Hot Rocks to Warm Ya' Body!

Have you ever tried this trick? You can put dry rocks on top your heater, radiator or wood stove and get them nice and warm (or burning raging hot)... then you can stick them either in your pockets, over your heart to warm your blood stream, or the most special place in your cold cold COLD BED! I like to put mine on the wood stove and get them so hot that I have to wrap them in a few layers of fabric, then I shove it under the covers in my bed and wait 5 or 10 minutes before getting in. This makes the transition to cold sheets in the winter 100 x's more bearable!! I snuggle up with those hot rocks and put them on my belly.

PS ::: Make sure your rocks are not wet and fresh from a stream, if they get too hot they could explode! Let them dry out first. :)

xoxo

Project Fail: Heating Bath Water With Hot Rocks

A while back I read about how the Native Americans ate hard boiled eggs as part of their staple diet - they boiled the eggs by putting rocks in a fire and then put the hot rocks into an animal skin and it boiled the water. The hot water heater at my place as of now needs to be fixed and I was wanting to take a hot bath pretty bad, and figured I could boil the tub water just like the Native Americans boiled eggs! Except I wasn't going to bathe in an animal skin, but rather a cold metal tub.

Bort (remember the dude who taught me how to make rope from yucca leaves) put the rocks in the fire and took them out with a fireplace shovel, thick gloves and placed them into a metal pot to bring to the tub. I was 100% certain this project would work, but it failed horribley. Here's some reasons why I think it may have failed (please tell me why you think it did too in the comments section):

1. The metal tub was capable of holding the cold in itself and kept the water so cold it cooled the rocks instead of boiled the water.

2. The rocks were only on the fire for no more then 1-2 hours, which afterwards Bort (who was a way good sport for this project) pointed out that in Sweat Lodges they heat the rocks for like six hours to get them to create the steam. Possibly the Native Americans let those rocks heat for a day or two?

3. The rocks were dirty. This didn't really make it fail heat wise (I think) but I shoulda rinsed those babies off first cause when they hit the water they sizzled a cloud of dirt out. I can tell you this, I would have bathed in the dirt water if it had gotten hot though.

4. Rock type? I considered that the structure of certain rocks may be tighter and hold heat longer, better, and have a slower release - and that the Native Americans knew secrets it may take me a while to figure out on my own.

Regardless of the fact that no bath took place and the water didn't even get warm much less boil (a hella lot of sizzling and bubbling though), and the smoke from the stove nearly choked us - I was still happy cause sometimes it's kinda fun to have a project fail completely. :) So the pic below is my not bathed clean self, since I had promised some peeps I was going to take tasteful bath pictures and post them here in my brilliant success glory, instead here is what accepting failing glory looks like!

xoxo