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!

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.

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.

Here are some photos of this technique.

I find it useful to place my palm or thumb at the end of the trough to catch and stop the wood powder...

Survival Fire Firesaw Fireplow

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