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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Busy times, Hammock discoveries and fungus

Been very busy with climbing, work, business and hammock testing, worked a few things out with the hammock as well.

Hammock:
Right When sleeping in the dd hammock you have a tendency to slide slowly down until you centre of Gravity is at the bottom of the dip, hence your feet end up dangling over the edge of the hammock. To solve this you can either set it so the foot end is slightly higher than head end, or you can always get inside the hammock. I haven't tried to sleep inside it yet but it was very warm on the occasion I did try lying inside of it. Also played with some tape as well, round tree instead of using the rope.

Inside the hammock

Tape round a Birch tree (note: new hammock)

Also ordered a new Hammock from the Bushcraftuk Forum in a Group buy. It arrived and I played with it on a lunch time, it is much wider than my dd one, but does not come with straps nor is it double layered. Needs a proper test though. It certainly is very wide, I can lay width wise on it!!


Fungus and fire craft:
Managed to get some Horsehoof fungus or Fomes Fomentarius the other weekend off an old birch tree.

I wanted to see if I could use it as I had heard many people say it can make good tinder for catching a spark from firesteal. Took a little researching to find out how to use it, turns out its the outer layer just below the hard exterior called the Amadou which you need to separate from the rest, this you scrape to get a little fine downy pile which you can then drop sparks onto. I did this and got a nice glowing stable ember, just needed to get that into a flame, I did get chance to test this out one night with a tinder bundle (My first ever) but didn't manage to blow it into a flame, am guessing my bundle wasn't good enough as it was made mostly out of dried grass so was very fine. I shall try again later with tinder bundles and let you know how I get on.

Life:
Busy Studying as usual a little a day, though I do think I need to step it up a little if I'm going to reach any of my expected goals and bag the exam in a couple of months time. Work is the usual boring place, with not a lot of interesting things happening really. But they say it is what you make of it. It is busy just boring and not very challenging at all, feel like I'm wasting myself there. But that will change soon, so I just need to be patient.

ferrol

1 comment:

Keith said...

Good pic of the tinder fungus.
Regards, Le Loup.
New England, Australia.