Bushcraft Fire Lighting: Essential Technique of Bow Drill Friction Fire

Description

In this video we look at a step by step guide to the essentials of bow drill friction fire technique. If your finding it hard to get an ember and want some guidance in how to refine your bow drill setup and technique then hopefully this video can help.

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Video Transcription

either guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to another video in front of me here I have a friction fire set and this is predominantly a bow drill set I live in the northern hemisphere and bow drill is a very compatible friction fire method for this kind of environment is very damp predominantly we have hardwoods so using this technique operating a bow drill set can even make the worst of materials produce some results and that's really where it comes into play it's knowing the woods that are around you and that's 50% of the battle but having good technique and discipline technique with the bow drill and carry along unsuitable materials and actually get your results as well and good technique is so important with the bow drill understanding what's happening with the set making a set that suits your posture and your comfort and being able to feel what's going wrong with the set whilst you're working with it stop so you're not wasting any more energy and then correct that problem and carry on it is really about technique and technique allows you to understand what's happening with the set and that's what we're going to focus on in this video it's going to be technique with the bow drill so if you're out there and you're practicing with the bow drill you're having trouble or you're looking to start using it hopefully this video can help you out if we look at the satyr little more closely we can see what materials we have here and then we'll have a look at how it all goes together as the video progresses first of all probably the one the most important parts is the half board we have two half boards here of different materials you can see I've used this one one slightly bandy the other straight can give you various results depending on which one you use we have a drill or a spindle here as well we have a bow which is the part one of the parts that we operate to drive the whole set like a drill and it's got called slight curve in it this is dog-rose above I've been using with the same cord for the last two years we have a bearing block as well which supports the top of the actual drill or spindle I'll use a gray fear fossil Flint sometimes stone anything that can't be drilled into because this can be 90 percent of the problems that you face when operating the set especially if you use a softwood so another important aspect we have an ember pan as well this catches our ember allows us to put it into nest material which we have here in this tinder bag so this is plant fibers in a box things that burn very well and can take an ember into flame to then light fuel wood and the beeswax we'll talk about in a little while if we have a look at the bow you can see that this bow is very straight this is above I've been using for the last couple of years it stretches from about the center of my chest the end of my fingers which is usually ideal for a bow so I would measure that when you're making one this could do with being a little bit longer but I've gotten used to it and generally you can get used to things even if they're less than ideal but that's really just a minor thing we have a small twig on one end and I've cut a notch on the other and that's to hold the actual cord and the cord I've measured all out and and you know done it by I made it all comfortable for myself and we can cover the cord in a moment but you can see that this bow is actually very straight you'll only be able to see a very very slight curve in the actual bow and that's exactly what you want on a bow for a bow drill set you do not want a very large curvy piece of wood because what happens is it starts to become springy especially if you don't pick a wood that's hard if you pick a wood that's quite springy like hazel or virtual willow or even poplars ashes things start to get a little bit springy because naturally that's what woods will do when they have a bend in the grain like that they will have a degree of flex to them when they're pushed like this if you've ever tried to hammer in a post in the ground has a large bend in all the force goes this way instead of down into the ground and this is really important when you're operating a bow drill set when you're doing this I always call it the step of the bow and it's like a rhythm and you want it to be as consistent as possible if you have a large curve in it and you push down very hard on the drill and start to force it you can grip the cord and cause the bow to flex and it can actually loosen off the drill and slip on the drill and ruin the snap of the bow a large Bend as well also can cause vibration in it just means that a lot of the force you're pressing forward can go out in the wrong direction the straighter the bow the more power you can put down like this keeping all that force going back and forth and it just makes a far more consistent step of the boat the cordage itself is 550 paracord and this piece of cord has lasted me a couple of years now it's completely impregnated with beeswax which really helps its longevity a little bit like a recurve bow compound bow or crossbow and it's not been done up too tight around the drill or the spindle which again prolongs its life for a great deal of time if you have a tight piece of cord around the drill it will destroy itself as you operate it but you can see I've just tied some loops at the end and this loop here was just to tighten it a little bit because paracord can have a degree of flex in it especially when it gets damp it does have a bit of flex you can see that one end just loops around there the other end comes just round the back here and hooks in just there like so if we put the cord on the actual bow now we look at this bow here you can see that this is the lighter end of the bow and this is the heavier end and you always want to be holding the heavier end you never want it far away from you because again that will actually change the step of the way you operate the bow drill you want to be holding the heavier end and have the lighter end here you can see that if we hold that very very comfortable and I hold it very very far back I actually hold the cord myself because it allows me to get my thumb and adjust the tension of the cord on the actual drill so you can actually use your thumb to actually tension that if you find there's a bit of slippage and you're so far away through the process you don't want to stop because you're almost there so that does really help if we put the bow into our belt line here make sure it's strung up we can just heat the Corder get the wax nice and warm take our beeswax block if you carry a beeswax candle on you in your set then it can be very useful you can use saps