Papua New Guinea native firemaking with string

[Galemys]

Can't easily get my hands on flint.
Would a firesteel do?
Could you also let me know what Beccari said the various others were used for?
I could then ask lots of questions and compare what the old and current uses are

Bod,
I think a firesteel will not work because it's too blunt. My theory is that the sparks are tiny pieces of bamboo, sliced of by the flint. If this is correct any material that's hard & sharp enough will do the trick. My scarce resources mention flint, china pottery (porcelain), glass or iron so you were probably right in trying out your parang to strike sparks.
Well that's my hypothesis but I might be wrong so don't let it stop you trying out a firesteel!

Beccari is not very elaborate in describing the uses of the bamboo species so I don't know of the next will be of any help:
Bulu pretja (a slender type) Beccari used for "making cane frames for the rearing of silkworms" later he found bulu kassa preferable for that purpose ("being still more slender and very like the reeds we use in Italy")
Beccari says the bulu gading ('ivory bamboo') is a sacred plant for the land dayaks but he gives no uses for it.
He also mentions a spring bamboo trap ('petti') that he land dayaks use too catch wild pigs which "consist of a horizontal bamboo stake (('jerunkan') driven by a strong spring".
In contrary to the meagre descriptions above, the book abunds in plant lore and Beccari mentions a lot of wildlife. There is also a description of how the natives make a sumpitan (blowpipe) but that's in one of the last chapters of the book I still have to read.

Tom

[Stew]

Can't easily get my hands on flint.

Would a firesteel do?

Could you also let me know what Beccari said the various others were used for?

I could then ask lots of questions and compare what the old and current uses are

Would you like a piece of flint posting out to you?

I would happily send you a piece.

[Galemys]

After a new google-search with Bod's alternative spelling I found this site with some bamboospecies that could turn up to be Beccari's Bulu tamian. I've put the names that are similar to Bulu tamian in bold.
(http://www.plantnames.unimelb.edu.au...ostachyum.html)

Schizostachyum blumei Nees (PROSEA,Wang)
SYNONYM(S) : Melocanna zollingeri Steudel var. longispiculata Kurz. ex Munro (PROSEA), Schizostachyum longispiculatum (Kurz ex Munro) Kurz (PROSEA)
CHINESE : Zhao wa si lao zhu.
ENGLISH : Borneo schizostachyum.
FRENCH : Schizostachyum de Borneo.
MALAY : Bongulungul (Sabah), Buloh anap (Sabah), Buluh lacau (Brunei, Indonesia), Buluh tamiang (Indonesia), Pring wuluh (Indonesia), Pring jawa, Tombotuon (Sabah).
SUNDANESE : Awi bunar (Indonesia), Awi tamiyang (Indonesia).

Schizostachyum iraten Steudel (PROSEA)
SYNONYM(S) : Schizostachyum biflorum McClure (PROSEA)
ENGLISH : Bali blowpipe bamboo, Bali schizostachyum, Java schizostachyum, Sumatra schizostachyum.
FRENCH : Schizostachyum de Bali, Schizostachyum de Java, Schizostachyum de Sumatra.
MALAY : Pring wuluh (Java).
SUNDANESE : Awi bunar (Indonesia), Awi tamiyang (Indonesia).

Schizostachyum irratun Kurz (OHRN)
MALAY : Bambu tamiyang (Indonesia).
Could this taxon (specific name) be a synonym of Schizostachyum iraten ? D. Ohrnbereger says that it is of doubtful status.

Schizostachyum jaculans Holttum (PROSEA)
MALAY : Buloh kasap, Buloh sumpitan, Buloh temiang.
Photograph at BambooDownUnder, Australia.

Tom

[BOD]

Well Done Galemys,

I also checked the Kew gardens catalogue following your lead and they confirm the blumei species is in Temburong - the East of this country so I will go both east and west to see if I can get samples.

If I get any I'll leave them at Condex's place (I'll ask him tonight) and when Stuart comes out he can bring samples back or the group coming out can play with them if they bring their flints.

As for the "bulu" angle a friend reminded me of the fibres (like fibre glass)that came off some bamboo we were collecting which were irritating and caused a rash for him. A physical chemist he belives they could contain silica.



Stew Thanks for the offer of a flint. I'm leaving Borneo soon for Peninsula Malaysia so posting would be a difficulty as i will have no address here, just a bush hut

http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/herbarium/brunei/fams/200.htm

[Galemys]

I've contacted "bambooweb", a site for bamboo-enthusiasts, and the person I had mailed had not heard of the bamboo-spark method but he was willing to put my questions about it on their forum. So maybe one of the bamboo-fanatics comes up with additional information.
He also said the following: "One thing to remember about bamboo is the culms increase in silica content as they get older" So the older (in growth years) the bamboo specimen, the better.

