Hot enough for ya?
What in blazes is The Riven Word thinking with all these posts about “fire”during our first summer heat wave? Does this mean that we’ll be posting about “Riven Popsicle Sticks” when the January freeze comes?
Nana always drank hot tea and coffee even when it was wicked hot outside. She claimed it actually cooled her down some. And you feel a bit cooler after a hot shower on a hot day, opening up all those pores. Maybe our fire-centric posts will open up your metaphorical pores and bring you some relief…
Tim Turner and Mark Atchison presented at our staff-training on methods of making fire from the Wampanoag and English traditions. The Riven Word was fortunate to catch some of their expertise on video.
Making fire without matches or a lighter is a very deliberate act, full of preparation, patience, and time-honored brilliance. Like so many human endeavors that would at first glance appear to be simple, there are lifetimes of wisdom just beneath the surface.
Tags: fire starting, Mary Rose, Native Plymouth Tours, Plimoth Plantation, Wampanoag Indigenous Program
One of these days I’ll have to test drive one of those strikers i’ve made! I think the people I’ve made them for just use them for window dressing . Makes me wish I had paid better attention when I saw the Mary Rose too. Cool post, as usual.
That Mary Rose repro-box Mark has to keep his fire-making kit in is just so dang efficient, it doesn’t seem as though it should be so old–I particularly love how the underside of the lid is charred…perfect. Even the little finger pull in the lid. They should design a car after it! Thanks John.
I was lieing awake last night planning out my tinder box, and realized that I am used to thinking in 18th or 19th century – not 17th. Occasionally 10th. How are the corners of the box joined? I get the impression that dovetails weren’t common at the time, but am assuming an assumption. While I am on gaps in knowledge, what was all of that enormous pile of firewood cut with? I find in “Ancient Carpenter’s Tools” that something like a 2 man crosscut saw goes back to 1600 anyway, but how common were they? You certainly provide a lot for someone engaged in brainless labor to use as work for an idle mind.
Hi john,
Let me talk with Mark about the details of the tinder box’s construction. Ted Curtain Jr., former Plant artisan, made it several years ago. More bout that later.
As for your question about what the firewood is cut with, it’s a perfect one to ask. We have thwart saws showing up in the earliest Plimoth inventories, so we know they’re there. But was the firewood processed this way? Mark has always thought that we ought to represent more chopped firewood–small dimensions cut with a hatchet or an ax. In many ways, cutting small firewood to length with an ax is more efficient than using a saw, either thwart or handsaw. When the firewood is bigger, however (roughly in the 7″ and up range) it’s almost essential to use a crosscut/thwart saw–it’s almost quicker and there’s less waste. It’s hard to tell from the Oxford woodcut image what’s going on with the endgrain of the various pieces of the ricke of wood, whether they are chopped or cut with a saw.
Considering that there’s a large variety of diameters of wood within a single tree, my best guess is that a ricke of wood, especially one made in New England, would tend to be a mix of pieces both chopped and sawn.
Full disclosure: We process almost all of our firewood in this century with a chainsaw! Shhhh…keep that to yourself.
More later John,
Rick
If you had some summer interns, they could dress the ends with an axe. While contemplating their sins.
Ha! I read that as, contemplating their SHINS…