Things You'll Need:
- 14-function Pocketknives
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Step 1
Make the four pieces of your apparatus (see "How to Make a Bow-Drill," under Related eHows).
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Step 2
Place your fire board on the dry ground and place your left foot across it to hold it stable, with your right knee on the ground. If you're left-handed, do the reverse.
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Step 3
Wrap the string of your bow around the spindle once.
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Step 4
Place the bottom end of the spindle in the notch on your fire board. Hold it in place by putting the top end of the spindle into the handhold notch and pressing down on the handhold.
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Step 5
Hold one end of the bow in your right hand, with the string side facing inward, toward your left knee.
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Step 6
Lean down over your left knee and press down slightly on the handhold with your left hand. Move your right arm back and forth in a sawing motion, causing the spindle to spin back and forth.
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Step 7
Increase the speed of the sawing motion and the intensity of your handhold pressure until the fire board begins to smoke.
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Step 8
Do this for a while to grease your handhold notch and "burn in" your fire board to prepare your apparatus to start a fire.
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Step 1
Prepare a small tepee of twigs in your fire pit. Make sure you have enough fuel readily available.
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Step 2
Gather a palm-sized ball of dry fibrous vegetation, such as dry grass or inner tree bark. Wad the material together to form a nestlike tinder ball.
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Step 3
Keep your tinder ball near your fire board.
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Step 4
Place your spindle in its fire board notch.
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Step 5
Operate your apparatus until your fire board begins to smoke.
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Step 6
Give it about 10 more strokes.
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Step 7
Lift your apparatus carefully away from the fire board. Notice that a small piece of coal has developed from the wood dust worn off by the action of the spindle.
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Step 8
Use a small twig to nudge the coal from the fire board into the tinder ball, like an egg in a nest.
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Step 9
Blow gently on the ball until flames develop.
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Step 10
Place your burning tinder ball inside your twig tepee and carefully fuel your fire.
Comments
dfanjoy said
on 9/8/2009 I did not get a coal just a fine light brown powder, there was smoke though but the powder wasn't even close to being hot, what was my mistake? I used a dry hard wood for the spindle and a softer dry wood baseboard. Any suggestions?
Nilescrane said
on 12/18/2006 I DID IT! I discoverered my own mistakes, and learned a few things no one had told me:
1. The spindle should be harder than the fire board. You are trying to make dust of the board, NOT the spindle. I used a poplar spindle and a cedar fireboard.
2. The shape and extent of the notch in the firebord are important. My notch was narrow, V-shaped, and extended less than halfway into the initial burn hole. It helps to burn a hole to the full diameter of the spindle, not just a dimple, before cutting the notch. If the notch extends too deeply into the burn hole, the spindle will get pointier & pointier, and the friction will reduce. The best spindle was basically round on the bottom, sharply pointed at the top. I lubricated the hole in my socket with carnauba wax.
3. I used a 1" thick fireboard. I found that I had to FILL the notch with hot "punk" dust to get it to ignite. A little pile of dust at the bottom of the notch won't ignite-the punk needs to pile up until it is touching the friction point in the hole.
4. The "coal" didn't look red in the notch. When you stop drilling, and a wisp of smoke continues from the pile of punk, it is burning.
5. The Bow. I have seen many illustrations of people uning small bows, but I got better results with a bow 3' long. The short bow seemed to demand more muscular stamina from the arm, back-and-forth. I got more friction by pulling the FULL length of the longer bow aggressively. It also helped to scratch the point of the drill, to roughen it up once.
5. I used oakum (dismantled manilla rope fibers) for the Nest. The "punk" didn't LOOK like a "coal" until I dropped the whole smoking pile into the nest and started blowing on it-then it looked like an "ember". Just when I thought it might go out, the whole nest caught flame!
Nilescrane said
on 12/13/2006 I have it all down pretty good, bow, spindle, "chimney" notch, etc, but the problem I have is in getting the black dust to IGNITE into a coal. I am using a spindle of oak, and a fireboard of pine or cedar. Sometimes, I drill all the way through the fireboard to the ground, lots of smoke, black dust, no coal. Wht hardness of wood should the spindle & notch be of? How hard do you have to press? Help appreciated.
jamiecon said
on 10/9/2006 To cut down on the friction of the top of the spindle, make the top come to a narrow point. Make the depression in the hand piece smaller to accomodate it.
Anonymous said
on 12/30/2005 A great lubrication for the handpiece (headpiece) comes from a common item you might have with you on the trail-- a regular pencil for notes or maps.
Use your knife to cut out some of the pencil lead (actually graphite a common industrial lubricant) and crush it finely with your leatherman multi-tool pliers. Dump the graphite dust into the handpiece hole, then put your drill in it and crush and grind the graphite (using the drill and handpiece upside down) until it's slick inside. Those of you who have actually started fires with this know that once you get smoke, you need about another 20-30 good hard fast strokes to get hot coals. Your arm will be very tired and a well-lubricated headpiece cuts your workload way down.
It's great if you have all this equipment, but if you're caught in an emergency, you may not have the string to make the bow.
Save yourself some time. If you're caught out on a trail with no string and have a friend with you, don't waste your time with a bow. Make the drill stick, handpiece and footpiece. Take off your leather belt. If it's not rawhide in the back of the belt, split open the threads to get to the rawhide to give it more grip on your drill stick. Roughen up your drill stick to give it more grip and less slip. Use the belt as the string. One person holds the entire apparatus as usual and one end of the belt. The other person operates the other end of the belt. In unison, you both work it back and forth. It's half the effort and you can really make the punk dust in that footpiece smoke!! I've started a fire this way and it works. If the belt is too wide, it only takes a knife and 2 minutes to split it long ways to thin it down.
Shoestrings might work too, but I haven't tried them.
You can buy commercial kits and all of them (and some survival books I've read) suggest cutting a notch in the footpiece so that it cuts into the hole about 1/8 inch. This allows air to get in and allows the hot brown/black dust to fall down onto your dry tinder (soft, fuzzy, well-beaten cottony type cloths or charred cloth). This powdery wood dust helps your tender catch the coal better. If you do this, don't let the footpiece crush your tinder down, it needs to stay light and fluffy. Dig out a small hole the size of your fist beneath your footpiece to place your tinder in it.
When I do this, the coal often gets stuck in the drill hole in the footpiece and you need to either dump it (and risk loosing the coal) or put the tender in the hole and blow on the whole thing until it glows orange.
If you're looking for a good tinder to practice with to catch the hot coal, start with simple dryer lint after you dry a load of cotton clothes (jeans, cotton shirts, etc.). It works every time!