.
The set was western red cedar and while I didn’t have any trouble with the cordage, the set ended up producing a typical hang fire ember. This is when the pile will smoke for a moment after drilling and appear to stop entirely; but with some babying can be brought back to life. Cedar seems especially prone to this, but I have seen these delayed embers form in lots of different woods, so it is a good reminder to pay attention to the pile.

It took several minutes from the time I stopped drilling until the pile glowed red. It is sped up to 10X for time, but if you are interested you can see an extreme example of a hang fire ember by checking out one of the videos below.

Hang Fire Ember Sped Up
youtube.com/watch?v=Rf7zdbkuN7U

Hang Fire Ember in Real Time
youtube.com/watch?v=KXS_41b-xCM

Materials Used

Cordage: 4 ply reverse-wrapped black cottonwood bark.
Bow Drill Set: Western Red Cedar with a fatwood bearing block
Tinder Bundle: Western Red Cedar Feather Stick

Knife: ESEE Laser Strike

Music:

Nowe – Horizon
youtube.com/watch?v=g845F6ORCOc

Luca Stricagnoli The Last of the Mohicans Guitar
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Worlds Easiest Hand Drill: Gunpowder Friction Fire

NW Primate 2018-07-27 | Adding a little gunpowder makes friction fire unbelievably easy. In a recent video, I showed that this might allow even a novice to get a fire started with a bow drill if they found themselves in an emergency situation without other means of starting a fire.

Here is the link to that video if you missed it…

youtube.com/watch?v=dUVwnHE2eVs

I wanted to see if this would be a feasible technique with the hand drill. The spindle was one that I had gathered the previous day, so this wasn’t a perfect experiment, but it worked well enough that I am confident that this is a viable technique; at least in dry conditions.
Instead of taking the time to make fine curls, I opted to make thicker shavings that might be more representative of what an average lost hunter or hiker might be able to make in an emergency.

Unfortunately, the first ignition wasn’t enough to get the shavings burning, so I had to try a second time to get sustained flames. There was unburned powder in the reservoir after the first attempt

I used the grommets in my kydex sheath to pull the bullets to show that there are probably a ton of options that you could find to accomplish this if you dig around in your pack.

Warning! Handling and disassembling live ammunition is potentially hazardous, so do not attempt this if you are not willing to accept those risks. If you choose to try this, you do so at your own risk and it is important to understand that even a momentary lapse in judgment could result in serious injury or death when handling firearms or ammunition. I recommend wearing both leather gloves, and ballistic rated eye protection if you choose to experiment with this. I used .22 LR for this demonstration because it is very common worldwide and easy to disassemble. Other rounds may require other methods for pulling the bullet, but regardless of the approach, this is the most dangerous stage in the process, so extreme caution is required.

I don't want anyone getting hurt because of something that they saw me doing; so you don’t feel confident in your understanding of the risk involved, then please refrain from recreating this.

Materials Used:

Spindle: Salmonbery (gathered the previous day)
Hearth: Western Red Cedar
Ammo: 22LR
Knife: Ontario RD7 Bush

Music:

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

You Blew It!
youtube.com/watch?v=m5RtlpXsl8k

On-Site Hand Drill with a Skinny Spindle (Real Time Drilling)

NW Primate 2018-07-26 | Making and using a quick hand drill set made from two very common species in the Pacific Northwest; using materials gathered on-site.

I noticed an especially straight piece of salmonberry that I couldn’t pass up, but it was quite a bit thinner than what I would consider an ideal hand drill spindle diameter.

A thin spindle does concentrate the heat and provide more rotations per stroke, but the downside of this is that this concentrated force can bite into the hearth too quickly and bore through before enough heat is generated for ignition.

Ordinarily, I look for woods that have partially decayed but with this smaller spindle I picked out a red alder that appeared to be rot-free, but still dry in the upper portions.

I generally speed up the drilling footage in these videos to keep them a watchable length, but I think it may be helpful to occasionally show this stage in real time to better illustrate both the actual time spent drilling, and the sights and sounds of the process. Feel free to skip ahead if you are pressed for time.

I had a close call with a drop of sweat that fell from my face just as the ember was building strength. I have extinguished a few like this before, so it is a good reminder to manage your own moisture if you are working in warm temperatures. It was only a bit of luck and about an inch and a half that made the difference between success and failure on this one.

Materials Used

Spindle: Dead Salmonberry Stalk (Rubus spectabilis)
Hearth: Dead Red Alder Sapling (Alnus rubra)
Tinder Bundle: Green Moss (species unknown)

Knife: ESEE Laser Strike

Music:

Scandinavianz- Wanderlust
youtube.com/watch?v=Poe37HkCOGc

Luca Stricagnoli The Last of the Mohicans Guitar
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Making Char in the Ground: From Friction to Flint & Steel

NW Primate 2018-07-21 | The ability to make charred material frees you from relying on friction fire, which can be temperamental and requires a fair amount of exertion. Getting ignition from percussion (flint and steel) requires much less time and energy expenditure provided you have a piece of sparky steel and some good char.

