Friction Fire, Bow Drill; So Close I Could Taste It...

Odaon

Odaon

Joined
Apr 13, 2009
Messages
3,114
Hey everyone,

Well, making a fire via. bow drill is something I've never tried. So I gathered some info. on decent woods, and put that with the small amount I already knew from reading and watching, and gave it a try. I went fishing last Friday and grabbed some dead Willow staves to make my bow drill kit out of. I had some time after lunch and decided to start the project. I used my RAT Izula to make every thing. I'm continuously impressed with this little knife!

Here's the spindle, the top piece and the board. All made from the same piece of willow. (What are other names for the top and board pieces?)
bowdrill019.jpg

Couple things I learned while doing this, the broad needs to be a bit thicker next time and same with the top piece. The spindle could have been a little shorter. Although these worked well enough.

Here's the bow with those three pieces. I used cloves hitches at either end to attach the paracord to it.
bowdrill020.jpg

The bow could have been a bit longer and maybe a little thicker.

Here's my first attempt ever at the bow drill... I actually got an ember. :D I was surprised to say the least, I thought this was gonna be hard. :p
bowdrill022.jpg

This first ember I didn't let sit long enough and so it wasn't that hot when I added it to the tinder (which was a bad choice of tinder anyways... see below).

I didn't really have or want to go find some good tinder to actually get a fire going so I grabbed a cotton ball to try. That didn't work at all... :thumbdn:
bowdrill024.jpg

Maybe I was doing it wrong, but I couldn't get the cotton to light. It got really hot too. Oh well...

Since the cotton didn't work I decided to try something different. Like I said, I was being lazy, so I just went to the lawn and grabbed some dead grass.
bowdrill025b.jpg

Looking back, I probably should have grabbed about three times as much, but now I know for next time.

Here's the second ember I got. This one I let sit a while waving air at it and blowing very softly. It turned red before I put it into the grass.
bowdrill027.jpg

Still to no avail though...

By now, my board was almost drilled through so I decided to start over. Drilled a new hole re-shaped the ends of my spindle, and tightened my bow slightly. I went at it two more times and got lots of smoke (some of which I inhaled, hence the "taste it" title) and both embers were very nice and hot. Still no fire though...

I am very happy that I was able to get an ember every time I tried though. I was shocked that I was able to do it all with just one piece of Willow. I have some thicker Elm that I might try out sometime too. Next time I'm going to collect some better tinder and make a fire, but for just an hour and a half of carving and drilling, I think 4 embers is good. Any tips or comments are welcome.

Thanks for reading,
Orion

Another shot with my Izula.
bowdrill029.jpg
 
Odaon - Congrats! Very impressive to get a coal so soon! :thumbup:

Suggest you spend just as much time on making tinder bundles as ignition. The fuel part of that fire equation is mean SOB! :D
 
abo4ster said:
Odaon - Congrats! Very impressive to get a coal so soon! :thumbup:

Suggest you spend just as much time on making tinder bundles as ignition. The fuel part of that fire equation is mean SOB! :D
Click to expand...

Agreed, I was just being lazy in my back yard. To tell you the truth I didn't expect to get a coal. :D Next time I will have a more proper tinder, and more of that tinder.
 
Any closeups of your notch?

Keep your spindle long, just index the bottom of it to direct heat and pressure down,not to the sides of your fireboard. For the first go, heat your boards to dry them out thoroughly and stack everything in your favor.

Look up my bow drill tutorial on slideshare.net or go to the wilderness learning center page on facebook. You'll find more troubleshooting tips there.

Hope this helps for now.
 
The notch went to the center of the hole. I think I did it right. I can take a close up if you'd like.
 
k_estela said:
Any closeups of your notch?

Keep your spindle long, just index the bottom of it to direct heat and pressure down,not to the sides of your fireboard. For the first go, heat your boards to dry them out thoroughly and stack everything in your favor.

Look up my bow drill tutorial on slideshare.net or go to the wilderness learning center page on facebook. You'll find more troubleshooting tips there.

Hope this helps for now.
Click to expand...

Hey Kev, when ya say index the bottom of it to direct heat, do ya mean make it more pointy so there is less contact with the sides ?
 
From what I can tell, you nailed it buddy. Getting the ember is the bow drill method, turning the ember into flame is the next, but easier step.

A couple pieces of advice.

1) Use your hand and wave back for forth over the ember, fanning it, to glow rather than blowing. This produces a gentle but consistent air flow without the danger of scattering your coals. Fan the coals until you see the ember glowing like the end of a cigarette. What you are doing in this process is growing your ember to a more useful size. It will be igniting turning the little bits of dust around it.

2) Consider using a coal extender. The problem with the ember is that it is just basically glowing dust. Once it scatters its heat flips out fast. A coal extender will basically catch the heat and convert it to a more robust coal. You can use natural materials like tinder fungus for this. In the absence of that, a bit of char cloth used with flint & steel is great. Touch a corner of the coal extender to the ember and get that glowing. Its your insurance policy.

