Use Your Spincast Reel to Start a Fire in an Emergency
by PapaD
I hope to soon get back to posting more information and pictures of vintage spincast reels. I have a lot of notes and outlines and have taken a lot of reference photos for them--but time is at a premium. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, the plan was to have my next oldest brother who shared an interest in this subject, to impart a lot of his experience herein. As it turned out, Ernie died before this could happen and I wound up instead dedicating this blog to him. Meanwhile, I have been involved in health issues of my own and just life, which divides my ever-dwindling time between other higher priorities.
I write a few blogs other blogs. One teaches alternative methods of starting fire as one might find helpful in an emergency situation. The subject is another of my oddball interests that kinda just sprung up and grew over a lifetime--driven by a mildly OCD personality. I am only guessing that I may know more alternative methods for fire starting than anyone else in the world--maybe the universe. Ha. I mean, why would anyone else even want to know so many ways to start fire? Be-that-as-it-may, the blog is entitled One Hundred Ways to start Fire without Matches. I originally started it to teach my fifteen grandchildren how to do this and to provide a reference for them; some of them don't live close by. As a teaching tool, I try to cite real-life situations that people could conceivably find themselves in.
For example, a friend of mine fell into a ravine and broke his leg while trying to steal into his deer hunting tree stand before dawn without turning his flashlight on. He did have a flashlight, and due to his own tenacity and remarkable athleticism (he was once a lifeguard on the LA Beaches), he was able to crawl and hobble his way back to his car and get to the hospital. But this also shows that outdoors men and women, and really anyone, could find themselves in extreme situations that might call for unusual fire starting skills.
In one of the recent posts to that blog, I related an experience that my dad had in 1962, while we were living in Bethel Alaska. He and two friends were fishing in a remote area when their their plane crashed. Although they were not seriously hurt, it was days before they were located and rescued. Using this situation as a scenario wherein a fisherman might find himself in need of emergency fire starting methods, I showed two ways a particular Abu Garcia spincast reel might be used to start fire. Since I added these posts to my blog about fire starting, I thought it might be interesting for readers of here as well.
In this post I am including an excerpt from each of those two posts along with a link to each of them, thinking other fishermen and spincast reel enthusiasts might find them interesting.
First Post from My Other Blog
#77 Another Way to Make Fire with a Fishing Reel
by PapaD Wright
. . . . it seemed reasonable to point out this method on the heels of the previous friction method using the same reel.
Second Post from My Other Blog
The Real Reel Deal: #56 Starting Fire with a Fishing Reel
Start Fire with a Fishing Reel
by PapaD
I have made fire with each of the three main types of fishing reels. Each requires a different approach. The spincast works best, the Spinning reel requires a more sophisticated set-up. I have used older Johnson Century reels for this in the past with good success. They worked quickly and simply. Featured in this post is an Abu Garcia spincast reel.
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