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- Apr 14, 2006
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Back in 1996 my daughter copied a bunch of posts of the old Primitive Skills Group for me. One of the posts was an article by Barry Keegan called 'Fast Survival Bow Drill Strings'. It was concerned with using different materials such as tree bark and roots as emergency bow strings.
More recently, in the now-defunct Wilderness Way magazine, Volume 4, Issue 2, the same article was presented with even greater detail. I filed it away for some future time to experiment with it. That time was today.
I met my buddy Phil, this morning and we headed out to try out some of the things mentioned. It was a cool day, -7° C or 19° F for our American members. No snow, something we have been cursed with this year. Everybody else has sn........., never mind! Anyway, it was a nice, sunny day and being a Wednesday, we had the woods to ourselves.
A nice little falls on our way in.
For the first part of the day, we were looking for suitable saplings or branches to work with. This particular area is sapling-rich, so taking down one or two did nothing but improve the growing conditions for the ones that remained. (It is necessary to use live wood for this application). I also wanted to find some dead Basswood to stock up my friction fire supplies. No luck on that.
You can see that it was a bit cool. Looks like maybe a deer broke through this ice, judging by the size of the holes on the left.
We finally managed to find a couple of saplings (2 different species) with the desired characteristics - 'somewhat straight, preferably with no branches, scars, dead spots or any such flaws that interrupt the bark fibers, should be about 3 feet long and at least thumb thickness'. One of the techniques involve beating on the bark to loosen it from the wood.
Here you can see the end of the wood splitting from being whacked. You have to strike fairly hard to get some action, but not so hard that you damage the bark.
In the article, Barry talks about securing the bark strip at one end of the bow, then twisting the bark so that the bark is on the outside, with the 'wood' side enclosed within.
We tried this on the bow and it worked for several strokes but it quickly broke down. I want to say at this point, that this failure was due to the wrong type bark, our poor technique or some other short comings on our part - not in any way related to Mr. Keegan.
I also should mention that we had previously decided to bring a drill and hearth that we already had, to save some time and also because the focus was on the string and a bow to accomodate it.
It was at this point that Phil said that he always envisioned the bark used as a strip rather than twisted, so we decided to give that a try. After trying a few different methods to affix the bark to the bow, we finally found one that worked.
Here, Phil is burning in the divot.
The divot.
Everything arranged, going for the coal.
SHE'S SMOKING!
Can it be?
More recently, in the now-defunct Wilderness Way magazine, Volume 4, Issue 2, the same article was presented with even greater detail. I filed it away for some future time to experiment with it. That time was today.
I met my buddy Phil, this morning and we headed out to try out some of the things mentioned. It was a cool day, -7° C or 19° F for our American members. No snow, something we have been cursed with this year. Everybody else has sn........., never mind! Anyway, it was a nice, sunny day and being a Wednesday, we had the woods to ourselves.
A nice little falls on our way in.
For the first part of the day, we were looking for suitable saplings or branches to work with. This particular area is sapling-rich, so taking down one or two did nothing but improve the growing conditions for the ones that remained. (It is necessary to use live wood for this application). I also wanted to find some dead Basswood to stock up my friction fire supplies. No luck on that.
You can see that it was a bit cool. Looks like maybe a deer broke through this ice, judging by the size of the holes on the left.
We finally managed to find a couple of saplings (2 different species) with the desired characteristics - 'somewhat straight, preferably with no branches, scars, dead spots or any such flaws that interrupt the bark fibers, should be about 3 feet long and at least thumb thickness'. One of the techniques involve beating on the bark to loosen it from the wood.
Here you can see the end of the wood splitting from being whacked. You have to strike fairly hard to get some action, but not so hard that you damage the bark.
In the article, Barry talks about securing the bark strip at one end of the bow, then twisting the bark so that the bark is on the outside, with the 'wood' side enclosed within.
We tried this on the bow and it worked for several strokes but it quickly broke down. I want to say at this point, that this failure was due to the wrong type bark, our poor technique or some other short comings on our part - not in any way related to Mr. Keegan.
I also should mention that we had previously decided to bring a drill and hearth that we already had, to save some time and also because the focus was on the string and a bow to accomodate it.
It was at this point that Phil said that he always envisioned the bark used as a strip rather than twisted, so we decided to give that a try. After trying a few different methods to affix the bark to the bow, we finally found one that worked.
Here, Phil is burning in the divot.
The divot.
Everything arranged, going for the coal.
SHE'S SMOKING!
Can it be?
Last edited:
) Phil managed it with little problem.