The phrase “make hay while the sun shines” definitely applies to fire too. If you were reliant on friction fire, it is definitely best to do so before the rain shows up. On this particular afternoon, the clouds were moving in and it occurred to me that there may be times when it is best to make a fire even if you don’t need one at the moment.

There are several ways to make char without a tin, and some work better for me than others. Burying smoldering material is one of the most often recommended methods ; but I struggled with it for a while and had multiple failed attempts due to the damp soil in the forest and fine sand in the riverbeds.

When it is dry, burying the material directly in the sand snuffs it out quickly, but also seems to damage the outer surface rendering it much less likely to take a spark. Putting the material into a bark sandwich first helps to protect it from the abrasive sand as well as any moisture present in the ground.

I have run into this same issue when snuffing out smoldering material with pressure; which has led me to seeing the value of treating it delicately.

I grabbed some punk wood from a cottonwood log in the riverbed that was pretty dry, but still dried it out further next to the fire before igniting it with the coals. The drying stage might not have been necessary but it also helped to dry the bark sandwich. I would have to be much more diligent about moisture management in the rainy season.

This particular type of punk wood is amazing at catching spark but burns up very quickly. With a slower smoldering material, I may have been able to skip the burial and smother it directly in the bark sandwich wrapped in leaves, but this sometimes leads to a package of burned up ashes, so I wanted to make sure it was really out. In hindsight, I should have put a few of the maple leaves over the bark to keep even more sand out before burying it over.

I will put a list of more no-tin char videos below in case you aren’t interested in alternative methods. There is always more than one way to accomplish a task, so get out there and have fun experimenting.

The rain never showed up, but the char worked beautifully and having it would have been a lot easier than using the bow drill set if it did start falling.

Making Natural Char in My Hands
youtube.com/watch?v=3V_vZpifYko

Fire Chain at the Ocean (charring in kelp)

youtube.com/watch?v=aTsa9lvpAjU

Far North Bushcraft & Survival Video - Emergency Fire lighting Method For Wilderness Survival (using a bundle of leaves)

youtube.com/watch?v=H5dmsz9-8y0

Materials Used...

Bow Drill Set: Silver fir hearth and spindle with a fatwood bearing block and stinging nettles cordage

Tinder Bundle: Cottonwood punk wood, moss, and willow twigs.

Char: Cottonwood Punk wood

Music:

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Fredji- Endless Nights
youtube.com/watch?v=KePN7-dF_lw

Making Fire with Ammo and a Knife: Hunters Emergency Fire

NW Primate 2018-07-19 | It is flat-out amazing how well this works and it has the potential to be a lifesaver for a lost hunter or stranded soldier.

It is without a doubt the easiest friction fire method I have ever tried; as it lets you completely skip over the ember and tinder bundle stages.

You don’t have to master the intricacies of the bow drill to be successful with this method, so it seems like it could be a very valuable thing for hunters to know if they ever found themselves in an emergency without the means to start a fire.

I have been carefully playing around with different ideas for starting an emergency fire with ammunition and as soon as I tried this one, I knew it had real potential.

The ignition point of smokeless powder is quite low, so just a few seconds of the spindle rotating is enough to set it off. So many of the factors that make friction fire difficult are related to the need to create a big pile of dry fluffy dust; and this approach completely removes those complications.

The first time I tried this, I poured the powder from a .22 LR cartridge directly into the burn in divot and it ignited almost immediately, but burned up around the rim in less than a second. Taking a second to make a small indentation next to the divot allows you to put more powder next to the spindle; which gives an extended burn time and more concentrated flame.

I have experimented with different amounts of powder, and the sweet spot seems to be three or four .22 LR cartridges worth of powder. You can get by with one or two if you’re low on ammo, but any more than three and you increase the risk of burning yourself with a taller flame.

I also tried this with powder from centerfire cartridges and shotgun shells, and it works equally well, but more caution is necessary to make sure you don’t use too much powder.

The gunpowder burns up quickly, so placing your tinder directly over the reservoir is the most reliable way to ensure that you catch the flames. I used feather sticks from a maple branch, but any flammable material should work well provided that it is fine and dry enough.

I have tried this with four different types of wood and have not had a failure yet. Soft cedar took more strokes to ignite the powder than fir, alder, or maple, so harder woods may be better in this application.

One of the most interesting this about this to me was how quickly the divot got up to the ignition temp. With a conventional bow drill, I generally recommend starting slowly to warm things up and make good dust, but in this case you would only be covering the gun powder in potentially damp wood dust, so starting out with plenty of speed and pressure is probably the best approach.

