One stick fire, with an axe // you're challenged !

[Dabberty]

Hello all, last month a friend in Holland started the "one stick fire" challenge again, but this time without the use of softwoods, like needle tree's and birch.
My participation in this one is with most likely Ash, and an axe instead of a knife.
I've done it many times in the past with knives, axes and machete, and then a couple of years nothing, so it was a nice refresher again.

And directly hereby I would like to challenge you as well.
- use your favorite sharp tool in combination with a ferro rod
- no soft woods are allowed
- you can use 1 stick for batonning
- take all materials out of 1 other stick (ignition, kindling, etc, etc)
- Never ending glory shall be yours for eternity, if you can boil a good cup of water on this fire !

[wsdstan]

The cutting edge of the axe sure worked well producing sparks from the ferrocerium rod (if that is what it is).  I have done that with one of my beat up trade knives but did not think about using my small axe edge.  As usual it is "well done" and thanks. 

[Dabberty]

Gentlemen, no one is taking up my challenge... ? :-)

[Dabberty]

No one's up for a little challenge..?

[wsdstan]

Well I have two excuses.  First it snowed.  Second I was trying to gather the materials to show the way I put the paracord loops on a small tarp like your other video suggested.  Then we went on a "stay at home" request from the State government because of the Corona Virus so my desire to go to a place to get some materials was disrupted.  We can might get to this after the next storm dries out.  We are scheduled to get some snow and rain this Saturday and have two or three quite windy days following that.

[xj35s]

I did this in 2011. didn't boil two cups of water but certain I could have. I think it was silver poplar.

[xj35s]

This was maple I think. Very wet woods. small fire though, just playing. I love my Ontario!!! This was a firesteel armageddon .




This is why I'm not doing it today but really should get out there to truely test my skills....

[Dabberty]

Good stuff !
Who else? :-)

[wsdstan]

I made a bag of hardwood shavings (maple) yesterday while idling my life away in the house and will now wait until the wind dies off and the temperature gets above freezing to continue.  I have the maple cut from a downed branch about 2" in diameter stacked and ready.   

[wsdstan]

Well it turned out warm today so I started to do the fire challenge but ran into the wind.  I moved to the front of the shop and got out of the wind.  I cannot do videos (technical stupidity on my part) so I tried taking photos as I went along.  That would have worked okay but the card was defective as when I went to down load the very start the photos were not there.  I took some more but it is a hodge podge and omits all of the early starting steps,

What I did:  I used maple from a silver maple that sheds a lot of small branches.  It is a hardwood, of course, and on a scale of 1 to 10 for difficult to start I rate it a 12.  I could get it going and then it would die out.  Finally resorted to some dry leaves to get enough going to start the small splits I had made and then worked up to larger pieces as fire went along.



Here is a photo of the water before it boiled and the hatchet I used to split the maple into various sizes.



Here is the water boiling. I did not time it but about eight minutes given the wind and time to build up heat.



It was interesting to try this.  I would say it was a fail using maple as it simply would not ignite well and without going to the dry leaf laying around it would not have stayed lit.  When I finished boiling the water and took the pot of of the fire there was still good flames and smoke coming off.  Five minutes later it was out, sort of just self extinguished itself.  Might have been the wind.  The wood was dry and came from a place I pile up dead branches to burn when we can.  I think in the future I will stick to soft wood to build a fire from scratch or keep my tin of vaseline coated cotton balls handy.