This weekend Cloak and I went on our usual hike into into the forest.

It was a beautiful Saturday Morning. Good to see Portland having some decent weather know.



It was very hot but, fortunately we were in a forest and under the shade. This made everything much cooler and we had a little breeze once in awhile





With the allotted time that we had we really couldn't do anything too extravagant as making a large shelter. During Midday, I had to go to a 2 hour long college conference meeting. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

So we ultimately decided to try a little bit of primitive fire making.

We traveled fairly light. Cloak brought is small backpack and I just brought my best.

Here's the two of us prepping. I'm putting on my vest and Cloak is checking his gear.



As you can see, the structure of our shelter is still there. However, all the leaves and branches have dried and been blown off.



On to the fire making.

At first I decided to grab a piece of cedar and started a bit of hand drilling. This didn't really do much except hurt my hand. I was able to get the wood fairly hot, but not hot enough to make ashes.

Cloak tried this, too. He then though that he would have a better change with a bow drill.

After that both of us started to make our own bow-drill assembly.

When I made my bow, I used a really short piece of iron wood. It really didn't work very well so I didn't go any further.

Cloak, on the other hand had made a perfect bow and drill for the task.

It worked splendidly and Cloak was able to get very hot ashes.





You can see here, how well Cloak was able to drill in the wood.



Here he goes at another attempt. Notice that you can see the smoke coming from the wood burning.

"This is only kind of smoke that teens should be smoking"-- Cloak <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />



After he had his go with the drill, I, too tried it out.



[img]http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee292/The_Aaij_1/DSC_0117-1.jpg[/img]

Here's the result of the drill tip and how burnt it is.

[img]http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee292/The_Aaij_1/DSC_0115-1.jpg[/img]

I really got the thing smoking.

Because of the short time that we had, we really weren't able to get a fire going. We, were however, able to get smoke and really burnt ashes of wood. If we kept going longer we probably would have been able to get a coal and start a small fire.

This and also it was our (well at least mine) first time trying the technique and getting some results. Both of us kept messing up when using the drill.

At the end of everything we went through a bag of Sour Patch fruit candy to keep us motivated. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

[img]http://i235.photobucket.com/albums/ee292/The_Aaij_1/DSC_0104-4.jpg[/img]

Though next, weekend we'll have more time as I won't be needing to go to a darn college meeting. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />