I've built fences with the stuff you're referring to, the green comes from the mixture of copper and cyanide (heh heh bad news) that the wood is impregnated with. It kills anything that tries to chew through it


I've done some more research. By using red oak, I accidentally started with one of the hardest woods to use, but oh well. I'll get some cedar or willow as soon as possible. Also, I need to thin out my drill so I can get more rpm's off of it

Rainwalker is rightly cautious about commercially available lumbers. But it is not true that all wood from the lumber yard is poison.

Contractors do not always use treated timbers. That’s a matter of economics. Creosoted or pressure treated timbers are more expensive than plain, kiln dried, untreated beams and scantlings. They only spend the extra bucks where the end purpose requires it, or the architect’s specs demand it. Where the job doesn’t need treated wood, they use regular, untreated lumber. I’m not saying you don’t need to be cautious, using wood from a construction site. But not all of it is automatically poisonous.

Creosote treated timbers look dark, as though they’d been painted with thinned down hot tar. If it looks funny that way, leave it alone. I haven’t knowingly dealt with PCP treated wood, so I can’t advise you about that one. In both cases you’re dealing with big timbers. I’ve seldom seen even 4 X 4s treated with creosote. 6 X 6s and up, or telephone poles, are more likely to be treated with the stuff.

You can spot pressure treated lumber by its physical appearance. Be it CCA or ACQ, the surface will look as though someone had stapled it all over. There aren’t any staples, just dimples in the surface of the wood, running parallel to the length of the timber. Pressure treated wood comes smaller than creosoted wood. Any size of 2 X can be pressure treated. (The nominal size of building lumber is larger than the actual size. A 2 X 4 isn’t 2” X 4”, it is 1 ½” by 3 ½”.) Occasionally 1 X stock will be pressure treated. Pressure treated lumber may not be obvious, if for some reason it has been milled down on site. The carpenters may have needed something smaller than a 4 X 4, and so they trimmed the edges off of a standard stick. That would eliminate the staple marks. But it’s rare for builders to have to fiddle with timbers that way. It costs man-hours = money.

The other building materials you should be caution about burning or cutting or sanding are plywood and especially particle board. Most plywood isn’t made with poisonous additives, but some is. Especially marine grade plywood. On the other hand, it is rare for particle board to be safe. Usually it is glued together with arsenic and worse.

I've found that the two best woods I've worked with so far for primitive friction firemaking are Cottonwood and Cedar.

And Yucca and Mullein stalks work great for hand drills. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

very imformative thread,thanks guys...

yeah RW the first one I built at a survival training course was out of cedar, but it seems to have disappeared. Too bad, that one was sweet

I have a bag literally chocked full of used firemaking sets of many different kinds of wood. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Spindles, Fireboards, Hand pieces, Bows and Stalks. It's kinda comical getting them out and tring to figuring out which goes with which sometimes... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/paperbag.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

That's the cool thing about it though... I can always make more, as long as there's a source of natural wood around. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

Great stuff, I love seeing knives do the real work they are designed for !!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbup.gif" alt="" />

Great work! This is a fun skill to play around with.

From my experience, I usually want the drill to be as hard or harder than the base board being used. Being that you have a red oak base, and a pine drill, I think you are going to have a tough time. Although, I have never used that particular combo. But, that is also what is great about playing with a bow drill, there are are endless combinations to experiment with and you always learn something.

Once you have had many successes, the confidence is great. Knowing that you could start a fire (if you had to) with the knife in your pocket and the lace on your shoe <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Hey Cloak, is your rd7 stripped or is that a bead blast finish?

I ordered my RD7 custom from justin with a satin finish, but that was too high maintenance, so I did a white vinegar patina. Now I just use it and don't care what it looks like. The thing performs beyond all my wildest dreams now that I've thinned the edge out.