Post by lenapej on Jul 1, 2020 15:27:27 GMT -7
This past weekend my brother from WY and his family came for a short visit, and as he is just getting started in the 18th century journey, we decided to do a short float on the Osage River which is a short distance from my place, our other brother joined us for the trip.
I am in the middle of taking an old aluminum canoe and fixing it up to look like a birch bark canoe, its not finished yet but we took it anyway ( I tried making a dug out canoe but did not properly research on making and caring for it, and long story short, it developed so many cracks that I had to abandon it, I hate paddling a canoe while sitting in water up to my armpits anyway.
hence the aluminum canoe )
As soon as we arrived at the river it started a gentle rain, we went a quarter to half ways and then decided to pull over and test our fire making skills in the rain, the only items we allowed ourselves from our kits was, flint & steel, and a bit of charred punk, the rest had to come from the damp woods.
As we got the canoe tied and began to look for a place to build a fire, it began to rain, hard, we spread out and started collecting our tinder and fire wood.
My brother from WY, cliff, (my darned computer won't let me capitalize a c for some reason) had been experimenting recently with uncharred punk, and found that when held to an ember, it will lite and smolder for a while, so we found a downed, punky, log and tore into it to get the dry interior, My other brother, Laverne, found a hanging water/grape vine and using his belt ax, scraped the bark off the side that was less exposed to the rain and put it in his belt pouch to keep dry for a tinder bundle, we found a small outcropping of rock and decided to start our fire under it to shelter it from the rain, first we took a large piece of the punky log and turned the dry side up, then put our fire lay on top, the idea was so it would catch an ember as we were trying to ignite the damp tinder and give us more ember to blow on, Laverne struck a spark to a piece of his char and started blowing, it took a while but we got it going, we had some dryer wood taken from inside downed logs and helped dry out the wet wood as it burned, it's a good feeling to know you can start a fire in difficult conditions and we learned a lot too, so I thought I would share it here.
I am in the middle of taking an old aluminum canoe and fixing it up to look like a birch bark canoe, its not finished yet but we took it anyway ( I tried making a dug out canoe but did not properly research on making and caring for it, and long story short, it developed so many cracks that I had to abandon it, I hate paddling a canoe while sitting in water up to my armpits anyway.
hence the aluminum canoe )As soon as we arrived at the river it started a gentle rain, we went a quarter to half ways and then decided to pull over and test our fire making skills in the rain, the only items we allowed ourselves from our kits was, flint & steel, and a bit of charred punk, the rest had to come from the damp woods.
As we got the canoe tied and began to look for a place to build a fire, it began to rain, hard, we spread out and started collecting our tinder and fire wood.
My brother from WY, cliff, (my darned computer won't let me capitalize a c for some reason) had been experimenting recently with uncharred punk, and found that when held to an ember, it will lite and smolder for a while, so we found a downed, punky, log and tore into it to get the dry interior, My other brother, Laverne, found a hanging water/grape vine and using his belt ax, scraped the bark off the side that was less exposed to the rain and put it in his belt pouch to keep dry for a tinder bundle, we found a small outcropping of rock and decided to start our fire under it to shelter it from the rain, first we took a large piece of the punky log and turned the dry side up, then put our fire lay on top, the idea was so it would catch an ember as we were trying to ignite the damp tinder and give us more ember to blow on, Laverne struck a spark to a piece of his char and started blowing, it took a while but we got it going, we had some dryer wood taken from inside downed logs and helped dry out the wet wood as it burned, it's a good feeling to know you can start a fire in difficult conditions and we learned a lot too, so I thought I would share it here.
