Woodsmoke Woodcraft - July Class

It is Southern hot and humid here on the South Coast in July. 

Afternoon thunderstorms are common. You just expect them to pop up. Everything stays damp from the frequent showers and high humidity. You can almost wring a drink of water out of standing deadwood. We are, after all, contending with a sub-tropical environment here on the lower coast.

Setting up for our monthly class didn’t involve much work. My job was mostly to facilitate … considering today was a timed skills challenge for the guys.

I did need to get a smoky fire going to hold the mosquitoes at bay. I got my fire lay in place and doubled up on the amount of fatwood considering the kindling material was all damp. I pulled some jute twine out of my kit and used it as the initial source to catch a spark from a ferro rod, ignite, and in turn ignite the fatwood shavings and pencil sized pieces placed in the bottom of the fire lay.

It was a good fire … a little slow getting the kindling and fuel burning … but the doubled up fatwood did its job.

There was a couple of important things I needed to go over with the young guys I am mentoring before we started the challenge.

The first was to reiterate the necessity of constantly safeguarding the important contents of their kits.

When you use an item always put it back where it belongs. It’s easy to lose things when we get sloppy. Losing something in a class setting is not a tragedy. It’s easy enough to run to the store or get on the computer and order a replacement. Lose something “out there” days deep in the woods and you have a situation on your hands. Lose something in a genuine survival situation and the situation on your hands become even more serious. Maybe even life threatening serious.

And here is the second thing that I needed to go over with the guys.

These challenges are not competitions where individuals are competing against other individuals to see who is faster or who is better where this skill or that skill is concerned. The only person anyone is competing against is their own self. The objective is not to outdo anyone else. The objective is for individuals to do better at their own skills than they did the time before … to improve their own efficiency and proficiency where these skills are concerned.

No one wins. No one loses. Everyone improves.

I’ve said it several times over the course of these guy’s woodcraft journey …There are no fails. 

There are only opportunities for improvement. I think that’s a pretty good way to go about life in general.

The first challenge was really a simple one … in 10 minutes or less construct your shelter. Piece of cake for the guys. Everyone had their shelters built in less than the allotted time.

The second challenge was a bit more complicated considering the wet conditions.

Build a self-sustaining fire in 20 minutes or less. No bic lighters or matches allowed. Anything else from their kits and from the landscape was fair play. I handed each of the guys a more than adequate sized piece of fatwood and a small piece of dry spruce (items that ought to be in every fire kit in the event dry kindling is not immediately available).

I let this challenge go an additional 5 minutes to insure that everyone got a fire started.

Here’s the thing to remember about using a ferro rod in damp conditions. Be sure you have some dry easily combustible material in your kit to catch a spark and ignite. Sandwich bags make good dry bags for storing dry tinder material like finely processed cedar bark, jute, or anything that will quickly and easily take a spark and ignite. Also, don’t put that dry material on a wet surface or it will act like a sponge and absorb moisture in quite a hurry essentially dowsing your fire before it has a chance to start. Damp material does not easily ignite from a spark from a ferro rod. To improve your success … lay down a layer of green twigs, leaves, or small sticks as a moisture barrier between the wet ground and your dry absorbent material.

The third challenge involved working from memory. I allowed 30 minutes for this challenge. I had already cut some random lengths of usable material and had it ready. The challenge? Construct (1) a peg style snare trigger for use as a trail set, (2) a modified Figure Four snare trigger for use in a baited set, and (3) a snare  from a piece of #36 tarred bank line with a non-loosening snare loop.

I admit that this challenge was a pretty tall order considering the actual amount of time the guys have invested in constructing these and the fact that it’s been a couple months since they worked on their Figure Four’s and several months since they worked on the peg style trigger. It was a good exercise though that made the guys dig into their memory banks. 

We’ll keep digging into those banks.

Rehearsal.

Practice.

Repetition.

Recall.

Again and again and again.

In differing circumstances.

In differing conditions.

That’s how we master any skill. 

That’s how we come to own any skill.

One of the things that I want to be careful of in this mentoring program is to insure that skills being taught are also skills that are being improved upon. Just like the fire making that went on today. The wet conditions and damp materials threw something new into the fire making learning curve that presented some challenges within the challenge. Rehearse and practice the old and add a little something new as we go.

Last month I introduced friction fire using the bow drill. I demonstrated how to use the component parts to produce an ember that went into a tinder bundle that produced fire.

I used an old blade to baton some pieces from the black willow rounds that I had cut from the woods the day before the class and showed the guys how to whittle a round spindle from a square split off piece and how to shape a hearth board. They took those pieces of green wood home with them and brought their seasoned spindles and hearth boards to class today.

Each of the guys got a present today … a wheel from a set of roller blades that I bought at the thrift store. The things make really good bearing blocks considering that free spinning bearing in the center of the wheel that lessens the amount of friction that is normally part of the friction fire process.

How did the guys do with the friction fire?

Let me answer the question this way …. . One got smoke. One got a lot of smoke and was close to getting an ember. One got an ember.

I call that good, good, and good.