As stated in the warning at the beginning of the video, handling and disassembling live ammunition is potentially hazardous, so do not attempt this if you are not willing to accept those risks. If you choose to try this, you do so at your own risk and it is important to understand that even a momentary lapse in judgment could result in serious injury or death when handling firearms or ammunition. I neglected to put on my gloves when taking apart the cartridge, but I was wearing eye protection. I recommend wearing both leather gloves, and ballistic rated eye protection if you choose to experiment with this.

I used .22 LR for this demonstration because it is very common worldwide and easy to disassemble. The lanyard hole on my knife worked perfectly for pulling the bullets, but they can even be wiggled loose by hand if necessary. Other rounds may require other methods for pulling the bullet, but regardless of the approach, this is the most dangerous stage in the process, so extreme caution is required.

Materials used…

Ammo: 22 LR Remington Golden Bullet
Knife: ESEE 6

Pacific Silver Fir for the hearth, spindle, and twig bundle.

Music

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

Hot Rock Pork Chop & Stone Tools Hand Drill Set

NW Primate 2018-07-17 | Primitive fire and fatty pork sizzling on a hot stone....

The no-knife hand drill fire has been a goal of mine for a while and the recent hot and dry weather in the Pacific Northwest seemed like a good opportunity to give it a shot.

The beauty of the hand drill is its simplicity and making the set itself is much easier than trying to construct a working bow drill set and cordage using on sharp rocks. I chose soft materials (red elderberry, and western red cedar) for the set and both felt dry enough to get the job done.

Unfortunately, the elderberry stalk I chose was more decayed than I thought and I ran into some trouble and had to adjust my plans.

I considered going back up into the woods for a new spindle, but I knew I had a pork chop sitting in the sun, so I opted for a more expedient solution. My big take-away from this was that the next time I invest the time in a stone tool set; I will gather multiple hearth and spindle options in advance so that I can easily correct course if it turns out that I chose poor materials.

Cooking meat on hot rocks is a lot of fun. What seems to work best for me is finding a rock that is thick enough to hold its heat long enough to sear both sides and cook the interior as it cools down.

If you are new to this, you may want to put several rocks into the fire as there is a good chance that they will crack when heated up; especially if you are using rocks from a riverbed that may have been recently submerged. I have gotten pretty good at picking out rocks that don’t explode, so I only heated one this time; but I made sure to get well away from the fire as it heated up. Sometimes they can explode with quite a bit of force, and send shrapnel at high speed, so you don’t want to have your face nearby if that happens.

The time you need to heat the rock will vary depending on the size of both the stone and your fire. I left this one in for about twenty minutes and let it sit to cool for a couple more before dropping the pork onto it.

With a fatty piece of meat, you can often skip putting oil on the stone, as a rock hot enough to sear both sides will likely burn it off anyway. I usually expect a little bit of sticking, but if things go correctly the stone will release the meat when it is ready to flip.
Keeping the stone out of the fire but still next to it lets you handle the cooking process without putting your hands directly into the fire, and the residual heat helps to cook the sides. I still like to render the fatty edges by standing the meat up on its side; but I do that regardless of what method I’m using to cook pork, steak, or lamb.

This method works very well for fish too, but you may want to let the rock cool down a bit first and add oil if it is available, though it will stick cook through even if it sticks.

Stone Tools Bow Drill Video
youtube.com/watch?v=WKmjog4e7FY

Rotten Materials Hand Drill Video
youtube.com/watch?v=wKP074qeO_Q

Materials Used

Spindle: Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa)
Hearth: Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata)
Tinder Bundle: Black Cottonwood Bark (Populus trichocarpa)

Pork Knife: Marttinni Timberjack

Music: Fredji - Endless Nights
youtube.com/watch?v=KePN7-dF_lw

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

One Minute Berry Basket: Quick & Easy Foraging Container

NW Primate 2018-07-13 | Here's an idea for a quick little foraging container. This isn't fine basketry; it's an easy way to make a container that will let you gather and carry berries or other wild edibles back to your camp or vehicle.

It takes literally one minute to make, the rim gives it a nice open top for tossing berries into, and you can add another leaf as a lid.

Wrap it up with whatever you like once it's full and it's ready to travel.

This one was made with a vine maple rim, thimbleberry leaves, and some trailing blackberry wrap, but I have tried using lots of similar materials and they all seem to work fine; so you can experiment with different options in your area to see what works.

Music- Lights: Sappheiros
youtube.com/watch?v=-lbbHQbZNKg

How To Make Bow Drill Cordage from Nettles (Twist Braided for Extra Strength)

NW Primate 2018-07-11 | If you want to try your hand at a natural cordage bow drill fire, stinging nettles are tough to beat. They take a bit of work to process down into fibers, but once you do, you have one of the strongest and most flexible materials available in the woods.

