Starting a Fire With a Bow Drill: Body Position

Video Transcript

"The next step is the positioning of the body. I mentioned earlier about putting the wrists against the ankle but let me go beyond that. Now I am going to put the bow, the rope in the spindle, see that? Bring it towards you. This does not have to be extremely tight. If it is too tight it is going to be too hard to do. Bring it down to the fire board and the positioning, I'm going to show you the positioning of the body which is really important before we go down any further. I mentioned earlier about putting the wrists against the ankle, you can see that, you can see the position of my body. You can bend over a little bit when you do the bow drill but act like it's an instrument. I see too many people that are leaning this way which makes the spindle go off direction. Use this as the balancing point, the relationship between your wrist and your ankle. That's the center point as you can see. You see that, the movement. If you start to go towards this you can see how the bow can hit the cement. You can also see how the bow can hit the backing and hit your leg so it is the positioning and this is like playing the violin. It must become an instrument for it to be easy and a part of you. So let's do quick motion here. Look at that, see that? It's the rhythm and it is already starting to burn which I don't want to get there yet I want to show you this. I am going to stop it here and you can see how the body has to be in relation to the bow."