VIIL General Scouting Outdoors 



Rubbing-Stick Fire 



I HAVE certainly made a thousand fires with rubbing- 

 sticks, and have made at least five hundred difi'erent 

 experiments. So far as I can learn, my own record of 

 thirty-one seconds from taking the sticks to having the fire 

 ablaze is the world's record, and I can safely promise 

 this: That every boy who will foUow the instructions 

 I now give will certainly succeed in making his rubbing- 

 stick fire. 



Take a piece of dry, sound, balsam-fir wood (or else 

 cedar, cypress, tamarac, basswood or cottonwood, in order 

 of choice) and make of it a drill and a block, thus: 



Drill. Five eighths of an inch thick, twelve to fifteen 

 inches long; roughly rounded, sharpened at each end as in 

 the cut (Cut I a). 



Block, or hoard, two inches wide, six or eight inches long, 

 five eighths of an inch thick. In this block, near one end, 

 cut a side notch one half an inch deep, wider on the vmder 

 side; and near its end half an inch from the edge make a 

 little hoUow or pit in the top of the block, as in the illustra- 

 tion (Cut I b). 



Tinder. For tinder use a wad of fine, soft, very dry, 

 dead grass mixed with shredded cedar bark, birch bark 

 or even cedar wood scraped into a soft mass. 



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