to do this as well pine pitch can work although it does get very very sticky it's not as good as the wax but it does allow a little bit of grip on the actual drill so it works in a slightly different way to the wax you can see I've just put some wax on there and just warm that up and that will do one of two things as we spoke about earlier like with recurve bows compound bows that will stop the cord fraying and you can see that this cord is really tightly compacted together but what it actually does is it gives you a lot more grip on the drill and it means that if you're operating a set with called that might be a little bit slippery you don't have to tighten the cord just putting the wax on will actually give you that tension you need and stop you over tightening the cord and actually fraying it on the spindle and if we string that up by putting the drill on the inside and then twisting you can hear that Bight there and it should lapse back about 45 degrees and that's ideal for a boat and a spindle or drill I've got some nice flat ground to work on but unsurprisingly it's very damp it's best to move away large twigs and things like this because it can uneven the surface for you when you put your half down but one thing I will never do is put my half on soggy ground like this because that can get moisture into your set and give you trouble and that will really work against you I found some birch bark here offer an old rotting birch tree and this is an ideal material for keeping away moisture from your set so I can put my half down there and I don't have to worry about if I pick up the drill here you can see the drill I use about a foot long that's ideal really for me I find it gives me good posture I do not like a short drill at all I find it really messes up with my posture when I'm operating a bow drill set and a tall one like this just just to me a better stance as you can see a little bit later but if we have a look at the actual drill you'll see one end is black and rounded it started off hexagonal where I'd carved it into a sort of rounded shape as it's been used it's ground itself down which it will do it's not really a problem you want it to be like that eventually but one end is quite pointed it's quite tall as well it's not not just a little sharp stubby point it's actually quite tall there's a reason for that and if you're going to use a piece of wood as a bearing block like this for example which wouldn't be ideal but just for an example we'd get our knife when we make an indentation there and this would sit into it like that what can often happen if you make a stubby point is it will grind down and you'll start getting a bow drill set the other end and smoke will come out this end instead of that ends that so make it tall and long like that with a bullet at the top and that will stop the edges from touching the inside of the indentation you make in your bearing block if you use wood you use a fossil like me or a shell like a limpet or any kind of sort of hard piece of stone with an indentation you won't have any problems like that and you'll eliminate those issues altogether which is why I use something like this we had a look at this half board earlier this is the one I've already used you can see it's really flat so when we put it down like that and we press down on the half board there is no gap underneath well drill will be operating no gap at all if we take this other half all this a little bit twisted you can see that we need to work with that a little bit and if we put our foot down there we have a gap underneath here never put our foot down there we have a gap there as well this is why it's really important when you make your half you flatten it off at the bottom to give yourself a nice consistent path board that's easy to work with and that won't present you too many problems because if we have it like that and the gap underneath as we're drilling all our material all our dust as you'll see us create later or just all vibrate away underneath and you'll lose all of your material and it'll be a waste of time an air gap is great but you want to be able to create that air gap yourself in the form of a V like that and make sure your dust is collected in there and then it's not going anywhere so we're going to work with this board is this one is an example of really something you don't really want to create that should have been flattened off properly but I've done it like that on purpose to show you you can take your knife now and we're going to get the knife and not drill down like this actually scoop material out like that you want to go down just enough so the drill will stay in that divot as you spin it a few millimeters should do that looks okay and bearing in mind they're not only the floor is damp but the mud underneath my boot is I've got some more bark here from Western redcedar I can place just here I want it quite close to the indentation I've made it means I can put my boot on it like that not worry about mud and moisture getting into the half I just put a glove on because I'll be holding the bearing block and it will take a bit of heat out of it you can mount it in a piece of wood if you want but I prefer not to as I always have some gloves or something on me to act as insulation you can actually string up now you can see if we hold the bow the curve is on the inside of my body along with the cord the part of the drill that faces down faces up it strings on the inside then you twist like that they have it and then the drill now remains on the outside of the bow where the largest gap is so it's not going to be touching the actual bow itself but we should be ready to work so as I put my boots down on the actual hearth I just make sure it's nice and flat I'm not operating the bow on the incline or a decline to match the ground you just want that half to be flat not like this or I should be very uncomfortable and comfort is the key when you're doing this kind of technique when you're making a bow drill when you're operating it you want to be comfortable as you do with any form of friction fire or anything you do outside but one thing we're going to do now because we're making a fresh depression and the actual half they're not using the same one even though we could but we're just starting from scratch we're going to do something called burning in the sets and burning in the set just means matching that face with the new depression we've actually created that in the half and it's a short process so I'm just going to get comfortable you just space myself out a little bit this is generally the posture that I go for unease you rotate my wrists around that's holding the actual ember but the bearing block just to make sure that everything feels right you can see that my arm is quite straight but not completely straight I don't want just my shoulder muscles to be operating the actual bow you want a bit of bend in your arm like that to actually give you more power more of your muscles are doing the job for you you can see when I operate the bow operate really flat like that

