Choosing Wood to Make a Bow Drill Fire Starter

Video Transcript

"Okay, what we're going to do here, is we're going to walk around here. And we're going to find the proper wood. The proper bend that you want to have for your bow. A lot of times I've noticed that people who select a bow, usually will select a straight bow. And then they'll actually bend it with their nylon cord. What we want to do it is we want to find a bow that has a natural bend to it. And we just found one right here. You want to pan up here. See this bend here, this natural bend on this piece of wood? From right to that knotted area over, is a really nice bend for a bow. And it's about arm length. It should be from your armpit to your hand or longer, the bow should be have that length to it. The shorter the bow you have, the faster you have to do it. The larger the bow, the longer the motion is, the easier it is on you. Okay, if you have a large bow, it's not as many turns that you have to take. So this is about arm pit to past hand length. And it's just right. So that right there is a really nice piece, and that's what we're going to use today."