Making the Spindle for a Bow Drill Fire Starter

Video Transcript

"We will get rid of this stuff and here we go. Now even the most perfect piece of wood you find is still going to have some uneven lines. You can see this little hump right here. What you want to do with this spindle, any spindle, you are going to have to get rid of all this bark, get of this little hump, this wave is what I call them waves. You have got to get these scraped off so it becomes like this. See that line how straight. The least amount of friction, this is what you want. So now I'm going to start to remove some of this and I see a lot of people who do this, put their leg out and do this. They do this or they even do this towards themselves. In a survival situation, you know, don't put your limbs in harm's way. Use a rock, use a stone, use anything but do not put your limbs near the knife. What I do is this, just rest it and take your time or just hold it, get rid of all this bark right here. All this bark has got to go. It has got to become smooth and you want to get rid of the wave too. So I'm going to do this. Take your time. Create a nice rhythm. You can see how it is starting to take shape and once you have this piece like this, this pre-made spindle, you now have to make each end. This end is actually the end that goes to my hand held and it is black and glazed which you want. The reason why you want it black and glazed is because you want it to be as hard as possible so when you lubricate this it fits really nice into your hand held and has the least amount of friction. So let's make that the top part. With your spindle both ends, very important, both ends have to be shaped the same like a triangle. What we are going to do is we are going to burn in the spindle into the fire board where it becomes round. So both ends have to be like this. One end will be lubricated that goes into the hand held. The other end will not be lubricated it will burn into the fire board, a very important fact to remember. Both ends have got to look the same. One end will be lubricated."