Fire Hardening As a foolish youth I read in books of outdoor lore about fire hardening spear points.

Most just left it at that mention. A few such authors even talked about charring the wood and very little else. With typical youthful enthusiasm I thought that would be neat and tried it. Yeah Right. Results were very disappointing to say the least. First such treatment burnt the point off. The charred wood was even softer than the green wood started out. Even after scraping the char off of it the tip was still softer than to begin with. A real big time bummer. Which is a very good reason to try things out before depending upon them. All in all, it was a total waste of time and resources. I figured that those authors were idiots full of Barbara Streisand. Or like so many so-called experts copy and re-copy the work of those that came before. Doing all this without the knowledge behind the truth. In many of these cases in the various re-dos either editors or the authors change a word or two to make it read better. Finally ending up with something completely different, often wrong and on occasion even dangerous. Well a few years ago I heard a little different story on how fire hardening actually works. Experimenting time again. SUCCESS! It really works. Now dont get me wrong this technique does not make a point in soft wood or even hard wood that is stronger than steel or sharper than a flint point. But it is better than a carved wooden point alone. This process only works on green wood not dead dry wood. What it does is boils the water that is in the sap. This does 2 things. It dries the wood that toughens it to start. It also crystallizes the minerals that were in the sap forming almost a varnish that increases the hardness of the point. The trick of doing this is you bake rather than burn the wood. Instead of putting the point into the fire you slowly rotate it above the coals. The final appearance it like a well-roasted turkey. Golden brown not black it takes time so dont rush it. If it starts to turn black it is starting to char. Stop before it is ruined. Trying to speed things up by plunging it into the fire will result in a wasted mess. Hopefully this will save some others from falling into the same misconceptions I labored under for years.