They are usable as early as late spring in the Pacific Northwest, but the fibers don’t seem to really get strong until the time they flower in the summer.

I use gloves to harvest them initially and running them through my gloved fingers knocks off the leaves and stinging hairs at the same time, which allows you to handle them bare-handed after that.

To make the best cordage possible, it is ideal if you can hang the fibers up to dry once they are separated from the woody section of the stalks. An hour or two in the sun is all it takes. They will shrink a lot during this initial drying stage and will become a bit stiff. At that point they can be soaked in water to rehydrate.

Unfortunately there was no sun on this day so I opted to braid them up in their raw, un-dried state. The fibers are still very strong and flexible like this, but they will eventually shrink when they dry out, making for a looser weave. This isn’t ideal for long term-use, but it is still a very viable option for times when drying isn’t possible, or you just need a piece of rope right now.

I have really come to prefer braid over reverse-wrapped (two-strand twist) cordage for a number of reasons, but when working with flexible fibers like nettles, giving them a quick twist with each pass while I’m braiding keeps everything nice and tidy and results in a tighter weave and more durable cordage. Be careful doing this with less flexible fibers like bark though. It can still be beneficial, but more attention needs to be paid to avoid over-twisting them.

For the set I chose red alder, which is not the ideal wood as it has a strong tendency to soak up moisture. For that reason, I took down a dead sapling and used the wood from higher up on the tree. The difference in dryness from the top to the bottom of trees this size can be dramatic, so keeping the phrase “the higher the drier” in mind can be very useful.

This wood really responds well to light pressure when drilling. Pressing down too hard will grind out sawdust or over-char the powder depending on speed. Slow and steady seems to the be the key for this material.

In the wet season , I really prefer conifers like firs and cedars, but alder (Alnus rubra) is easy to work with and very common, so knowing how to use it can be a big advantage.

I used some dead sword ferns for a hasty bundle. They work OK when they’re dry, but they’re not my favorite option as they have a tendency to smolder out, so it is a good idea to make sure that the next stage of your kindling is suitably to catch the short lived flames.

Materials Used

Cordage: Stinging Nettle (urtica Dioica)
Bow Drill Set: Red Alder (Alnus rubra)
Bearing Block: Douglas fir fatwood (Pseudotsuga menziesii)
Tinder Bundle: Sword fern (Polystichum munitum) wrapped in Trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus)

Knife: Mora Garberg (Stainless)

Music
Ikson- Reflect: youtube.com/watch?v=A26LDRmLP58
Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1...

First Time Making a Folded Bark Basket

NW Primate 2018-07-07 | Just a quick video showing my first attempt at making a folded bark basket from a cottonwood tree.

This is definitely not a how-to video as I am still learning and made some mistakes, but I learned a lot and was really happy with the finished product. I thought I was being clever by using the bark to bind the two ends together, but in hindsight I realize that roots or withies would be much more durable and easier to punch through the holes.

I also did a very lackluster job on the rim, but I am totally new to this so of course there will be room for improvement.

Despite these shortcomings, the basket is very solid and I am quite pleased with how it came out. I will be playing with this concept again, and hope to experiment with different sizes and potentially attaching handles or straps to it.

I may end up posting another video on this style of container with more details when I get better at making them, but I wanted to share this here to show that you can make a workable container with no previous experience. Even with filming and my slow approach, it only took about two hours to put this together.

Here is a video by Tom McElroy that inspired me to try this. It’s worth watching if you want to see how this was supposed to look.

youtube.com/watch?v=BDWXKkK5wU0

Any time I post a video showing harvesting materials from living trees, some people will inevitably get upset. I totally understand the sentiment behind this, and in some places, harvesting material from a living tree is not appropriate. It is important to know your area, ecosystem, and local rules.

Ideally, it would be great to find a dead or downed tree with bark that is still in good condition, but here in the Pacific Northwest, things rot quickly, and anything that is not alive has likely begun to decay.

In this case I deliberately selected a black cottonwood as it is a very common and fast growing species that can often grow over five feet per year. Afterwards, the tree was cut cleanly at the stump with a saw and is likely to survive by sending up new shoots. If not, the break in the canopy may allow longer lived species like Western red cedar or Douglas fir to take hold and add variety to the environment. People have been harvesting materials from living trees for at least as long as we have been human, and can be a sustainable practice in some areas if it is done with respect and understanding of the ecosystem.

I welcome your opinions if you disagree, but please keep in mind that I'm not clear cutting old growth, and there is a good chance you sleep in a house made of wood or eat your meals at a wooden table.

Materials Used

Black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) bark for the basket and binding.
Western Red Cedar withie for the rim.

