(relaxing country music)
- 'Kay, so we're talking about
some different fire tools today.
This particular tool is called a McCloud Fire Rake.
Used primarily to create some fire breaks,
using your, just as a hand tool.
Without big machinery and equipment.
It's used a lot out West, especially,
just creating small fire breaks.
You can rake with it, you can scrape with it,
and then also, if you're working with fire itself,
you can snuff a fire out,
just by setting it on top of the fire.
It's probably not used so much,
in the Central Great Plains,
as much as it would be out West,
as a fire break preparation tool.
Next piece of equipment is just a standard shovel.
These are probably, more commonly used in the
southeastern past of the US, where they got deeper soils,
where you can actually dig down,
and prepare your fire breaks.
In the Central Great Plains, probably its biggest use
would be just gathering up something dirt,
if you've got any, so that you can snuff the fire out,
just by covering it up.
It's a lot harder to do that.
Just because in a lot of parts of the Central Plains,
we're dealing with hard clay-type, or rocky soils
and there's not a lot of loose dirt around.
The next piece of equipment would be a fire rake.
Which sort of just looks like a sickle bar on a stick,
which is kinda what it is.
But it's used also to prepare fire breaks, by hand.
The teeth are typically sharp enough
that you can cut small brush, to clear that out of the way.
Works really well, pulling stuff back into a fire,
if you need to.
So that you can get the fuel away, from what's burning,
so that you can try to put the fire out.
The next piece of equipment is
what's called a Fire Broom.
These are mainly used along your initial fire line,
where you just kinda of sweep, the loose materials,
back into the blackened area,
so that you don't have the fire trying to creep
backwards across your fire break.
Probably works really well in your leaf litter type burns,
a lot of time of grassland type burns,
you've got enough thatch down on the ground,
it's hard to get it all swept back.
So it's not a real heavily used tool in the Central Plains,
but it can be beneficial occasionally.
Then this is ...
Next piece is a true fire Leaf Rake,
and this would be more beneficial in the 'tember type burns,
where you've got a lot of leave litter
that you either need
to scrape away before the fire gets there,
to prepare a break, or, you can go along your black line,
and scrape the loose materials back in, onto the black,
so that they'll quit burning.
Another piece of equipment here is,
basically just a common Garden Rake.
And, here again, you can use it just like
your Fire Rake, or your McCloud,
Try to prepare some bare area, small fire breaks,
get fuel pulled back away, or, pushed into the burn.
And then also, I've used them where,
if you're trying to go really, super slow with your burn,
you can just grab up a rake full of fuel,
and then just kind of dob it along,
and that way you don't necessarily have to use
drip torch fuel, and things like that.
And then lastly but not least,
is what's called a Fire Swatter or a Fire Flapper,
and in my mind, it's a piece of equipment that is misnamed,
because typically, if you're going to flap
or swat that fire, you probably gonna spread it.
So, typically, it's, I would prefer to call it
a Fire Mop, 'cause what you're trying to do
is just snuff out you fire by mopping it around,
and covering the fire over,
and smothering it over from the oxygen.
Question might be, if you held this
over a fire too long, would it melt?
And, typically, if it's a super hot fire,
and you just left it on top of some embers for a long time,
yeah it probably could melt, most situations,
it's not going to.
Because, it don't ignite very easily.
(calm country music)