Guy Radford November 30th, 2011
Cramp Ball fungus also known as King Alfred’s Cakes is great for starting fires or as a coal extender.
Cramp balls grow mainly on dead Ash trees, they can be easily removed with a little force. If they crumble then they are too old. Remember when collecting anything from the wild not to strip an area, only take what you require.
Once the cramp ball is removed you can break it open, the inside looks like the layers of an onion. These layers will easily take a spark from a fire steel. When a spark has taken it will start to glow, you can now gently blow until the ember has grown and is self maintaining.
Now with this good ember you will be able to light all sorts of tinder, from dried grass to silver birch bark.
Guy Radford May 1st, 2011
This weekend was a making weekend, yesterday I made a steel to use with flint for making fire and today I made a Buck Saw.
I have been planning my Buck Saw for several months. My main requirement was that the blade had to be protected and it would needed very little assembly. I did not want it to fiddly or to many little bits that could get dropped or lost. The blade needed to stay part of the saw at all times even when packed away. So after a few hours of fettling in the garage I has myself a Buck Saw.
I am still looking at the design and works and already have a few minor adjustments. In the photo you will see that the tensioning cord ends are both hooked over the same end, this makes it easier to use the same cord to tie up the folded saw. Also the tensioning bar needs a hole for the cord to pass though so that it cant be lost.
I have used dowels to hold the middle bar in place, next time I intend to make it out of one piece and carve it to shape.
Guy Radford May 1st, 2011
Back in February I did a charcoal making course and part of the course was to light the forge and do some forging, I chose to make a steel for use with flint. The Steel looked great once finished but did not work, I later found out that the steel was too soft and required a higher carbon content, this is often found in tool steel and an old file makes a good donor.
Yesterday I went to my local forge, old file in hand. Forging high carbon content steel is interesting, if you get it too hot it becomes very brittle and just crumbled when hit. We over came this but not getting the steel to hot and being more gentle with the hammer. After an hour of hammering and heating I have my steel, the next think is to test it.
Initial tests did not seem to produce any sparks, we tried heating the striking face and quenching in water, this changes the structure of the steel and hardens it. After this we got a few sparks but not the number we got of the original file, we assumed that the forging had burnt off some of the carbon.
To cool the steel after it had been forged we had dunked it in water and the same when we hardened it. After we had been chatting for a while I tried it again and it worked much better, even though I had dried the steel we can only assume that it was still wet and now it was fully dry it worked much better. I took it home to give it a proper test.
I placed the char cloth on top of the flint next to the striking edge, then struck the flint with a downwards swipe with the steel to produce sparks. This takes patience but after a while a spark landed on the char cloth and took, I could then gently blow the tiny ember it into a nice hot ember. At his point you would add it to your tinder bundle and get your fire going.
Guy Radford April 28th, 2011
Yesterday whilst wondering the fields in the early evening I spotted a fox and her cubs playing in the last of the warm sun. I used my tracking skills to creep closer, it’s not very easy to hide in a grass field, but the wind was on my face so that helped. Here is one of the pictures I took. It took me about half and hour to get this close and this was just as she started to get suspicious of me.
Guy Radford April 28th, 2011
The young Beech leaves are very tasty and make are rather more-ish wayside snack. They are also great in salads.
Even though Hornbeam is part of the same family the leave don’t taste nice.
Guy Radford April 27th, 2011
Wood sorrel is easy to find and identify and on top of that is very tasty. It has and apple flavour. Each plant is tiny so you need loads to make a reasonable snack, however that flavour comes from the oxalic acid, which if you consume too much is poisonous! But I doubt you could pick enough for it to be a problem.
Sheep Sorrel or Common Sorrel is harder to identify. But once you find it it has a similar taste if not a little tarter.
Guy Radford April 22nd, 2011
Whilst driving back from the woods I saw a Barn Owl sat in the middle of the track. I managed to take a few photos before it flew silently away. The photos is not very good quality as it was taken on my mobile in the dark and zoomed it.
Guy Radford April 16th, 2011
Vetch is a member of the pea family. Which means you can eat the peas. They are very small but tasty.
Guy Radford April 16th, 2011
With Burdock you can eat the root. The root contains a lot of starch. To get to the root you need to dig next to the plant, the root can go down 12 inches or more and will easily snap if pulled.
To cook there are to main ways, throw it on the embers like a potato. Once cooked you can eat the starchy middle. Or you can chop it up and add it to stews.
Guy Radford April 16th, 2011
I just bumped into a lime tree where the bark is semi prepared. The tree is dead and still standing. The bark has started to rot and all the fibres and becoming exposed. In just pealed of great length with my hands. What a great find.
Here is a photo from near by of a fallen Lime with suckers growing up.