Knife: Esee Laser Strike

Music: Theme from Last of the Mohicans on Guitar performed by

Luca Stricagnoli
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Boiling Water With Just a Knife

NW Primate 2018-06-23 | A metal cooking container is easy to take for granted. I set out with the goal of boiling water using nothing but a knife. I had a rough idea of how I wanted to accomplish this, but had to make some adjustments along the way.

I have seen several demonstrations and designs for bark containers that will hold water and initially intended to make a variation of a canoe bailer that was used by the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest; and press that into service as a stone boiling container. These are traditionally made from the bark of the western red cedar, but I chose to use big leaf maple because I didn’t want to contaminate the water with the oils in the cedar bark. Native people in this area boiled water in wooden boxes made from bent planks of western red cedar, but I wasn’t sure if it would be advisable to drink water boiled in the bark of that species.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but I learned some lessons and ended up with something of a hybrid design, incorporating folded and pinned corners with a rigid center section. Because the outer bark was not removed from the center section, it made for a very sturdy container that held water and could be easily picked up and moved around.

Dropping hot rocks into the water resulted in an almost immediate boil and surprisingly clear water. I let it sit long enough to cool and was able to drink directly from the corner of the container.

The most surprising thing to me was how little flavor the bark imparted to the water. It definitely tasted a little bit like the smell of fresh bark but it was mild. I imagine this could be different with bark from a more pungent species.

After the stone boiling experiment, I was curious how the container would fare when put directly on the coals, wonder if it would boil water similar to a paper cup in the fire. While it did eventually boil, it took almost a half hour and the heat transferred a lot more of the tannins in the bark into the water. Of course it also ended up full of ash and the heat basically destroyed the vessel.

Stone boiling is the way to go if you have access to rocks, but it is nice to know that it is still possible to boil water without them.

I didn’t want to pour out water that I had spent so much time tending, but the idea of waiting around to drink an ashy slurry of orange water didn’t sound appealing either, so I took the opportunity to do some cooking with it instead.

********************

A Note on The Use of a Living Tree

While I certainly didn’t do this young maple any favors, I felt that this was an appropriate harvest. I chose a young tree with some existing damage growing on the edge of a river floodplain. After extinguishing the fire, I went back and cut the stump down cleanly with a saw, and the stump will likely be sending up new shoots.

Maples are very hardy and usually regenerate after being cut. I am not sure if the tree will survive long term, but respectfully harvesting living trees has been a part of human history for as long as we have been humans.

Whether or not this is appropriate depends on a number of factors including species, location, and regulations, so it is important to do your homework and some thinking about the local ecology before harvesting any living plants.

********************

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

********************
Materials Used

Knife: Modified Tops Tom Brown Tracker (on loan from a friend)

Bark Container & Bow Drill Cordage: Big Leaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum)

Bow Drill Set: Grand Fir (Abies grandis)
********************

Music

Jebase – Relax
youtube.com/watch?v=IiMHMhqUDYo

Ikson – Relfect
youtube.com/watch?v=A26LDRmLP58

Luca Stricagnoli - The Last of the Mohicans (Guitar)
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

YOU BLEW IT!!!!!
youtube.com/watch?v=m5RtlpXsl8k

Quick & Easy Natural Cordage for Bow Drill

NW Primate 2018-06-10 | While the ability to make high quality cordage is a skill worth learning, you don't necessarily have to master reverse-wraps and braiding to be able to use natural cordage for a bow drill.

Some materials will work with minimal processing. Roots are a great example of this. Lately I have been playing with willow bark and have found that by simply twisting two or three strands together on the bow, it is strong enough to work without the time consuming step of processing it into proper cordage.

This time I took an extra couple of minutes to separate the inner bark from the outer for extra flexibility. I have been successful in skipping this step, but it is probably worth taking a little extra time to ensure your success.

I have seen this method demonstrated with a single strand of bark, but I have had much better luck breaking the bark down into two or three thinner strands and twisting together.

When placing the spindle in the cordage, you can choose to wrap it as many times as you like. I initially went for a double wrap on the burn-in, but because I didn't experience any slipping, switched to a single wrap for the actual ember.

Many barks are especially flexible this time of year, so this may be an option with other species in your area. Be sure to experiment at different times of year, as the properties of these materials change through the seasons.

Materials Used...

Bow Drill Cordage: Willow Inner Bark

Bow Drill Set, Tinder Bundle, Kindling: Western Red Cedar Driftwood

Bearing Block: Driftwood fatwood

Knife: Ontario RD7

Music....

NOWË - Horizon
youtube.com/watch?v=g845F6ORCOc

Luca Stricagnoli - Last of the Mohicans Theme
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

I was first introduced to this concept in this great video by Tom McElroy... youtube.com/watch?v=REZJ0XV95fE

Simple No-Cordage Solution for Hanging Your Pack on a Tree

NW Primate 2018-06-08 | This is about as simple and easy as it gets. I was looking around for a spot to hang my pack yesterday and didn't notice any conveniently broken branches to use as a hook.

