It was a nice looking evening for a walk and an experiment.
Mors Kochanski's excellent book "Northern Bushcraft" has an excellent description of the bow-drill technique for fire lighting. I've wanted to try out this method every since reading it! I had made the fire board and drill back in May out of a piece of dead red alder. They've been drying out indoors for several months now, so I figured they should work pretty good. Using the right wood, generally non resinous hardwoods like birch, alder, willow etc., and making sure it is thoroughly dry are key to success.
For the bow and block I picked up a stick and a piece of wood in the forest on my way down to the creek.
The string on the other hand I bought from Zellers. It's a shoelace from a work boot. I think it cost me about $1.00. I cut a notch in each end of the bow, and in a couple of minutes had the string tied on and ready to go. Using a perfection loop on one end of the string really helps. It holds very steady, and you can adjust the tension at the other end.
Within a few minutes I was drilling away to establish a hole in the fireboard. I was surprised at how easy it was! Within no time I had a nice hole drilled into the wood and ready for the all important notch!
As the drill is turned in the hole very fine and hot wood dust is produced. The notch is required to collect the burning hot dust and allow the formation of a glowing red ember. The ember is then transferred to a fine tinder bundle and "blown" into a flame. Without some kind of a notch, it just doesn't work!
I sat down to drill again and see if I could get some dust to accumulate in the notch. Surprisingly again, it wasn't so hard as I thought it was going to be. Now I don't profess to be an expert in any way, shape, or form. I won't be relying on this method for all my fire lighting needs just yet, and I understand that a lot more practice is necessary; but still, within a few seconds I had accumulated a nice little pile of dust out of which a thin wisp of smoke curled upwards!!!
It's really too bad that I couldn't chance starting a fire! I was very excited and felt I could probably get one going without too much more effort. Still, I was pleased with what I had accomplished to this point and felt it was better that I not risk setting fire to the local forest!What I seemed to find the hardest was keeping the back and forth motion of the bow to be flat and level. My hand had a tendency to wander upwards, which had the effect of drawing the string up along the drill. This eventually let to a loss of rotation on the drill since it's upper part is thinned down, and thus the tension in the rope around the drill was lessened. Additional practice is required to correct this problem.
All in all however this experiment was a success, and I can't wait to be able to use the bow-drill technique to light a fire!
