"After a dozen strokes," says our authority, Mr. Albert Ernest Jenks, "the sides of the groove and the edge of the piece are burned down; presently a smell of smoke is plain and before three dozen strokes have been made, smoke may be seen. Usually before a hundred strokes a larger volume of smoke tells us that the dry dust constantly falling on the pile has grown more and more charred until finally a tiny spark falls, carrying combustion to the already heated dust cone."
The fire-board is then carefully lifted and if the pinch of dust is smouldering it may now be gently fanned with the hand until the tinder catches; then it may be blown into a flame.
Fire Pumping of the Iroquois
Fig. 23 shows another form of drill. For this one it is necessary to have a weight wheel attached to the lower part of the spindle. A hole is made through its center and the drill fitted to this. The one in Fig. 23 is fitted out with a rusty iron wheel which I found under the barn. Fig. 23C shows a pottery weight wheel which I found many years ago in a gravel-pit in Mills Creek bottoms at Cincinnati, Ohio. It was brick-red in color and decorated with strange characters. For many, many years I did not know for what use this unique instrument was intended. I presented it to the Flushing High School (Long Island), where I trust it still remains. The fire-drill is twirled by moving the bow up and down instead of backward and forward.
The Twirling Stick (American Indian)
Fig. 7 is practically the same as Figs. 16 and 17, with this difference: the bow and thong are dispensed with and the spindle twirled between the palm of the hands, as formerly practised by the California Indians, the natives of Australia, Caroline Islands, China, Africa and India.
Many of the American Indians made friction fire in this manner. They spun the thin spindle by rolling it between the palms of their hands and as pressure was exerted the hands gradually slid down to the thick lower end of the spindle. To again get the hands to the top of the drill requires practice and skill. Personally the writer cannot claim any success with this method.
The Plow Stick (American Indian)
The simplest method of friction is that of the plow, which requires only a fire-board with a gutter in it and a rubbing-stick to push up and down the gutter (Fig. 24). Captain Belmore Browne of Mt. McKinley fame made a fire by this last method when his matches were soaked with water. It is, however, more difficult to produce the fire this way than with the thong and bow. It is still used in the Malay Islands; the natives place the fire-board on a stump or stone, straddle it and with a pointed drill plow the board back and forth until they produce fire. Time: Forty seconds.
Of course it is unnecessary to tell anyone that he can start a fire with a sunglass (Fig. 25) or with the lens of a camera, or with the lens made from two old-fashioned watch crystals held together. But as the sun is not always visible, as lenses are not supposed to grow in the wild woods and were not to be found in the camps and log cabins of the pioneers, and as watch crystals have short lives in the woods, we will pass this method of fire making without matches as one which properly belongs in the classroom.
The Pyropneumatic Apparatus
Before or about the time of the American Revolution some gentleman invented a fire piston (Fig. 26) with which he ignited punk made of fungus by the heat engendered by the sudden compression of the air.
The ancient gentleman describes his invention as follows: "The cylinder is about nine inches long, and half an inch in diameter; it terminates in a screw on which screws the magazine intended to hold a bougie, and some fungus. A steel rod is attached to a solid piston, or plunger, not shown in the figure, it being within the tube. This rod has a milled head and there is a small hole in the tube to admit the air, when the piston is drawn up to the top, where a piece unscrews, for the purpose of applying oil or grease to the piston. I have found lard to answer the end best."
Method of Using It
"Take from the magazine a small piece of fungus, place it in the chamber, screw the piece tight on and draw the piston up by the end, till it stops. Hold the instrument with both hands in the manner represented in Fig. 26, place the end on a table or against any firm body, either in a perpendicular, horizontal or vertical direction, and force the piston down with as much rapidity as possible. This rapid compression of the air will cause the fungus to take fire. Instantly after the stroke of the piston, unscrew the magazine, when the air will rush in, and keep up the combustion till the fungus is consumed. Observe, in lighting the tinder, the fungus must be lifted up a little from the chamber, so as to allow the tinder to be introduced beneath it, otherwise it will not kindle.
"Here it may be remarked that the instrument thus constructed has a decided advantage over the fire-cane, where the fungus is inserted at such a depth as not easily to be reached."
But in Burmah they had the same idea. There the coolies still light their cigarettes with a fire-piston. The Philippinos also use the same machine and ignite a wad of cotton stuck on the end of the piston by suddenly forcing the piston into air-tight cylinders, and when the piston is quickly withdrawn the cotton is found to be aflame, so it may be that the Colonial gentleman had traveled to the Indies and borrowed his idea from the Burmahs, or the Philippinos. At any rate we do not use it to-day in the woods, but it finds place here because it belongs to the friction fires and may be good as a suggestion for those among my readers of experimental and inventive minds.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] It is not the buckeye of the Ohio and Mississippi Valley, but is the nut buckeye of California, Æsculus Californica.
[B] The record is now eleven seconds.
CHAPTER II
FIRE MAKING BY PERCUSSION