Snowy day Pump-drillin'

Pump drills are cool. They are a little bit tricky to make but once a good set is tuned and working it takes very little energy to create an ember. I've never made one before so since it has been snowing hard here lately I thought it would be a nice little indoor project.

It works by twisting the rope around the spindle which raises the handle and as you push the handle down it turns the spindle, creating friction where the spindle contacts the fire board. The weight is attached to the spindle by drilling a hole through it (the handle also has a hole drilled through it) and tapering the spindle so that it is thinner at the top then gets thicker as it goes down so that the weight gets stuck part way down. This weight causes the spindle to keep spinning after you have pushed the handle all the way down causing the rope to twist back around and bring the handle back up. It was surprisingly easy to make once I found the parts and it is very fun to mess around with. I borrowed the dimensions for the parts out of the Bulletin of Primitive Technology and it worked well. The materials I used were an old broom stick for the spindle with a cedar plug on the tip and a cedar fireboard, an ash handle, a sawed off pine log for the weight and a purple nylon cord for flair.

Sit Spot

This is where I sit to learn about nature. I come here for at least an hour every day to just sit, expand my senses and observe. I’ve had many awesome experiences from just sitting quietly in nature. I had a deer almost step on me, a fox trot by and sniff my outstretched foot, little Juncos hop around on my boots. I heard once that animals and birds are drawn to meditating humans and from my experience I would have to agree. The Sit Spot is part of the Kamana program but it is a practice found in many native traditions and cultures all over the world. Sometimes it is used for meditation and to rejuvenate the spirit or to teach young scouts about the intricacies of bird language. I find that I am generally happier and healthier when I’m visiting a Sit Spot every day.
I’ll be going to this sit spot every day for a full year and I like that I’m starting in the dead of Winter. This way I can know the lowest level of activity and watch it all come to life then back down again at the end of the year. It is also nice to pick a spot while there is snow on the ground because while it looks bleak, there are tracks of bobcat, coyote, gray fox, grouse, rabbits, deer, skunks, fisher, mink, mice and more in view of where I sit. I plan on getting to know all of these animals before the year is up.

Gray fox tracking

It has been warm the past few days and the snow has been melting. We had a little dusting of snow on Thursday night which creates perfect conditions for tracking. There is a solid frozen layer with about half an inch of fresh snow on top. This makes the tracks clear and also makes them easy to age.

I took this opportunity to follow a gray fox trail that I saw on the road. On top of the perfect tracking conditions, it was also a beautiful day with a big blue sky. I followed the fox from the road, through the swamp, up to the cliffs behind camp. It was probably two or three miles total. It is rare treat to get to follow an animal for that long of a distance and you really get an insight into its life. I was amazed at how agile and nimble this fox was while I was stumbling and crashing through the snow after it. In one spot the fox trotted up a stump then hopped onto a narrow fallen branch without ever breaking its stride - even with everything covered in snow and ice! I'm looking forward to seeing this fox's trail again trotting through camp and hopefully getting a glimpse of the animal itself.

Progress...

I’ve finished roughing out my bow and carving it down to one growth ring on the back. This can be a tedious process but with sharp tools and a little patience it goes by fast. My method for doing this was to use the drawknife to bring it within two growth rings, then use a spokeshave to shave off one more growth ring, then go back to the drawknife only this time I held it as a right angle and used it as a scraper to scrape off the last growth ring. I touched up any final remnants with a pocket knife held the same way. If anyone else has a method for doing this that they would like to share I would be very interested in hearing about it! I've thinned out the belly quite a bit so I'm probably just about ready to start floor tillering. We'll see what Barry says tonight.

My First Bow

Bow making, like a lot of these skills is an art form. The only difference is that when you are done, you can use it to kill a deer! You can’t do that with a painting.

It is a great feeling making something with your hands and watching it take shape. I especially like working with wood and carving through each growth ring and seeing how the grain peels apart. I’ve attempted a few bows but I’ve never made one all the way through so this is very exciting for me. I picked out the stave which I thought to be Black Locust. Turns out it is White Ash with a weird orange tint to it. With much help from Barry Keegan I stenciled the outline on the back of the bow and roughed out the shape. The stencil we used is the Sedbury style bow from Peabody, MA. This is a copy of a bow from the 1600s and thought to be one of the few known bow designs that was made with stone tools. I think that is cool. I've finished roughing out the outline and now I'm working on finding a nice growth ring which will make the back of the bow (the "back" of the bow faces away from you while shooting, the side facing towards you is the "belly"). Once the back is finished then I will start thining the belly until it starts bending. More to come...

Tracking Intensive

I spent the weekend tracking with White Pine Programs in southern Maine. It was a great day of tracking. We followed an animal from the weasel family for several hundred yards slowly adding clues and ruling out species. We finally determined that it was a mink by the way it was sliding on the snow and heading from one water source to the next (Mink are alot like Otters in that their diet is made up of aquatic animals). We also tracked deer, porcupines and bobcats. We followed one porcupine trail all the way to its den where we found the grumpy, spikey animal trying to sleep. We even got a glimpse of a flying squirrel. Apparently if you find a standing dead tree with a hole fit for a flying squirrel you can tap on the tree and get the squirrel to poke its head out and sometimes glide away. We were lucky enough to see it poke its head out but we didn't get to see it fly.
Now I'm back at camp and back to work on my bow. Tonight Ricardo is taking me to see Michael McCarthy, the local blacksmith to work on projects and if I'm lucky, learn a thing or two about blacksmithing.
Connor