Tom

[bryanr]

Wow, this has been a very interesting and educational thread. Thanks for the input guys!

Bryan

[BOD]

It would be helpful to know the following:

1. did the Bidayuh use green bamboo or dried sections? If the former there is no use getting lots of samples apart from a couple to try out

2. is there any description of the technique used - how to strike etc. I have no experience with flint and steel other than seeing it done by others. Should I try for a glancing blow or try and keep the surfaces in contact as long as possible , a sort of sliding blow if you know what I mean

3. By what has been said earlier I take it that the best sections are the oldest so that means I'll be felling 15-20 meter bamboo to get at the tops as blumei is a large species from what I read?


It seems that this type - S. jaculans has other uses - blowpipes. Buloh Kasap incidentally means rough bamboo

[Galemys]

Yesterday evening I tried striking a length of thick bamboo (a leftover from experimenting with the bamboo fire saw) with a piece of flint. I had turned off the light to enhance my chances of seeing any spark. The flint wasn't exactly sharp but I regularly got sparks coming off the bamboo! The sparks looked a bit dull in comparison to flint & steel but it was more than I had expected.
I can now understand that a bamboospecies with higher silica-content could generate better sparks and, in combination with a good 'spark' tinder, can make fire.

The piece of bamboo I used is about 4 inches in diameter and is sold as decoration in a flower shop so I cannot identify the species, but after my experiment I am quite sure that any hard bamboo will generate the dull sparks I got.
I will get some better (sharper) flint this weekend and try again to see if this produces better sparks, and also try to project the sparks on some charcloth.

Tom

[BOD]

Since I do not have flint perhaps I should use porcelain

I suppose not fine bone china

but the more common stuff?

[Galemys]

1. did the Bidayuh use green bamboo or dried sections? If the former there is no use getting lots of samples apart from a couple to try out
2. is there any description of the technique used - how to strike etc. I have no experience with flint and steel other than seeing it done by others. Should I try for a glancing blow or try and keep the surfaces in contact as long as possible , a sort of sliding blow if you know what I mean
3. By what has been said earlier I take it that the best sections are the oldest so that means I'll be felling 15-20 meter bamboo to get at the tops as blumei is a large species from what I read?

Hi Bod, I hadn't seen your post,

1 I assume that they used dried bamboo, but it doesn't eplicitly say so in the book (or in my other sources).
2 With flint & steel I normally have the flint with some charcloth on top of it, held in position with the thumb and then strike a glancing blow with the steel on a sharp edge of the flint. Yesterday with the bamboo it was the other way around; I held the bamboo piece steady and struck the flint with a glancing/shaving blow against it. If I have better flint I will try it with the bamboo as the moving piece too. As for the 'sliding blow', I don't know if it will work, I think it has to be a very fast movement but I will experiment with it & let you know.
3 I think you're right, grasses grow from below so the oldest bit should be on top


PS a sturdy piece of broken glass (bottom of a beer bottle) should also work
Tom

[BOD]

I'm not hoping that I'll succeed in making fire

I'd use a bow drill it seems much easier. In fact lit the wood fired BBQ with it for lunch. Friday is the Muslim sabbath so its a day off

If I get good sparks then I know that it is the right bamboo.

Maybe you can demonstrate the technique at the bush moot!

[Galemys]

I'm not hoping that I'll succeed in making fire
Maybe you can demonstrate the technique at the bush moot!

Me neither, but just exploring the possibilites of this method is fun enough for me.

I would love to come to the next Bornean moot, England is a bit too far from the Netherlands...

Tom

[Galemys]

I tried again yesterday, striking my piece of bamboo with some new pieces of flint. The flints I used had a much sharper edge so I figured it would give better sparks. Oddly enough the opposite happened; I got some weak sparks, as dull as the ones I got last week with the blunt piece of flint, but most of the time the edge of the flint 'bit' into the piece of bamboo, chopping of bamboochips that were way too big to spark.
I think I'll have to improve my striking technique, preferably before my piece of bamboo is chopped to smithereens.

Tom

[BOD]

Struck with a blunt instrument...

There may well be a BCUK trip to Borneo next year if enough people can make it. We made some camp furniture in the bush for them last month.

My travels have been somewhat curtailed so can't go sampling as soon as I hoped. May have to do it next month.

