Pyromania!

- By Claire Goodey (March 2007)

Too much of my youth was spent playing with smoky fires at the bottom of the garden and this fascination has never left me.  My Big Chief I Spy Annual for 1956 told me the different ways I could light fires.   I don’t remember trying them out until much later when I was a young mum clearing flints from our garden on the North Downs.   I was striking two flints against each other – the sparks flying haphazardly everywhere but on my carefully prepared tinder - watched by my 4 year old daughter.  “What are you doing Mummy?”  “Trying to make fire”, I replied.  With all the wisdom of the very young she advised, “It’s much easier if you use a match”.

Later still on the excellent Experimental Archaeology course run by Tristan at Michelham, we had a demonstration of the bow and drill method.  The effort turned  our demonstrator’s face an alarming beetroot colour.  A few of us tentatively tried working the bow, only to find whilst it was easy to make the drill hot, it was a lot harder to get any further.   Eventually a pimply youth and I teamed up to work the bow together and we succeeded in coaxing our smouldering embers into flame.  Still my enthusiasm was not quenched by this success and this summer I signed up to a WHOLE DAY on firelighting at the Peat Moor Centre on the Somerset Levels.

Our tutor was Firefox, - well actually he did have a proper name but I’ve forgotten it – Firefox sounds more evocative.  He was a leaner version of Ray Mears, and he lived in a tepee.   Firefox showed us the different methods of creating fire – friction, focusing the sun’s rays, chemical, electrical and compression.   We all had a go using different methods – great fun, but we all knew he was holding the biggest friction test – the bow and drill, till later.   Next we learnt what materials are best for kindling fires.  Here are some of them: charcloth, silver birch bark, old man’s beard buffed up, the fungi fomes fomentarius (hoof or tinder fungus that grows on  birch) and                 or  daldinia concentrica, also known as cramp balls or Kings Alfred’s cakes which resemble black warts that grow on ash and beech.   Our ability to recognise different woods was then put to the test, and we learnt about their burning properties.   

Our next task was to go foraging on the Levels for tinder, light it using a Swedish firestick, and then nurture our glowing embers for the 20 minutes walk back to base where we were to coax our treasure into life.   As you can imagine, twelve people walking along blowing into their cupped hands and wreathed in varying amounts of smoke, got some very curious looks from passers-by.

Finally we were shown how to use the bow and drill.   Our bows were hazel, and the drill, drill holder, hearth and underpans were willow.    Firefox produced a flame in no time at all and then encouraged us all to do the same.   Speed, angle and pressure are all important factors in achieving a nice little pile of black wood dust which eventually starts to smoulder.   Very careful transfer of these embers on your underpan to your chosen tinder (buffed old man’s beard), and gentle blowing to get that first lick of flame is difficult because you are shaking with the exhaustion of working the bow.  Forty five minutes later seven of the twelve participants had succeeded.  Everybody’s success was met with whooping and wild applause.   Our “tribe” was happy and had bonded and we would eat hot food that night!