3) This should actually be point 0. Make sure you have your birds nest of tinder all ready before you go. It always super fun to do this with natural materials, but sometimes it is best to work with something that is guaranteed to work first then go on to the natural stuff. For this embers and glowing charcloth I like to use jute twine. Take about 8" of twine and pull all the strands into individual piecies. Make a birds nest out of the strands with your thumb. Natural tinders - use milkweed fluff, phragmities heads, cattail fluff in combination with strips and pieces of birch bark, fatwood or shreadded bark. Use a bark cup or find an actual bird nest to stick the stuff in.

4) Poor the ember + coal extender into the birds nest. Fold the jute twine over the coal and ember. Raise the jute high in the air and blow upward into it. At first use slow, steady breaths. As the smoke begins to percolate through the nest use stronger and strong blowing until it bursts into flames.

Edit - great use of the grass juice as lubricant. Works great. You might want to make the head part of the drill (that fits in the head piece) a bit sharper to reduce friction at that point compared to the drill.

Awesome on the willow --- its still one of the woods on my list to do.
 
kgd said:
From what I can tell, you nailed it buddy. Getting the ember is the bow drill method, turning the ember into flame is the next, but easier step.

A couple pieces of advice.

1) Use your hand and wave back for forth over the ember, fanning it, to glow rather than blowing. This produces a gentle but consistent air flow without the danger of scattering your coals. Fan the coals until you see the ember glowing like the end of a cigarette. What you are doing in this process is growing your ember to a more useful size. It will be igniting turning the little bits of dust around it.

2) Consider using a coal extender. The problem with the ember is that it is just basically glowing dust. Once it scatters its heat flips out fast. A coal extender will basically catch the heat and convert it to a more robust coal. You can use natural materials like tinder fungus for this. In the absence of that, a bit of char cloth used with flint & steel is great. Touch a corner of the coal extender to the ember and get that glowing. Its your insurance policy.

3) This should actually be point 0. Make sure you have your birds nest of tinder all ready before you go. It always super fun to do this with natural materials, but sometimes it is best to work with something that is guaranteed to work first then go on to the natural stuff. For this embers and glowing charcloth I like to use jute twine. Take about 8" of twine and pull all the strands into individual piecies. Make a birds nest out of the strands with your thumb. Natural tinders - use milkweed fluff, phragmities heads, cattail fluff in combination with strips and pieces of birch bark, fatwood or shreadded bark. Use a bark cup or find an actual bird nest to stick the stuff in.

4) Poor the ember + coal extender into the birds nest. Fold the jute twine over the coal and ember. Raise the jute high in the air and blow upward into it. At first use slow, steady breaths. As the smoke begins to percolate through the nest use stronger and strong blowing until it bursts into flames.

Edit - great use of the grass juice as lubricant. Works great. You might want to make the head part of the drill (that fits in the head piece) a bit sharper to reduce friction at that point compared to the drill.

Awesome on the willow --- its still one of the woods on my list to do.
Click to expand...

:thumbup: Much appreciated. I will take all of those into mind next time I try it out. My next project was going to be making some charcloth, so I'll do that first. I also need to get some jute. I did use my hand for most of the "ember growth", but i did blow a little bit. I will stick to just hand fanning. Thanks again, all that is really helpful. :D
 
What I mean by indexing is knocking the diameter down towards the bottom of your spindle. Your spindle doesn't need to fill up the sides of your hole but it should make contact with the bottom.

Make sure your notch is 1/8th of the pie and cut the bottom out to look like a traffic cone (wide at the bottom and narrow at the top.)

E-mail me and I'll send you the link to my Bow Drill Handout/Tutorial.
 
Listen to Kevin. He knows his stuff.

I wish Doc would chime in too.

The both really helped with me getting my first fire.


If a guy named Magnussen posts - don't listen to him. He is some hippy that plays bongo's and probably just uses friction fire to light his bong. The guy is fully off his nutter.


Also - given the pointy nipple on your spindle - your notch may be a bit too deep.

TF
 
Talfuchre said:
Listen to Kevin. He knows his stuff.

I wish Doc would chime in too.

The both really helped with me getting my first fire.


If a guy named Magnussen posts - don't listen to him. He is some hippy that plays bongo's and probably just uses friction fire to light his bong. The guy is fully off his nutter.


Also - given the pointy nipple on your spindle - your notch may be a bit too deep.

TF
Click to expand...

:D Yeah, I noticed the "nipple" it still made a nice ember though. :thumbup:
 
If I get a chance today, I'm going to collect some better tinder and retry this. Pictures will be posted when it happens.
 
Good stuff, :thumbup: for jumping into it Odaon. I need to get on this soon too.

ETA: And excellent walk-through Doc, and others in Doc's thread :thumbup:.
 
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Guys,

Got a lot of stuff to do tonight for classes. Probably wont get any free time so just keep an eye out for the next attempt. Might not be until the weekend though.

EDIT: I just stopped by Ace on my way to get dinner and picked up some Jute. That'll be my first tinder nest attempt when I do it. Maybe tonight, we'll see how much I get done.
 
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Nice job on assembling that firedrill set. One observation is that the grass tinder does not look dry enough.

Best of success!

DancesWithKnives
 
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