One-stick-fire practice with Redneck Woodlore knife

Hey folks, more skills practice here.  Just tuning up for the season ahead and thought I'd share some pics with ya. 

We had some rain a few days ago and I was surprised that most everything was still fairly damp.  I found a dead hanging pine branch and broke it off.  It was just starting to rot but was solid enough for what I had in mind

This was still damp on the outside so it ended up being some good practice with wood that's not perfect.  Here we are getting it split down

continued splitting it down till eventually getting to the small pencil size stuff and smaller

got the prep done and then got a surprise.  I tore off a piece of bark from the dead tree I was using and this guy was on the underside of the bark.  Tossed him off and took the pic.  He was angry, must have ruined his nap

always gotta be watching for the creepy crawlies when it's warm out.  Well moving on, got the prep done and made a pile of shavings

I decided to try some different shaving this time.  Instead of think super curly curls, I thought that maybe wide thin pieces would be good since the wood was a little bit porous.  Well I'm not gonna lie.  This was a bugger to get to take since it wasn't completely dry.  The idea of a one stick fire, is of course, to use one stick for everything.  So I wasn't going to cheat and use something else for the tinder.  But I was pretty close to giving up and then finally success

I don't know if the shavings helped or hurt the process.  I'll have to experiment again to know for sure and do a pile of each next time.  But regardless it worked.  Well I was our of time for the bigger stuff but the fire was going fine.  Some decent practice and getting more work out of a knife is always fun.  One last shot of the knife we Redneck knife fans have dubbed the "Redlore"

Thanks for looking