This basic pack toggle idea popped into my head, but with any idea this simple, it is likely that others have had the same thought; so this is more likely a re-discovery than an original idea.

To me, the beauty of this solution is its simplicity, and of course the fact that I can now hang my pack on just about any branch that I can reach.

Hoisting a fully loaded expedition pack could be a bit tricky, but it is very easy with a 20lb day pack.

I know this isn't typical of the types of videos that I normally post here, but I figured that this was useful enough to share.

Music: Sappherios - Lights
youtube.com/watch?v=kzeQK45StRo

Fire in the Wind

NW Primate 2018-06-03 | Sometimes making fire in the wind can be almost as difficult as fire in the rain...especially if you don't learn from your mistakes.

This is not intended as a demonstration of the right way to do things; rather it is an example of what happened and the results of some mistakes on my part.

The weather in the river valley started out calm and beautiful, but the wind started gusting through and definitely kept things interesting.

I initially tried lighting a piece of charred punk wood by placing it on a found stone, but the smoldering pieces just crumbled off with each strike, so I switched to striking into the tin.

When I broke the stone, I ended up with such a nice edge that I didn't want to compromise it by breaking it again. This larger stone worked great for throwing sparks, but twice in a row I didn't account for the extra size in my strikes and flipped the tin over twice.

Had it been raining or the ground soaking wet, this might have meant total failure, but I did my best to gather some of the pieces up before the wind could take it all away.

Luckily, I got a spark to land on one of the few remaining pieces and tried to get it to spread to the others. I transferred the smoldering material into a bundle of black cottonwood bark and the wind that was once a liability, became an asset as it helped the flames to climb the kindling ladder quickly.

Because I had emptied my char tin, I took a few moments to restock it with some more cottonwood bark, and gave it the spark test to make sure it was viable.

Please keep in mind that fire can be extremely dangerous in high winds, especially in dry environments. I made a point to position myself so that there were no flammable materials downwind should sparks or embers be blown from the fire.

Ideally I would have found or built a windbreak, but I wanted to treat it as a fun and challenging exercise.

I also should have known better than to compromise my whole tin full of char in these conditions, and it would have been much smart to have put a few pieces into the bundle, and dropped sparks onto them.

When the wind picked up, my first instinct was to grab the tinder bundle before it blew away, when I should have been focused on the much more valuable charred material that was being scattered.

Materials Used

Black Cottonwood Bark: Tinder Bundle & New Batch of Char
Black Cottonwood Twigs: Kindling
Assorted Driftwood: Fuel

Striker by Wolf Creek Forge (a thoughtful gift from a BCUSA friend)

Music:

Ikson- Reflect
youtube.com/watch?v=A26LDRmLP58

Last of the Mohicans Theme - Luca Stricagnoli
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

Thick or Thin? A Tale of Two Spindles (Bow Drill)

NW Primate 2018-05-31 | How thick should your bow drill spindle be? Thinner spindles concentrate the heat, and thicker spindles generate more of it, but that's just one of many factors to consider...

I was poking around a beautiful riverbed this morning with my eye out for friction fire materials when I came across a very interesting piece of cottonwood root. I have heard that this is a very soft and excellent material for friction fire, but every time tried cutting a chunk from a downed tree, it was even harder than the wood.

This piece felt completely different and was extremely soft and very lightweight. I usually see it recommended for hand drill, and I broke off a dead willow intending to spin up an ember that way, but my hands were still healing from a previous failed attempt, so I opted to try bow drilling with a hand drill sized spindle.

Unfortunately, this caused several problems. Because the hearth material was so soft, the concentrated pressure of the thinner spindle made it so that anything but the lightest amount of pressure would grind out course material instead of creating heat and fine dust.

The solution to this is usually extra speed, but with a bow drill, that combined with a smaller gearing on a thin spindle also results in stronger horizontal forces being transferred into the hearth. I had repeated issues with it failing under the pressure, which would send the spindle and dust pile flying.

After three attempts with the thin spindle, I recognized the issue and scrounged up a new thicker spindle from one of the debris piles. I’m not sure of the species on this one, but I suspect that it was willow as well.

This thicker spindle was just what was needed and the extra width slowed its decent into the hearth allowed me to drill for longer to create more heat.
It is possible that the thinner spindle would have worked as a hand drill, as the lateral forces aren’t nearly as violent when drilling by hand, but I think this ended up being a good accidental illustration of a key principle.

The ideal spindle diameter depends on the materials that you are working with. Softer materials may require thicker spindles and a lighter touch, while harder materials often call for more pressure, which can be achieved with a thinner spindle, and more force on the bearing block.