[Galemys]

I found this in an article called:

On Fire-Making in North Borneo
Sydney B. J. Skertchly
The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 19, 1890 (1890), pp. 445-452

"V- Fire from Bamboo and pottery
Pandeka, who is most skilful as a firemaker, often amused me by striking fire with a bit of broken crockery on a bamboo. He holds a long bamboo nearly upright, and taking a little of the scraped inside of bamboo in the hollow of his hand, and the crock between his finger and thumb, he strikes a spark from the siliceous coating of the bamboo by one free stroke of the arm. It requires a good hard, seasoned bamboo to work well."

The fire-syringe (fire piston), fire drill and fire saw are also depicted and described in a more detailed way. Skertchly also includes the english, dyak and malay names for the different parts of the fire piston and the tinder that was used by the locals for the fire piston, the "covering of the stem of a low palm, called by the Dyaks Apiang".

Tom

[BOD]

Got it!

Just back from Borneo. Got the bulu temiang.

Maybe we should write a story about the quest for the fire bamboo!

[Galemys]

Maybe we should write a story about the quest for the fire bamboo!

and then sell it to a Hollywood producer, it sounds like a good title!

That 's amazing news Bod! Let us know how & where you found the bulu temian bamboo. Did you try it out already or are you still busy with the new house?

On the original subject of this thread, the fire thong:
I tried again with hemp string on a split log of lime (basswood, Tilium sp). I doubled the 3 mm string this time but it still wears out, exactly at the time the smoke begins to rise. It doesn't cut into the wood as fast as a single string does though. Next step will be tripling the string and using a longer length (combined with longer strokes). This will (at least in theory) distribute the abrasion of the string over a longer length thus enhancing it's lifetime and maybe giving me the few more strokes that are needed to reach ignition.

Tom

[rich59]

I had a thought about cordage for this method. The problem seems to be that the cordage breaks when you put enough work into the job. Well, I was experimenting with a load of different materials for tinders today and included raffia. Raffia stood out a something that remained intact despite a lot of stress on the fibres, and was highly flexible too. Anyone tried a well made raffia cord for this? Would back twisting or platting be better to contend with the friction?

[BOD]

Hi Tom,

It’s a long story about how I got it. I’m using my wife’s computer and it is giving me some trouble so I won’t go into detail. After a lot of fun like heavy monsoon rain, landslides and floods I got there and was told by the Iban that it grew around there (the border of Brunei and Sarawak) and that I knew the bamboo which puzzled me!

It is a bamboo which often contains water and I have drunk from temiang stems and cooked rice in them before (but have never noticed sparks)
However, the longhouse headman and his brother who are in their 70’s said this was the fire bamboo and described 3 different methods of using temiang without prompting from me, namely bamboo and steel, bamboo and crockery and bamboo and bamboo (not recommended). It is a bamboo with many uses both utilitarian and spiritual.

Anyway I now have a bergen full of temiang lengths drying in Borneo. I posted 4 lengths to myself in West Malaysia and I am waiting for them to dry before trying it out. Remember that at least 3 different species are called “temiang” and the one that was observed to produce sparks may be a different one.

It’s best that I try it before sending it as I do not want to disappoint. The problem is that I have no flint and steel experience and may botch it. Another issue is that we collected it in pouring rain. Jamit said that there were differences in the stems we cut (not apparent to me no matter how closely I looked!) and the river was flooding at the time and I needed to return before I was cut off (the community had been cut off for a week a few weeks before) so the lengths were mixed up and I may have sent myself the lengths collected by myself!)

I have complete faith in Jamit however as I have never known him to be wrong on anything to do with jungle lore.

I have tried the rattan on bamboo method but cannot claim any expertise. The diameter of the rattan is important. About 0.75 cm seems to be right for success. The age and dryness are a factor I think.

[Galemys]

However, the longhouse headman and his brother who are in their 70’s said this was the fire bamboo and described 3 different methods of using temiang without prompting from me, namely bamboo and steel, bamboo and crockery and bamboo and bamboo (not recommended).

Amazing and encouraging that the knowledge is not completely gone!
What do they think of your ´quest for the fire bamboo´? Do they think we lost our minds or are they happy that people are interested in the old ways?

Tom

[Galemys]

I have tried the rattan on bamboo method but cannot claim any expertise. The diameter of the rattan is important. About 0.75 cm seems to be right for success. The age and dryness are a factor I think.

Did you succeed?
Do you use a piece of bamboo just as those that are used with the bamboo fire saw (i.e. a length of bamboo cut in half with a transverse cut)?

