Ok, decided to shift gears again and try a couple of different things.
First, I shaved up some mullein pith and stuffed it in my fire piston.
After many attempts, i did get a little smoke inside the cylinder when I cleared it with a stick, and you can see a tiny charred bit towards the bottom of the tinder cup. I'm not sure if this is charred mullein, or leftovers from the fire piston's last ember with charcloth. Still, no glowing ember.
I decided to try this ornamental grass growing in our rock garden. It's not indigenous, but I figured what the heck, let's give it a try since it's right here.
Still no luck. Though it did char pretty good after several cycles through the piston, it was probably doomed to fail since I didn't separate the fluff from the seeds. The seeds probably contained just enough moisture to prevent it from working. As you can see, the fluff got a pretty good char on it.
After this failed attempt, I took a full length mullein stalk and smoothed up the outside, and decided to try a hand drill since that was another method I have never attempted. I used a juniper hearth board. the mullein stalk is so much softer than the juniper that it was just grinding away and the end was only barely getting warm. For this to work I will need to find a much, much softer material for a hearth board. The dust formed wasn't even brown at all. I stopped just short of blister territory.
