- Joined
- Mar 19, 2007
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- 7,443
So - I have been thinking about the bow drill - and how to start a fire with very little materials at hand.
I was thinking about a hard wood forest - where the the only wood was very hard - perhaps too hard for the average person to make a bow drill fire with. (a forest of only confers would also make this scenario work). Let's also imagine that either you can find or can't get to any kindling under pinkie size and made of hard wood.
This is not a good forest to get a fire going from a coal. You have very little tinder to make a tinder bundle out of. You have to go from coal - to kindling.
I imagined having the SHTF in this forest, needing fire (say for signaling) and having on the some string (say shoe laces) and knife on hand. Let's imagine in this scenario that you also brought your favorite walking stick - you chose this stick out of medium hard wood.
I took this as my scenario last night and today - and made two successful bow drill fires with only this as my wood. Here is how I did it.
1) I took the straightest part of the walking stick and measured a 9 inch section - or so and then used my blade to cut around stave to start to section it in half. This part would be my spindle. I simply made .45 degree angle cuts one way - and then .45 degree angle cuts toward the first cuts to get a V cut all the way around the stick.
2) Once I had a V of about 1/2 inch in depth - I used this depth to start making the spindle smaller. I held on to the stave section and started hogging off material. I was able to get 1/6th in deep curls at a swipe and soon had quite a pile of those going.
3) Once I had the spindle down to about a thumb with - and fairly octagonal (this took making the V cut deeper and turning the stave back and forth. It was very good to have the whole stave to hold on to.) - I began to sharpen both ends of the spindle. When I sharpened this spindle I took very small curls off the ends. I could have made deeper cuts - but what I needed was little curls to help form what would be my tinder bundle.
4) Once the spindle was done I had quite a pile of small curls and quite a pile of larger thicker curls. I set these in two separate piles.
I was thinking about a hard wood forest - where the the only wood was very hard - perhaps too hard for the average person to make a bow drill fire with. (a forest of only confers would also make this scenario work). Let's also imagine that either you can find or can't get to any kindling under pinkie size and made of hard wood.
This is not a good forest to get a fire going from a coal. You have very little tinder to make a tinder bundle out of. You have to go from coal - to kindling.
I imagined having the SHTF in this forest, needing fire (say for signaling) and having on the some string (say shoe laces) and knife on hand. Let's imagine in this scenario that you also brought your favorite walking stick - you chose this stick out of medium hard wood.
I took this as my scenario last night and today - and made two successful bow drill fires with only this as my wood. Here is how I did it.
1) I took the straightest part of the walking stick and measured a 9 inch section - or so and then used my blade to cut around stave to start to section it in half. This part would be my spindle. I simply made .45 degree angle cuts one way - and then .45 degree angle cuts toward the first cuts to get a V cut all the way around the stick.
2) Once I had a V of about 1/2 inch in depth - I used this depth to start making the spindle smaller. I held on to the stave section and started hogging off material. I was able to get 1/6th in deep curls at a swipe and soon had quite a pile of those going.
3) Once I had the spindle down to about a thumb with - and fairly octagonal (this took making the V cut deeper and turning the stave back and forth. It was very good to have the whole stave to hold on to.) - I began to sharpen both ends of the spindle. When I sharpened this spindle I took very small curls off the ends. I could have made deeper cuts - but what I needed was little curls to help form what would be my tinder bundle.
4) Once the spindle was done I had quite a pile of small curls and quite a pile of larger thicker curls. I set these in two separate piles.
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