Friction fire success is often about finding the sweet spots in materials, set dimensions, speed and pressure. A set that is not cooperating sometimes just needs another attempt to dry things out, but sometimes examining the variables above and making a change is the best course of action.

The tinder bundle was a collection of loose river debris that appeared to be a mix of roots, bark, and sand. This fine fibrous material made an excellent bundle that ignited on its own before I was ready for it. I didn’t intend for it to keep burning after I tossed it in the water, so I chucked a rock at it and got lucky. Had I missed I would have ran it down and made sure it was out, but this was still a pretty bone-headed move on my part.

Hearth: Black Cottonwood Root (Populus trichocarpa)
Spindles: Willow (unknown Salix) & Mystery Driftwood Branch
Tinder Bundle: River Debris

Knife: Ontario RAT 1 AUS 8

Music: Fredji – Endless Nights
youtube.com/watch?v=KePN7-dF_lw

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

A Toxic Spindle and a Punk Wood Sandwich

NW Primate 2018-05-28 | Red elderberry is extremely common in many areas of the U.S. and Canada; and the long pithy stalks look like great candidates for friction fire spindles. However...

... when I was doing research on this plant (Sambucus racemosa) I learned that many parts of it were known to contain a form of cyanide so I stopped using it a couple of years ago until I could learn more.

I posted questions about the potential for poisoning yourself by using this species in several places online, and emailed a few botanists for their opinions, but until yesterday I didn't get any satisfactory answers.

It turns out my online buddy Nathan has a degree in plant biology and he set the record straight for me...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

"...all the green growing parts are relatively high in cyanogenic glycosides. It’s essentially a cyanide molecule bound to a sugar molecule inside the plant cell vacuole. When the cell is damaged, the cyanogenic glycoside is exposed to enzymes in the cell that remove the sugar, activating the cyanide. It’s a pretty cool defense mechanism that is effective against anything with mitochondria. From what I understand S. racemosa has higher concentration of cyanide in the berries compared to blue elderberry. Cyanide is volatile at low temps (70-80 F) and even a little cooking gets rid of it (from blue elderberry berries). There’s not enough to create toxic cyanide gas. Never eaten the berries of red elderberry. I wouldn’t. There are stories of kids getting sick from making whistles of green elderberry wood. I’ve made flutes and whistles out of it, but always dried it first. As long as you aren’t chewing on it, I don’t think there’s a problem. Our bodies use thiosulfate to detox small amounts of cyanide. The danger is when we overwhelm that. That’s why eating apple seeds doesn’t kill us. You would have to eat like two pounds of apple seeds to be in danger.

...It’s only green living cells that contain cyanide. And even then, I don’t think there’s any danger as long as you aren’t chewing on it. There’s stories of California natives hollowing out the small green stems and using them to smoke from. I only know of one verifiable story where people got sick. It was a religious group having a gathering here in California. They were making elderberry punch from the berries and put a bunch of leaves and stems in the pot. A bunch of them got sick. No one died. Once the stems are dry and dead, there shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve also handled plenty of green elderberry without gloves, removing bark for drying the stems for flutes."

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Please do your own research, but this opinion was enough to put my mind at ease, so I grabbed a nice looking dead stalk from an elderberry bush and went to work.

I pulled a very rotten chunk from an old western red cedar stump for my hearth, and used some punk wood from the same stump for the bundle.

The spindle performed beautifully and I am excited to have another great option that is so plentiful in my local forests. As mentioned, this species has a very broad range, so you can check to see if it grows in your area too.

I left the drilling portion in real time to highlight that with extremely soft materials like this rotten cedar, speed is the key to getting an ember without grinding too deeply into the hearth before it builds enough heat for combustion. I tried to keep the pressure light and the speed up until the very end, when I made a few pressure strokes to ignite the pile.

When using punk wood on its own as a tinder bundle, I find that it works best to create a small divot for the ember, with a lining of powdered punk on both sides of it. Once it has a healthy smolder going, I like to pin it in place with another piece of punk and blow it to flames.

This material can take a little bit more time and patience than fibrous bundles, but it is a very forgiving option as it can be blown into flames repeatedly if needed. Punk wood also seems to respond well to higher pressure forced oxygen than other materials, so if you are having trouble getting it to flame up, try blowing harder than you're used to.

Knife: ESEE Laser Strike
Spindle: Red Elderberrry (Sambucus racemosa)
Hearth & Tinder Bundle: Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata)

Music: Last of the Mohicans on Guitar by Luca Stricagnoli
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

Fire Chain & Fishing on the Pacific Northwest Coast

NW Primate 2018-05-21 | More fun with fire and fish on the coast. The fire chain is a exercise put forth by Iz Turley in his set of Hardwoodman Challenges but the idea is obviously much older. The object is to initially start a fire by friction using found materials, and use that fire to char natural materials without the use of a metal container. By drying and charring materials, the next fire can be started via sparks from percussion based methods (flint and steel), which could be very valuable in a long term situation.

