First Fire in the Rumford Fireplace  | CABIN BUILD | PIONEER | OFF GRID

Okay that was a lot of work for nothing because I'm down to needing one remaining stone for my chimney build and essentially it's the cap. So yeah I need a piece that's 24 by 30 inches and this this was pretty close until I broke the edge off there. So back to the drawing board. Anyway we can go up and have a look at the almost finished chimney minus a cap for a flue cap. But anyway I have to keep looking and it's sort of like birch bark this year. It's been a little hard to find for my canoe build. Anyway let's go have a look at the chimney. So I've got a few minor projects left to do but the major ones are done. Cab is up, the roof's on, and the chimney is finished except for that cap piece and a bit frustrating because I whittled away at digging that thing out of the ground and mother earth wasn't going to give it up. Too handily. When I did get it out obviously too small. Well it wasn't until I broke it but anyway this project's done. I think tomorrow I'm going to be able to fire up my fireplace for the first time. But before I do that I attempted to in building this cabin to try to keep it nestled in the trees. I didn't want to take down a lot of trees for the build. So I've got to do a little elevation on the tree that's sort of overhanging the chimney. I need a bit better draft that. So that's my next project and that'll be the last one for today and then tomorrow I'm hoping to fire up that chimney for the first time. My entire adult life I've been an arborist as a trade. That's what I did for a living. So yeah I climbed a lot of trees and I've got to climb one now and I got to get kind of up there a good bit. So we're going to leap forward from the 1700s into the 21st century because yeah no sense getting old and stupid too and I don't want to fall. So a pioneer would have gone up there and scrambled around and I could probably do it too. But yeah I think I'm going to employ some modern stuff here and we're going to get this elevated over the chimney so I can have my first fire tomorrow. Okay I've got adequate clearance for the chimney. It should draw really good and put away my 21st century tools and now I'm going leaping back to the 1700s and this is how no modern brush chippers it was drag and burn. So yeah we'll get rid of this stuff and one more project done. So I had a very productive morning in the blacksmith shop today and I made a number of accoutrements that I'm going to use for cooking and other things in the cabin today. First being a number of hooks, a pretty simple hook, their drive-in, very common item in the 17-1800s. Being frugal you didn't have to make an extra nail it was just one piece it was built pretty easy. So I'm going to hang up some pots over my windows. I also built three things for the new fireplace. Oh and speaking of fireplace the exciting part about today is I'm going to light the first fire and it's been a raining day so we've got a low pressure over us which means the poorest draft you can get. So if it draws today and I don't smoke myself out in here I'm going to be really excited. Anyway before I do that a few items that I made here. This is called a trammel and basically what I've got here is my adjustment for low medium high heat like like you would in modern times. I also built a rotisserie. For beginner blacksmiths this is a great project. Really simple to build, a few bends, drawing out the ends here and making some nice little curls on it. This will be the spit part and goes through the through the chunk of meat you're going to cook. And one final little skewer here that you can essentially, if it works and it does, you push down into the meat. So you pull that out you can rotate the meat push it back in. You can rotate this away from the fire back towards the fire. So a simple little device that was commonly used in the 1700s. And the last thing I built for the fireplace is a trivet. So that's for putting my griddle on and doing up my bannock and bacon and such things. Now I'm going to start by driving these pegs in and get my pots hung above my new countertop here. So in order to capitalize on all my space in the cabin, when I put the the woodworking bench in, because of the undulations in the logs and the way I did my trim around the bottom to seal my floor, it sort of sits out a bit. So I'm going to build basically, I guess in modern times they call it a splash guard. But I made this out of cherry that, this really dates me, that was cut in 1971. So just out of college I did my first job working for a fellow who had a sawmill, big old circular sawmill. So you see in the wood, and I decided to leave it as much patina as possible, the lines of the saw, some of the teeth in the saw might be a little wider. So they'll leave those nice lines in the wood. So this is a piece of cherry. He had a contract for cutting railroad ties and whenever I saw a piece of wood go through that I really liked, I'd set it off the side of the mill and have them deduct it from my pay. And I loved wood, so there was a lot of weeks I didn't have a whole lot of money to take home, but lots of wood. Anyway, it's going to make a neat splash guard. And yeah, it's relatively old, like me. Anyway, I'm going to mount this and then I'm gonna light my first fire. That trammel may have to be made a bit bigger actually. So a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, Bob Miller, he made me this little horn thing here and not only that, but he charged the thing with fresh char cloth and some chaga for fire starting. So I'm going to leave Bob's fine gift there as a place of honor up there on my mantle. So first fire, pretty exciting, we hope.