I don't curve up like this and then curve down like that and it's really important you don't do that because watch what happens the drill if I go like this it throws the drilling and that's one of the major issues you can you can see when people do bow drill this they Rock the actual bow you've got to operate it really flat as flat as you can by operating nice and flat the drill doesn't get stressed and bends back and forth you're not pushing it by actually twisting the core there we go so our aim wasn't to make a fire then but we've just matched that there the actual depression on the hearth board and now that we've created some dust making sure we keep our set off the ground we can actually collect it you can see it's nice and fine and black and we want to keep that because that's material that we can actually use but what we want to do now is make a little V to actually help collect it even more so it doesn't pull out around the edge actually goes into the V and stays there I'd recommend that most people use a knife for this job especially if they're not used to using a softer doing it simply because saw cuts quick more margin for error much more aggressive a knife means you take your time you're more accurate and in this case I'm using a saw I generally use a saw for it most of the time as I've I've gotten used to it we can put this on the edge of this stump here we want to make the actual gap probably just under an inch wide you want it to be fairly wide so it can collect enough material and get oxygen Henry then used my knife just tidy things up of it you want the inside to be smooth not jagged because of the teeth of a saw for us that will cause you more problems and just cling on to a material and not allow it to fall down but you don't want it going completely into the center you want it to be a little bit like that and you need to bear in mind that that depression will get bigger which is why you can see it's only just poking into the edge of the actual circle but another thing I tend to do is get my knife and actually rounds the bottom I just take the edge off of the grain just like that and that just allows for a bit more oxygen material to actually build up you almost just shamp for the edges off there in there so now that we've cut our knotch we've actually got some material therefore when we burnt in the set you've got the Amber pan you can get underneath the V brush that material in and that means you've already done some of the work we can get strung up now and make a fire so again we just string up how we did before making sure the bow is roughly in the center and just get comfy obviously this process can be quick or slow depending on what sort of weather conditions you're in during at the time what kind of preparations you've brought with the in terms of shelter to keep you away from the weather or keep the weather off you but you can see that I keep a nice straight back I almost rest my my stomach there just across my thigh so I'm a lot of my weight is going straight down if I go like this I call it the Gollum technique I see a lot of people do it they start to do that and it means they're now having to push down a lot more here and they're not using their body weight to their advantage you don't need to be like this really rigid and straight because you do want a little bit of bend in that arm you don't be operating the bow like that you want some bend in it to give you that power so your muscles are working together but yeah I'm just about ready now so I'm going to do this in stages of three so we'll start off fairly light and then we'll put down more pressure and at the very end more pressure and then speed so the consistency that operate the BOA generally remains the same make sure you breathe

as you can see the breeze is blowing into the B coming from behind me something I forgot to mention that's quite that's it so we've got continuous smoke coming out of the set continuous smoke means that you actually have an ember in there but you want to get all this material and get it on top of the Ember the materials black and fluffy it means your pressure that you applied was as ideal but I did push a little bit too hard at one point which gave a lot of pooling around the edge that's okay

at this point we don't really want to rush you want the left to let the Ember develop into what's called a cherry you'll be able to see it glowing in the camera and that's great we can leave it there for a little while I then usually get my nest material I've never really in a rush at this point this is if the inner bark of poplar and we just space that out a little bit I've already pre-built it into a nest with the finer material in the actual core I've made a little hole for it we can take our Ember you can see it's really nice now we don't want the wind to take any more of that way and we can drop that in and you want to cover it up so you can barely see it just like that and depending on which way the winds coming it's coming towards us here just blow very lightly or vote but but pucker your lips and that really cuts down the moisture in your breath got a little bit of a flame we can turn that upside down and just hold it momentarily like that we just move to set bring that down here and we want to keep it fluffy you don't want to compact it if you are making a fire fluff it up like this and then make sure your twigs are elevated from the actual bundle or else you will smother it because oxygen is the key for this kind of fire lighting we have a lovely fire now obviously not a proper one missing a lot of key materials but it's getting rid of those flies now anyway they've been bugging me all throughout this video so I hope you found this video useful and you go out there a practicing bow drill are looking to start it up hopefully you've got some useful tips and tricks from this video that you can actually apply and use wherever you are in the world it's a very transferable skill the bow drill can be used in many many different parts of the world very good if you're in the northern hemisphere like this it's probably the most useful method of friction fire in an environment like this simply because of the damp and the hardwoods that we have everywhere but in our next video are actually going to go out and make a set because having technique is one half of the battle but knowing which woods you can use is the other half of the battle and if you pick the wrong materials you can waste a lot of energy and a lot of time trying to make a fire and not have too much success but having good technique can carry along less than ideal materials but it is good to pick the right ones and know why they're useful so we'll go out in the field in the next video look for different native species I'll show you the ones that I use the condition they're in and what kind of circumstances are used to pick them obviously the weather here very transferable it rains some days sunny others but most of the time it's very damp so I'm always working in less than ideal conditions when I'm making a fire but hopefully you enjoyed that video hopefully you found it useful I'll see you very very soon in another one thanks again guys take care