This isn't an official entry, but I did have fun playing around with the basic concept. The set that I used to get the process rolling was the western red cedar set that I had made the day before and was featured in the previous video.

While birch trees do grow in the Pacific Northwest, I have never found any of them, but I have found birch bark washed up on the beach or more than one occasion. This was one of those days and it burned great despite being at sea for an unknown period of time.

Materials

Bow Drill Stage: Western red cedar hearth and spindle, stone bearing block, kelp bow drill cord.

Flint & Steel Stage: Western Red Cedar punk wood in bull kelp containers

Here are a few links to some other awesome fire chain videos from my friends at Bushcraft USA...

Nature Into Action
youtube.com/watch?v=Yb7nTihRgGE

Cockeyed Hunter
youtube.com/watch?v=LFQIWNqyVGA
youtube.com/watch?v=LFQIWNqyVGA

Atlas*
youtube.com/watch?v=IlQYdM2l5tE

Fire From The Sea & Fresh Caught Fish for Breakfast

NW Primate 2018-05-18 | Making fire and cooking fish on the coast in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I got a lot of help from the ocean for this one.

This beautiful coastal ecosystem varies a bit, but extends for hundreds of miles from Nothern California, up into Canada and SE Alaska and offers a bounty of amazing materials and resources that the native people put to use in incredibly ingenious ways.

Between the lush Sitka Spruce and Western Red Cedar forests, and the bounty of the ocean, nature has a lot to give here and I am so grateful to be able to enjoy it.

As the ocean pounds the shoreline in the winter storms, some of the forest ends up falling into the sea, where a vast variety of materials are smashed and processed down into different sizes against the rocks before it is tossed effortlessly above the high water mark. Everything from twigs and giant old growth logs, to marine materials and flotsam from Asia end up in these piles, and make life a lot easier than it would be a few miles inland.

I have been camping on this coast since I was a little boy, and have been fortunate enough to spend at least a couple of weeks a year out there for the last several years.. It's like home away from home.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

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Western Red Cedar Driftwood: Hearth, Spindle, Tinder Bundle, Kindling, Fuel
Bull Kelp: Bow Drill Cordage
Sitka Spruce: Resin for Stone Bearing Block Lubrication, Fresh Needle Tips for Fish Seasoning, & Fuel

Skunk Cabbage: Wrap for steam cooking fish on hot rocks.

Redtail Surfperch: Breakfast

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Knife: Mora Stainless Clipper
Bait: Berkley Gulp Worms
Weight 1 oz Pyramid Sinker

Music: Last of the Mohicans by Luca Stricagnoli
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Forked Stick Bow Drill Hearth

NW Primate 2018-05-09 | Letting nature take care of the notch by using a forked branch for a bow drill hearth. In really dry conditions this can be accomplished without removing any material from the fork; but there was still quite a bit of moisture in the bark so I removed the top layer of the hearth to increase the chances of success.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome and appreciated.

Materials Used:

Hearth and Spindle: Big Leaf Maple
Bearing Block: Fatwood
Tinder Bundle: Dead Leaves
Bow String: Tarred Bankline
Knife: Ontario RD7 Bush

Music: Last of the Mohicans Theme by Luca Stricangoli
youtube.com/watch?v=6Kbv1OpIpaA

Embracing Decay: Fire with Rotten Materials

NW Primate 2018-05-06 | We have to work with what nature gives us, and right amount of rot can actually be beneficial when it comes to friction fire.

It had been unusually warm and dry over the last week, so I figured I'd try an on-site hand drill. I found lots of promising salmonberry stalks, but the long wet winter had not been kind to them, and I had to sort through a lot of rotten ones to find a dry section with some integrity to it.

In keeping with the rotten materials theme, I pulled some decayed cedar out of the ground for the hearth. Ordinarily, pulling friction fire materials out of the dirt is not recommended, but western red cedar is an especially moisture resistant material, and downed pieces like this can be surprisingly dry and are often right in the sweet spot in terms of decay.

When I first started working on the spindle, I thought I would be able to use it as-is, but as I was trimming up the top, it crumbled between my fingers and kept getting shorter. What I was left with was an uncomfortably short section of questionable material, so I opted to attach it to a maple host spindle with some maple bark.

Materials Used

Spindle Tip: Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis)
Host Spindle: Big leaf maple (Acer macrophyllum)
Spindle Wrap: Big leaf maple bark
Hearth: Western red cedar (Thuja plicata)
Tinder Bundle: Cedar punkwood, moss & western hemlock twigs

Knife: Mora Stainless Clipper

Music:

Ikson: Reflect
youtube.com/watch?v=A26LDRmLP58

Jebase: Relax
youtube.com/watch?v=IiMHMhqUDYo