That’s the NO BREAKING Part of our Blowpoke Guarantee.

Here’s the AIR BLOW Part of our Guarantee:

Certainly, the most important part of our Blowpoke Guarantee – is that our simple Blowpoke will really do what you hope it will do. The Magic stuff. The fun stuff. The smoke control stuff. The real stuff. Better Fires FASTER.

Better Fires FASTER is all about feeding combustion – Feeding the burn area with your oxygen rich exhales. It’s not even fresh air. But it works so well. The tapered tube, the blow holes, the air deflected off our tapered poker tip and spread over a burn area. Sometimes it even looks like the air pressure is pushing the combustion right into the wood. It glows so yellow-white hot! We will go up against any other simple blowpoke on the market and compete head on – Puffs per Puff – and see whose Magic grow a Better Fire faster. We guarantee that your Vineyard Firetools Blowpoke will deliver AIR FLOW that feeds the combustion better or equal to any other blowpoke, measured by your puffs.

If someday someone comes up with a tool that feeds pure oxygen, and an even faster fire, it probably won’t be a simple blowpoke.

So we guarantee that you will not find a blowpoke with better AIR FLOW Performance than Vineyard Firetools’ Blowpokes. This may also sound like a hard guarantee to make because of different people’s lung capacity (big to small, strong to weak) and different firewoods (wet to dry, soft to hard). But it’s not really all that complicated. Our Blowpokes do the Magic stuff better than most other blowpokes simply because head-to-head you’ll see most other blowpokes’ blow holes are just too constricted to allow you to express quite enough good ol’ exhale. And just making bigger holes – more air – doesn’t really make all the Magic FASTER stuff. We’re giving you the sweet spot, puff-wise.

And Here’s the POKE & POKER – the HANDLING part of the Guarantee.

We also guarantee that you will not find a blowpoke or blowpoker of a similar length that is easier to handle. And we extend this Blowpoke Guarantee to cover all of our different sizes of blowpokes for every size of fireplace.

Our Blowpokes actually give you a big step forward in Blowpoke Handling: from 2-hands to 1-hand. You can easily and effectively stoke and work your fire with just one hand holding our blowpoke at the hilt by the mouthpiece. Of course you can always use two hands. Sometimes you need to. But the point is that you can use our blowpoke’s long length as a true extra long fireplace poker. You can’t effectively handle a heavy brass blowpoke with just one hand at the hilt. And you can’t do it with a long regular steel blowpoke either. They’re just too heavy.

Handling means holding it in your hand(s) and using it to Push, Pull, Lift and Move your firewood. It means effectively using your blowpoker to arrange you firewood and open gaps so it burns better. One hand holding it at the hilt makes standing up straight a very real option. And it lets you stand back further from the fire. That gives you a safe feeling.

Handling is not considered the Magic part. Handling is just simple physics. Heavy means it’s more difficult to handle with one hand, and harder to move deftly. It takes more energy to move (accelerate) a more massive (heavy) object. And while our strong cromoly steel tube is Lightweight. Our 1/2 inch thick steel poker tip does add more heft than some blowpokes’ little tips. Blowpokes made of brass and regular steel are all too heavy to handle effectively at the hilt with just one hand. It is just basic physics. Just like MPG is directly related to a cars weight. Big heavy cars require a lot more power (gas) to get them moving, and to get them up the hill, and to push their big faces through the atmosphere’s resistance. Light cars with aero fronts get the best MPG. It’s basic physics.

The design and workmanship that goes into our poker tip, and the quality of the welding of the chromoly steel tapered tubing, that’s all just good machining and applied physics, too. But it’s really good physics! And it contributes mightily to the Handling – and to your ability to move the burning firewood where you want it to go, and to do what you want it to do, when all it wants to do is fall down and obey gravity. Physics.

Look closely at the 2 tapered tangs that make the poker tip. look at how the front pointing tip is capable of weaseling it’s way to slip in between two stacked logs to open a gap. Twist it, push, and lift, maybe slide a stick in there. Now air can flow through the open gap and burn the newly opened logs’ wood faces on both sides of the gap. That is a huge new opportunity for combustion, and it will be fed mostly by the fire’s natural draft. And our blowpoke guarantee states that with just average hand, wrist and arm strength, you can do that better with Vineyard Firetools’ blowpokes.

