FIRE MAKING BY PERCUSSION
THE preceding methods of producing fire by friction are not the white
man's methods, and are not the methods used by our pioneer ancestors.
The only case the writer can remember in which the pioneer white people
used rubbing-sticks to produce fire, is one where the refugees from an
Indian uprising and massacre in Oregon made fire from rubbing-sticks
made of the bits of the splintered wood of a lightning stricken tree.
On that occasion they evidently left home in a great hurry, without
their flints and steels.
But this one instance in itself is sufficient to show to all outdoor
people the great importance of the knowledge and ability to make
friction fires. Like our good friend, the artist, explorer and author,
Captain Belmore Browne, one may at any time get in a fix where one's
matches are soaked, destroyed or lost and be compelled either to eat
one's food raw or resort to rubbing-sticks to start a fire.
It is well, however, to remember that the flint and steel is
THE WHITE MAN'S METHOD
And notwithstanding the fire canes of our Colonial dudes, or the
Pyropneumatic apparatus of the forgotten Mr. Bank, fire by percussion,
that is, fire by friction of flint and steel, was universal here in
America up to a quite recent date, and it is still in common use among
many of my Camp-fire Club friends, and among many smokers.
HOW TO USE FLINT AND STEEL
In the age of flint and steel, the guns were all fired by this method.
Fig. 33 shows the gun-lock of an old musket; the hammer holds a piece
of flint, a small piece of buckskin is folded around the inside edge
of the flint and serves to give a grip to the top part of the hammer
which is screwed down. To fire the gun the hammer is pulled back at
full cock, the steel sets opposite the hammer and is joined to the
top of the powder-pan by a hinge. When the trigger is pulled the
hammer comes down, striking the flint against the steel, throwing it
back and exposing the powder at the same time to the sparks which
ignite the powder in the gun by means of the touch hole in the side
of the barrel of same. This is the sort of a hammer and lock used by
all of our ancestors up to the time of the Civil War, and it is the
sort of a hammer used by the Confederates as late as the battle of
Fort Donaldson. In the olden times some people had flint lock pistols
without barrels, which were used only to ignite punk for the purpose of
fire-building. But when one starts a fire by means of flint and steel
one's hands must act the part of the hammer, the back of one's knife
may be the steel, then a piece of flint or a gritty rock and a piece of
punk will produce the spark necessary to generate the flames.
In the good old pioneer days, when we all wore buckskin clothes and
did not bother about the price of wool, when we wore coonskin caps and
cared little for the price of felt hats, everybody, from Miles Standish
and George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, used flint and steel. Fig.
27 shows ten different forms of steel used by our grandsires and
granddames.
[Illustration: 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 32½, 33, 34, 35]
Flint in its natural condition may be found in many states, but, as a
rule, any stone which was used by the Indians for arrowheads will
answer as a substitute for flint,[C] that is, any gritty or glassy
stone, like quartz, agate, jasper or iron pyrites. Soft stones,
limestones, slate or soapstones are not good for this purpose.
THE STEEL
Most of the old steels were so made that one might grasp them while
thrusting one's fingers through the inside of the oval steel, Fig. 28
(left handed). Some of the Scoutmasters of the Boy Scouts of America
make their own steels of broken pieces of flat ten-cent files, but this
is unnecessary because every outdoor man, and woman, too, is supposed
to carry a good sized jack-knife and the back of the blade of the
jack-knife, or the back of the blade of one's hunting knife is good
enough steel for anyone who has acquired the art of using it as a steel.
But if you must have steels manufactured at the machine shop or make
them yourself, let them be an inch wide, a quarter of an inch thick,
and long enough to form an ellipse like one of those shown in Fig. 27.
Have the sharp edges rounded off. If you desire you may have your steel
twisted in any of the shapes shown in Fig. 27 to imitate the ones used
by your great granddaddies.
THE CHUCKNUCK
But the neatest thing in the way of flint and steel which has come to
the writer's attention is shown by Fig. 31. This is a small German
silver box which still contains some of the original fungus used for
punk and an ancient, well-battered piece of flint. Around the box is
fitted the steel in the form of a band, and the whole thing is so small
that it may be carried in one's vest pocket. This was once the property
of Phillip Hagner, Lieutenant, of the City of Philadelphia at the time
of the Revolution, that is, custodian of city property. He took the
Christ Church bells from Philadelphia to Bethlehem by ox-cart before
the city was occupied by the British. Phillip Hagner came from Saxony
about 1700 and settled in Germantown, Philadelphia. This silver box
was presented to the National Scout Commissioner by Mr. Isaac Sutton,
Scout Commissioner for Delaware and Montgomery Counties, Boy Scouts of
America.
PUNK BOXES
The cowhorn punk box is made by sawing off the small end and then the
point of a cow's horn (Fig. 30). A small hole is next bored through
the solid small end of the horn to connect with the natural open space
further down, a strip of rawhide or whang string larger than the hole
is forced through the small end and secured by a knot on the inside,
which prevents it from being pulled out. The large end of the horn
is closed by a piece of thick sole leather attached to the thong, by
tying a hard knot in the end and pulling the thong through a hole in
the center of the stopper until the knot is snug against the leather
disk; this should be done before the wet leather is allowed to dry. If
the thong and leather stopper are made to fit the horn tightly, the dry
baked rags, the charred cotton, or whatever substance you use for punk,
when placed in the horn will be perfectly protected from moisture or
dampness.
