Even to this day peasantry throughout the Carpathian and Balkan peninsulas build their fires with a "rubbing-stick." But these people not being campers have a permanent fire machine made by erecting two posts, one to represent the fire-stick and the other the socket thimble. The spindle runs horizontally between these two posts and the pressure is secured by a thong or cord tied around the two posts, which tends to pull them toward each other. The spindle is worked by a bow the same as the one already described and the fire is produced in the same manner.
Fire Without a Bow
My pupils in the Woodcraft Camp built fires successfully by using the rung of a chair for the spindle, a piece of packing case for a fire-board, and another piece for the socket wood and the string from their moccasins for a bow string. They used no bow, however, and two or three boys were necessary to make a fire, one to hold the spindle and two others to saw on the moccasin string ([Fig. 17]).
Co-li-li—the Fire Saw
is made of two pieces of bamboo, or fish pole. This is the oldest instrument for fire making used by the Bontoc Igorot and is now seldom found among the men of the Philippines. Practically all Philippine boys, however, know how to make and use it and so should our boys here, and men, too. It is called "co-li-li" and is made of two pieces of dry bamboo. A two-foot section of dead and dry bamboo is first split lengthwise and in one piece, a small area of the stringy tissue lining of the tube is splintered and picked until quite loose ([Fig. 18]). Just over the picked fibres, but on the outside of the bamboo, a narrow groove is cut across it ([Fig. 18G]). This piece of bamboo is now the stationary lower part or "fire-board" of the machine. One edge of the other half of the original tube is sharpened like a chisel blade's edge ([Fig. 19]); it is then grasped with one hand at each end and is slowly and heavily sawed backward and forward through the groove in the board, and afterwards worked more rapidly, thus producing a conical pile of dry dust on the wad of tinder picked from the inside of the bamboo or previously placed there. ([Figs. 20] and [21]). [Fig. 22] is the fire-pan.
"After a dozen strokes," says our authority, Mr. Albert Ernest Jenks, "the sides of the groove and the edge of the piece are burned down; presently a smell of smoke is plain and before three dozen strokes have been made, smoke may be seen. Usually before a hundred strokes a larger volume of smoke tells us that the dry dust constantly falling on the pile has grown more and more charred until finally a tiny spark falls, carrying combustion to the already heated dust cone."
The fire-board is then carefully lifted and if the pinch of dust is smouldering it may now be gently fanned with the hand until the tinder catches; then it may be blown into a flame.