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One-Armed Fire Plow
by
Storm |
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| As a matter of ritual, I engage in hand drill
and fireplow everyday. One aspect of each that has bothered me in the past
is that these techniques have traditionally required the participant to bend
over and stress one's back muscles, of which I have significantly damaged in
the past.
For the hand drill, I always sit while doing it, thus avoiding further
injury and pain (but tremendously increasing the difficulty of succeeding).
For fireplow, I've long wanted to develop a method in which my back is
better supported. Finally I've met success! |
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| I've been practicing one-armed fireplow, very
occasionally, for a couple years. I hadn't sincerely committed to practicing
it until this summer. After two months of daily practice, I made my first
ember last week (I made an ember using this method a number of years ago,
but I don't recall the woods I used, and it was an isolated incident) using
CA Fan Palm on Sotol. So far, I've been able to generate an ember about once
in every ten tries. That will improve over time as I increase my level of
fitness (for the past month I've eaten nothing by sprouts--that I grow
myself, oatmeal, dried fruit and nuts, raw fruits and veggies, and the
occasional can of salmon...nature power! How long does it take to lose 100
pounds?).
Calling it "one-armed" is a bit of a misnomer, because I use one arm on
the plow (see how I hold it in the pics above) and one arm holding the base
still. There are paleolithic ways of securing the base, of course. But
"one-armed" is appropriate in order to distinguish this method from all
others--everyone uses two arms on the plow, but this hurts my back almost
immediately. So far, I seem to consistently produce a plow trench 10-12cm
long. |
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Using one arm to hold
the base allows me to support my back a bit by leaning on that arm. I've
also been using
(but no embers yet) bamboo and mule fat plows. I don't think the bamboo will
work--it burnishes the sotol base quickly, but one-armed bamboo-on-bamboo is
coming close to succeeding. |
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Here are some photos of this
technique. |
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I find it useful to place my palm or
thumb at the end of the trough to catch and stop the wood powder... |
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