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Making Fire
Walkhound:
While I was at the European summer meeting I went to a Pre-history park and saw a man make fire with flint and pyrite. Actually it was not pyrite but marcasite. It is harder than pyrite which merely crumbled away each time we tried to strike it with flint. (Got a small spark, but lost the firestone in the process.)
The marcasite is a form of pyrite with a different crystal structure which makes it better as a firestone. It has a greenish tinge, and has a smell of sulphur which distinguishes it from pyrite. When the man struck the flint onto the marcasite there was a strong smell of sulphur in the air. It made a very bright and strong spark too.
Now the way he managed to get the spark to hold was to aim the spark into some crumbled up dried old mushroom. This mushroom grows on trees like a plate.
The fungus didn't erupt into flame, but glowed with the spark when the man waved his hand over it. He then wrapped it up in a hay nest, waved it in the air until it burst into fire... He made it look so easy!
For his fire drill he had used ivy for the base and drilled holes into it. (He had taken the stem of the ivy that grows near the bottom of the tree, and sawed it into a rectangular piece about a foot long and 4 or 5 inches across then let it dry out.)
He used a bow with the drill. He had also made a small groove next to the hole and when the drill was twirled the hot sawdust came out of this hole onto prepared kindling.
Feyda:
The fungus name in french is 'Amadouvier', and the matter you take out of it is "amadou", which is translated into 'tinder'. JMA uses this term in the books, but it can mean anything that burns.
I found the fungus in big quantities in a forest (Foret de Fontainebleau), and found only one in another forest. We went in Fontainebleau with Utika and found some for her too.
The drill was made of hazel or lime. The important thing is that it is a hard wood, and the base should be soft wood, like ivy.
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Fire making 1. Using flint and and a marcasite stone (a form of iron pyrite), a man makes a spark that lands onto some crumbled dried mushroom which then starts to smoulder. He hit the stones smoothly several times to obtain several little sparks which landed on the tinder and lit it.
Photo: Sharon Rogers/walkhound 2001
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Fire making 2. Waving his hand over the mushroom you can faintly see how the man makes the mushroom glow red. Inset is a magnified view of the mushroom glowing red hot. Photo: Sharon Rogers/walkhound 2001
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Fire making 3. The man then makes a "nest" with some dried grass, wrapping the glowing mushroom inside it. Here he is blowing on it.
Photo: Sharon Rogers/walkhound 2001
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Fire making 4. Then the man waves the grass in the air and it bursts into flame.
Photo: Sharon Rogers/walkhound 2001
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