I tried the split limewood again tonight with the string now doubled twice but still had no luck. I should be better prepared next time I try, I was trying it out in the dark and my split piece of limewood was shifting all the time so I had to pause and reposition a few times. In the end I got good smoke till the rope broke. Examination in the light showed that it had produced good dark brown powder, something I hadn´t seen up till now.

Tom

[BOD]

Did you succeed?
Do you use a piece of bamboo just as those that are used with the bamboo fire saw (i.e. a length of bamboo cut in half with a transverse cut)?

...Tom

Yes it works but the lengthswise cut (Not the transverse)is less than half the circumference. The reason, i think, is that only friction you want is that around the hole - anywhere else just wears out the rattan without contributing to the ember.

Rattan breaking is always going to be aproblem. Will try with the temiang when dry

[BOD]

Here are some photos of the 'elusive' bulu temiang.





Please forgive the quality of the photos. They were taken in pouring rain. My trip coincided with the very heavy rains and floods in South East Asia. I am surprised the camera did as well as it did.

I include some photos of the making of rattan strips. In this case they are being made for a basket but the techinque for making a thong is probably similar. I forget this lady's name but she is so quick in stripping the rattan. Its done in seconds and only the hard outer surface remains which is very flexible. You can see the difference in her work and mine. My strip is more liable to break.

[Galemys]

Thank's for showing Bod!

Tom

[BOD]

.
Malay Peninsula
Employed a billet of wood again, "split ... at one end so as to form a cleft of about 6 inches. In this he inserted a small stick, which formed a peg separating the two halves and standing above the surface of the billet". Tinder 'palm scurf' [which I read as palm fibre?] was stuffed into the cleft between the peg and the thong at the base of the split. The thong is rattan, with sticks fasted at each end.

.

It is not palm fibre but a finer than cotton wool like material scraped from between the outer and inner layers of the apiang palm

[BOD]

I found this in an article called:

On Fire-Making in North Borneo
Sydney B. J. Skertchly
The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 19, 1890 (1890), pp. 445-452

"V- Fire from Bamboo and pottery
Pandeka, who is most skilful as a firemaker, often amused me by striking fire with a bit of broken crockery on a bamboo. He holds a long bamboo nearly upright, and taking a little of the scraped inside of bamboo in the hollow of his hand, and the crock between his finger and thumb, he strikes a spark from the siliceous coating of the bamboo by one free stroke of the arm. It requires a good hard, seasoned bamboo to work well."

The fire-syringe (fire piston), fire drill and fire saw are also depicted and described in a more detailed way. Skertchly also includes the english, dyak and malay names for the different parts of the fire piston and the tinder that was used by the locals for the fire piston, the "covering of the stem of a low palm, called by the Dyaks Apiang".

Tom

The apiang is held on top of the crockery/flint.

The tinder comes from inner layers of the stem around. the heart

Incidentally, this palm does not die as it has radial shoots each with a heart like a pandanus

[Galemys]

The apiang is held on top of the crockery/flint.

Ah, just as the charcloth or amadou with the traditional steel & flint, on top of the flint.

Tom

[BOD]

The story continues...

I arrived during harvest time and many people were busy gathering in the rice crop or engaged in related matters and were too busy or too tired to humour my request for a lesson in an old way of making fire

These are subsistence farmers and it was not a good year as strong monsoon winds and storms had flattened parts of the fields so it was not my part to be pushy.

Fortunately, after spending the first day learning how to harvest rice, I spoke to an old man in his 70’s named Salang whom I knew. He was not busy with rice harvesting and he promised me a lesson the following morning.

I had come just to photograph the fire starting but the quest turned into a complete tutorial on this form of fire making. I’m setting it out in some detail for the record since the 19th Century accounts are brief and sometimes misleading.

Since I had collected and dried the temiang bamboo on a previous visit, we now started by collecting the tinder.

This meant locating an apiang palm, mentioned in Skertchly as growing only “on the banks of mountain streams far into the interior.” In our case, we were about 60km from the coast close to a large stream in a transition zone between low hills and swamp.

[Apiang palm and Salang]
[IMG][/IMG]
The tinder is not, as Skertchly says, from the external covering of the stem but from intermediate layers between the outer layers and the inner pith. This is surprising since his description of the tinder is quite accurate.

Incidentally, his translation of ‘tinder’ as umbut is not correct as umbut simply means the palm pith or heart of palm. Salang never refered to the tinder fluff as umbut but as lulut (refered to by Skertchly as the Malay word for tinder) which he obtained from umbut apiang (apiang palm heart).

I have only a very small Dyak vocabulary and spoke to Salang in standard Malay. He has practically no English and a limited and heavily accented Borneo Malay but I am sure on this point.

