thinking this morning to teach a couple tricks;
first is a technique for Axe work, for all you folks that think you
know Axes and how to use them..
I learned this recently, after having begun using an axe in serious at
about age 16...
here in central america we have alot of Guava growing, its not native,
but has naturalized..
Guava is a fruitwood, its very very nice for carving, similar to
Holly... it has very interesting properties, as its both soft &
tough at the same time... Soft is relative to other harder woods, not
relative to really softer types.. Its perhaps similar to Apple wood in
hardness.. Its also very resilent, and would be my choice here for
barrel hoops in coopering, or if I needed a wooden spring perhaps..
you can bend it farther than anything else I know in wood types,
without breaking the fiber...
it makes good firewood, and I use it green for backlogs or sidelog to
hold a fire.. i.e. Keep a fire going burning a big slow hunk...
its serious work to chop and split, not my favorite to think about
when its wood getting time due to the amount of power required of the
moron on the Axe handle... The first thing I figured out was in
chopping up limbs etc. one had best keep the cut attempts at as acute
or sharp angle as possible.. Chopping it across the grain is somewhat
futile feeling...
then, I discovered that if you used only half of the axe blade, either
toe or heel, you could get the axe to go thru it better than trying to
strike at the center of the bitt.. So I developed a technique, where I
would first strike at the closest half of the round with the toe of
the axe, and then reach across that cut and strike with the heel, both
at acute angles to the grain, and chopping the limbs up into stove
wood became much easier..
then I combined this with another trick that I have, of laying the
piece across my chopping block, a stump currently, with the long end
of the piece away from me, and doing a split cut first..then coming in
from both sides with the toe of the axe, and doing the half cuts with
the toe of the axe, resulting in two hunks of stove wood for every
three strikes, and then one pulls the pole towards one's self, and
repeats the process, resulting in making quick work of longer sections
of it.. And less tounge hanging out when finished..
My worker prefers to cut the stuff with the chainsaw, even limbs, due
to the amount of force necessary with an axe, even a very sharp axe..
he's been doing incredible amounts of chopping with axe and machette,
since he was about 9 years old... child labor... Every day except
sunday...
the guy can out work me about 5:1.... and I can outwork the average
city person maybe 3:1...
anyway, I had him chop wood with the axe the other day.. Just to show
him the techniques.. he immediately adopted them...
you may have a chainsaw.. But without the technocult and alot of
infrastructure, to keep the fuel and oil supply line going, it
becomes history as a wood getting device.. So even the serious
survival & subsistence type would do well to learn these techniques...
As the number one survival tool in northern climates is the axe..
Here in the tropical jungle its number two behind the machete..
another thing to know, is that its best for cooking, to build your
fire against something.. I generally prefer building my cooking fire
against a backlog, or the back wall of my stone fire pit... this
reflects the heat back into the fire and results in better burning..
for quick fires, say for that first cup of coffee or tea, I like to
use a fire built into a corner, as it does the same thing only 2X
better.. A small fire, built of smaller dry sticks into a corner,
focuses the heat, and will produce a pot of hot water faster than a
propane stove...
I once saw an interesting foto of a fireplace built into the corner of
a masonry house.. It was incredibly simple looking.. just an arch over
the opening, leading on up, and after the mantle a smaller secton to
create the chiminey...
a very nice use for corners, which tend to be less useful generally
than other parts of a house... And I suspect a shape that would
produce better fires using less wood, than a classic Rumford style
fireplace, and be several times easier to construct.. It was also
nicely aesthetic...
The traditional fireplace as we know it evolved in Europe during the
feudal era.. Its designed to use fairly long pieces to allow large
fires for reflected heat, and its hearth for cooking, or cooking with
several pots at the same time... Hung from a bar across the hearth..
Or toasting etc. Over coals pulled out onto its hearth.. otherwise
the hearth would be lower, even with the floor to allow better heating
of the floor level of the home due to convection & air circulation..
if I were building a fireplace for heating in a cold climate, I would
build it in a stepped down area lower than the floor, so that the
coldest air in the house thermosiphoned to the fire.. This would make
for warmer feet...
the Rumford style fireplace was also the result of cheap slave labor
and an elite nobility who could have the serfs out working in the
cold, snow, mud, etc. Cutting large amounts of wood, in what were vast
forests of the European plain... Well things have changed.. The
forests are history, and the Nobility have evolved into bankers..
game staying pretty much the same....
the fireplace in a corner design came from the Mexican American
culture, which generally resides in places with warmer days, colder
nights, and not much for cooking fuel.. nor alot of wealth to spend
building huge impressive fireplaces... Once again, humility pays
dividends.. the design is obviously very efficient...
the fireplace also exceeds the wood stove, in being able to burn
green wood... in a stove this is impossible as the steam from the
green or wet wood will dampen the fire.. While in a more open
fireplace, the open contruction allows more air flow to remove the
vapor at the fire, allowing cooking on green wood of larger sizes,
thus holding a loner burning slower fire, which is better for
cooking.. This is a now forgotten art, and only mention of it I have
ever seen, was in a foxfire book.. I use the technique constantly, and
it allows me to hold fire overnight, and still have coals in the
morning, allowing rebuilding the fire without more matches or use of a
lighter.. Or waiting for the sun to use a lens... and in the future I
suspect the lighting of fires to be as much of an ordeal as it was in
the past... When the technocult goes down, matches & lighters become
history, and the relighting of fires becomes an unwanted extra task..
my guess is people will have to group up for mutual protection, and
cooperation, and each home keep a round the clock watch for raiders
and to keep the home fire burning..
The use of more green wood also allows firewood cutting to be spread
out over the entire year, rather than concentrated in summer.. This
allows working in cooler temperatures...
Its also wise to realize that in olden days, people relied on more
clothing even inside the home to stay warm... Not on bigger fires or
just turning up the thermostat... We live in decadent times leading to
times of anarchy, excessive wealth soon leading to universal
poverty, which leads to humility and restarts the cycle at its
fundamentals...
unfortunately this time, we have nuclear weapons... Its going to be a
long long period of dark ages, unless the Alien arrival predicted in
the Bible happens, which probably wont do much to prevent continued
humility...
and for a final few words on fire. a fire is the center of a home,
its like a good mother, with her love being what everyone revolves
around.. To share a hearth is to share heart, and I suspect the two
words came from the same root.
in whats coming, blaming will cure nothing, and result in fighting and
death.. And if you want to survive, the second most important factor
after self reliance, will be group effort.. And I suggest you consider
finding your hearts, and forming your clans and tribes and serious
relationships now, based on human decency.
--
Sent from my mobile device
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