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The world of fireplace tools is fraught with gimmickry. The blowpoke is NOT one of them - it's an excellent tool. Use it once, and you're hooked for life. Looks like this:
You get a double-pronged fork on one end, which is far superior to a standard poker. You can also use this forked end to open and close woodstove doors, and adjust woodstove vents. More importantly, you can blow through one of the blowpoke ends to jumpstart a fire. Yes, this works. Extremely well. Especially if you use the forked end to lift up a log, and then blow under it.
If your first thought is "gimmicky", it might be due to this attractive but mostly useless fireplace blowing tool, whose regretted purchase is a rite of passage for rookie woodburners, certainly including my younger self.
I burned wood for around 20 years before using a blowpoke. I bought one after seeing a documentary about Michael Peterson, a man who was accused of murdering his wife with a blowpoke. Yes, you can blow on a fire with an aluminum arrow shaft, or just tubing, but the addition of the forked end is very worthwhile.
Looks like this concept was first patented in 1942, by a J.H. Smith. The initial designs excluded the forked end.
While this is likely a fairly straightforward tool to build, I don't believe we have a single blowpoke listed on homemadetools.net.
More: https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US2286387.pdf
Previously:
Power Stow belt loading system and moving firewood into a house
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...3704#post99822
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