Phase 01 — First days: water, fire, shelter / About year 1
01.20
Resin torch
light to move at night
AWhat it needs
Needs 6 other products in all, 2 of them directly.
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- 01.20 Resin torchMaking Year 1 needs 6 products
- 01.03 Sharp stone flakeMaking Year 1 needs 1 product
- 01.02 HammerstoneMaking Year 1 raw materials only
- 01.08 First fire and stone hearthMaking Year 1 needs 5 products
- 01.06 Tinder and kindling storeMaking Year 1 raw materials only
- 01.07 Bow-drill fire setMaking Year 1 needs 3 products
- 01.03 Sharp stone flakeshown above ↑← shown at left
- 01.05 Twisted plant-fibre cordMaking Year 1 needs 2 products
Open a box to see what it needs. A dashed box is a product already drawn in full: click it to jump there. In the org chart, drag to move around.
BWhy
The hearth lights the camp but not the path to the latrine, the fish trap at a night low tide, or a search for someone who has not come back. A torch is fire that can be carried in the hand.
CYou need
- Resin: the hard yellow lumps and sticky runs on wounded pine, spruce or fir. Or fatwood: the heavy, dark, sweet-smelling wood from the heart of an old pine stump, which is soaked with resin and burns even when wet.
- A green stick, wrist-thick and as long as the arm
- Dry bark shreds or dry grass; strips of green bark for tying
- A stone flake (01.03) and the fire (01.08)
DSteps
- Split one end of the green stick into four, a hand's length deep, the same way as the fish spear. Push a pebble down into the splits to hold them open like a cage.
- Crumble resin and mix it with dry bark shreds, two parts resin to one part bark. Pack the cage full of it.
- Tie a strip of green bark round the outside of the cage so the filling stays in.
- Light it at the hearth. It catches slowly, then burns with a bright smoky flame.
- Carry it tilted forward and downwind, at arm's length. It drips burning resin.
- To make it last, carry spare lumps of resin and push one into the cage when the flame shrinks.
- Fatwood torch, quicker: split fatwood into finger-thick sticks as long as the forearm, tie six of them into a bundle with green bark at two places, and light one end.
- Put a torch out by pushing its head into sand or earth, not water, so it can be lit again.
EIt worked if
- It stays alight while walking fast into a light wind, and burns for at least as long as it takes to walk to the fish trap and back.
FWhat goes wrong
- It goes out when moved. Too little resin, or filling packed too loosely. Repack with more resin.
- It flares and is gone in a few minutes. Bark with no resin. Resin is the fuel; the bark is only the wick.
- The handle burns through. Dry wood. The handle must be green.
- Burning drips on the hand. Hold it tilted away, and wrap the hand in a green leaf.
GSafety
- Never take a torch into a shelter or under a thatch roof.
- In dry weather, do not carry one through long grass.
HIn the story
After the night of the storm, nobody wants to be in the dark again. Ulani knows where the old pines are, and comes back with her hands black and sticky and her hair smelling of smoke. Kofi takes a torch to the trap at the night tide and finds the fish come to the light.
IFigures