SULPHUR HEADED SPUNKS AND MATCHES
These old sulphur "spunks" were nothing more than kindling wood or
tinder, because they would not ignite by rubbing but were lighted by
putting the sulphur end in the flame. According to our modern ideas
of convenience they appear very primitive. They were called "spunks"
in England and "matches" in America, and varied in length from three
to seven inches, were generally packed in bundles from a dozen to two
dozen and tied together with bits of straw. Some spunks made as late
as 1830 are considered rare enough to be carefully preserved in the
York Museum in England (Fig. 32½). The ones illustrated in Fig. 32 are
a Long Island product, and were given to the author by the late John
Halleran, the most noted antique collector on Long Island. These are
carefully preserved among the antiquities in the writer's studio. But
they are less than half the length of the ones formerly used on the
Western Reserve. With the ancient matches in the studio are also two
old pioneer tinder boxes with flints and steels. The tinder boxes are
made of tin and contain a lot of baked rags. The inside lid acts as an
extinguisher with which to cover up the punk or tinder in the box after
you have lighted the candle in the tin lid of the box (Fig. 32).
The matches we use today are evolved from these old sulphur spunks.
When the writer was a little fellow up in the Western Reserve on the
shores of Lake Erie, he was intensely interested in an old lady making
sulphur matches. Over the open fire she melted the sulphur in an iron
kettle in which she dipped the ends of some pine slivers. The sulphur
on the end of the sticks was then allowed to cool and harden. These
matches were about the length of a lead pencil and could only be
lighted by thrusting the sulphur into the flame. So, although having
been born in the age of Lucifer matches, the writer was yet fortunate
enough to see manufactured and to remember the contemporary ancestors
of our present-day "safety" match.
THE REAL LUCIFER MATCH
That is, the match which lights from friction, is the invention of
Isaac Holden, M. P. According to the _Pall Mall Gazette_, Mr. Holden
said, "In the morning I used to get up at 4 o'clock in order to pursue
my studies, and I used at that time the flint and steel, in the use of
which I found very great inconvenience. Of course, I knew, as other
chemists did, the explosive material that was necessary in order to
produce instantaneous light, but it was very difficult to obtain a
light on wood by that explosive material, and the idea occurred to me
to put sulphur under the explosive mixture. I did that and showed it in
my next lecture on chemistry, a course of which I was delivering at a
large academy."
Because every real woodsman is a student, as well as a sentimentalist,
a brief history is given of these fire implements to entertain him as
we jog along the "trace." All these things are blazes which mark the
trail to the button in our wall which now produces the electric light.
Some of them, like the clay cylinders found in the ruins of Babylon,
are only useful in a historical sense, but many of them are essentially
practical for woodcraft.
HOW TO MAKE A CHUCKNUCK
The slow match or punk rope to fit in the brass cylinder may be made of
candle wick or coach wick purchased at the hardware store; such wick
is about three-eighths of an inch in diameter. Scout Commissioner John
H. Chase of Youngstown, Ohio, suggests that the rope may be made from
the wastes of a machine shop or a garage; but one of the best woodsmen
I know is Mr. Frederick K. Vreeland, and he uses the apparatus shown
by Fig. 34, which is made of the yellow fuse rope, or punk rope, which
may be purchased at cigar stores. He fastens a cork in one end of the
rope by a wire, he pulls the other end of the rope through the end of
the brass cartridge shell which has been filed off for that purpose.
The end of the fuse rope must be charred, so as to catch the spark. To
get the spark he takes the back of the blade of his knife (Fig. 35),
and strikes the bit of flint as you would with flint and steel, holding
the charred end of the punk against the flint, as shown by the diagram
(Fig. 29). Loose cotton and various vegetable fibers twisted into a
rope soaked in water and gunpowder will make good punk when dry.
TO GET THE SPARK
Place the charred end of the rope on the flint, the charred portion
about one thirty-second of an inch back of the edge of the flint where
the latter is to be struck by the steel; hold the punk in place with
the thumb of the left hand, as in the diagram (Fig. 29). Hold the knife
about six inches above at an angle of about forty-five degrees from
the flint, turn your knife so that the edge of the back of the blade
will strike, then come down at an angle about thirty-five degrees with
a sharp scraping blow. This should send the spark into the punk at the
first or second blow. Now blow the punk until it is all aglow and you
are ready to set your tinder afire. Push the punk into the middle of a
handful of tinder and blow it until it is aflame, and the deed is done!
All these pocket contrivances for striking fire were formerly known as
"striker-lights" or "chucknucks."
A SUBSTITUTE FOR FLINT AND STEEL
The Malays having neither flint nor steel ingeniously substitute for
the flint a piece of broken chinaware, and for the steel a bamboo
joint, and they produce a spark by striking the broken china against
the joint of the bamboo, just as we do with the flint and steel.
FOOTNOTE:
[C] Today flint may be obtained at Bannermans, 501 Broadway, New York
City, where they also have ancient steels which were used by the U. S.
soldiers. The flints may also be purchased from Wards Natural Science
Establishment at Rochester, New York, and the author found a plentiful
supply of flints at one of the Army and Navy stores in New York.