And look at the longer tapered tang – at ninety degrees – giving you a strong hook to push and pull as well as open GAPS for more AIR FLOW between adjacent logs. Admittedly it can take some practice. But it is not rocket science. And you’ve got a capable tool…

Titanium and Aluminum

Having come from the bike industry, I got to see Ti “throw shade” on cromoly steel. (I actually got to see Ti pioneered right in my own bike building shop.) Ti is pretty amazing stuff. But titanium is pretty expensive and more flexy. While aluminum is too brittle to take much heavy lifting flexing without failing. (Aluminum has a much lower modulus of elasticity.)

Better Handling means we are basically embracing lightweight tube technology. So theoretically an aluminum* or titanium blowpoke could rival our cromoly steel blowpokes’ handling. But I hope it doesn’t come to that, because I never thought the obsession with gram weights helped the sport.

And the really significant step forward in Blowpoke Handling is from 2-hands to 1-hand. And a few grams lighter will not change the handling from 1-hand to n0-hands. Our Cromoly Blowpokes give you both better handling and greater strength than other materials. Steel is really the right material for blowpokes and blowpokers. And some will say brass is, too, but that would be just for BLOWpoking brass affectionados, not for better blowPOKER handling.

Here is what is Not Covered by our Blowpoke Guarantee:

We designed and built our blowpokers for indoor Fireplace use originally. But over the years many have found their way outdoors. We don’t really see brass blowpokes used outdoors. But our cromoly blowpokers are definitely stoking a lot of fire pits.

And that’s great. Our blowpokers work great around fire pits as well as fireplaces. But fire pits and fireplaces have two major differences: rust and leverage.

Rust

Indoors around a fireplace, you really can’t damage a cromoly steel tool built this strong. But the outdoor environment is much wetter and can be a challenging environment for steel. Wet steel can oxidize – meaning rust. So, leaving a blowpoke – which is essentially an open steel tube – out in harsh weather elements for months on end and during wet weather just isn’t in your long term interest. Our Blowpoke Guarantee doesn’t prevent and protect against Rust. You do.

Leverage

Another really BIG difference between indoor fireplaces and outdoor fire pits is the temptation to use your blowpoke against a big rock to get leverage on a big log.

Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, did not have a blowpoke in mind when he famously declared “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.”  Blowpokes were not yet invented.

A blowpoke is not a Lever. And if you think about levering with the XXL 55″ blowpoker – that’s an awful lot of potentially damaging leverage you can create against a sharp rock fulcrum down near the poker tip. A really big log jammed in by a rock set in the ground is a perfect example of:

“Between a rock and a hard place” – it’s not a place to stick a blowpoke.

Our Blowpoke Guarantee doesn’t cover use (and abuse) as a lever. Instead, try approaching a big log from another side. Hook it and pull it. Hook and lift. Push it with the point, or use the long tang. But avoid the Archimedes’ Law of the Lever… on principle.

Fire pits do have one really big Advantage that you can leverage over fireplaces. You can approach the fire pit and the wood from any angle, all 360 degrees (though you may run into a little smoke). So if you run into difficulty on one side, you can approach it from any other side to gain your best advantage.

Flex

Flex is a normal characteristic of light steel tubes – but one that does not cause harm to cromoly steel. The cromoly blowpoke tube will flex-bend over it’s entire length when you lift a very heavy log, then it will unflex and return to straight. Cromoly has a very high “modulous of elasticity” meaning can flex a million times and will still return to straight. Out cromoly  steel tubes won’t set a bend after lifting logs up to 50 pounds. Somewhere over 50 pounds you’ll eventually be able to bend it.

You’ll also note that when you lift, your supporting hand will be close to the middle of the blowpoke. And the tube will be supported across your hand’s palm-width. That’s really different from a point load by a sharp fulcrum way down the lever arm.

Whenever you are using your blowpoke to lift very heavy logs – take care of yourself – set your posture, your feet, your back, your breathing, and bend your knees. Stay strong at your core. Someone has to carry the firewood!

So far, we are not aware of rust or lever issues having taken out a Vineyard Firetools’ Blowpoke. But I’m trying to think ahead. And I’m thinking back to the days when I was involved in building some of the early lightweight cromoly steel mountain bikes. We had a reputation of building bikes that did not break. But rust is different. You have to prevent rust. I know of one bike that was left outside exposed to the elements on the Vineyard more or less year ’round. And eventually the tubes rusted from the inside. And the rust build-up started making the bike heavier! I don’t believe it was ever treated with an oil. I wish I had oiled it inside. So think about an oil treatment your fire pit blowpoke. And you might want to use a cooking oil to avoid an industrial oil’s smell. Exposed steel outdoors requires you to be aware to prevent rust. 

Tips

As the real Smokey might say, “Only you can prevent forest fires, rust and levering.”

Have fun!