[ cutting off the outer layers]
[IMG][/IMG]
Getting the lulut is quick if you know what you are doing. Note the way he holds the parang

[“a brown flocculent mass, quite soft. This is scraped off and forms the best tinder.” Skertchly]
[IMG][/IMG]

[heart of palm umbut]


We later brought the heart to a hut used when the Dayaks are working the fields so they do not have to walk all the way back to the long house.

The scraped lulut was then collected.
[IMG][/IMG]

I had brought my collecting bag, Salang improvised. Aesthetically, it was no contest.

[bag vs. leaf]

[IMG][/IMG]

The ethno-pyrology literature makes no mention of any additive to the apiang lulut but Salang said that we had to add something. He brought me to a plant which I know by sight but not name.

[plant]

[IMG][/IMG]

The leaves of this plant can grow to 10 metres and are shaped like a V with wings in the way a child might draw a distant bird in flight. Some call it nature’s corrugated iron and it is indeed used as shelter material as this picture shows

[corrugated roof]
[IMG][/IMG]

We collected some very dry old roof mats from the rice hut and brought it back to the longhouse. Salang washed it to remove dirt and impurities.

We then dried the lulut and leaves which is almost as exciting as watching grass grow.

When dry the leaves were burnt on a drum lid till they almost turned to ash at which time they were covered. I don’t know why this was done. Initially, when I heard the word ‘tin’, I thought they would make some kind of char fibre but this was almost entirely ash, char dust at best if there is such a thing (Any suggestions why they do this?)

[ burning leaves]
[IMG][/IMG]

[ash]

[IMG][/IMG]
The lulut and the ash were then mixed taking care not to let any dirt etc on to it.

A piece of fluffed up tinder is then placed on top of a piece of stone / crockery with the thumb on top in the conventional way and the temiang section is struck hard with a glancing blow. If lucky a small spark or two is produced. As Balfour said it is a method requiring great skill and in a very demanding environment at that.

[striking bamboo]
[IMG][/IMG]

The tinder was not dry enough as it had barely 2 hours of direct sunlight to dry since being scraped off the inner stem. The crockery was also unsuitable being too modern though it threw off feeble sparks. We tried some robust ferrocium sparks to test the tinder. A very tiny part ignited but even hand fanning only produced more smoke.

[ smouldering tinder]

[IMG][/IMG]

When I return to Borneo, we’ll do it again with drier tinder.


Some the Dutch bushies were experimenting last weekend with the bamboo I sent them with I hear better results.

[Galemys]

Amazing to see BOD's pictures, they are very very much appreciated.

BOD had kindly sent me some of the Temiang bamboo so at the Dutch bushcraft meeting last weekend we had a chance to try it out. Sadly, I don't think there were pictures made while we were at it.

We did not succeed in creating fire with the temiang bamboo but it was very exciting to work with!

The temiang gave orange sparks easy but they tend to stick very close to the flint, or actually at the point of contact between flint and bamboo. The sparks do not travel far or fly like sparks from a flint & steel combination so they are difficult to project onto tinder. It could be that my tinder (charcloth) was too coarse or too damp as we tried it in the evening. It is also not easy to keep the charcloth in one piece when you hold it on the striking piece of flint. We tried it in several ways;
•the bamboo held steady & then struck with the flint (tinder below the flint)
•the flint held steady (charcloth on top) & then struck with the bamboo
•a glancing strike (as in the flint & steel method)
•a more scraping movement along the bamboo
(I didn’t try the method Skertchley mentioned as I think the tinder in the cup of the handpalm will be out of reach from the sparks, but then again, maybe I just have to strike harder).

I handed out some pieces of the temiang to some other Dutch bushcrafters so they can also experiment with it and they will report back to me if they get a result.

The difference between the temiang and the 'normal' bamboo pieces I used for my bamboo fire saw workshop was astonishing, with the latter the sole sparks are an occassional event while the temiang gives far more sparks, everytime it is struck.

I got some real prepared Fomes fomentarius-amadou from someone at the meeting so I can try that out for tinder as well. Maybe I should fold a piece around the sharp end of the flint so it is as close as it can get to the sparks, it is a method that works to set fire to a piece of paper with a ferrocium rod (the paper folded around the scraper).

I think it is just a matter of time (and of honing my technique).

A very excited Tom, eager to experiment further.

[BOD]

As an incentive, I will send an old hand carved temiang tinder tube with tinder inside to the first person to report complete success with this method.

These tubes were how they carried their flint/crockery, tinder and temiang in the old days.

It was given to me by Salang. Will post a photo when I can