How to Make Friction Fire with Hand Drill

How to Make a Friction Fire with hand Drill The combination I’m going to use today is Wood ivy and Hazel. This again is very abundant over whole of the British Isles. The wood ivy I harvested green, this some local woodlands there are bulbs and trees and this obviously would’ve been cut and was doomed anyways so I took it and dried it. So when you're cutting this ivy be careful not to kill the entire plant because if you cut it at the bottom of the tree, you take the whole section at you’ll kill the ivy over the entire tree of an ivy contrary to popular beliefs does not do a tree any damage. It doesn’t strangler the tree or anything like that. So, yes if you can't find any green freshly cut come try with some dead stuff, try and get it with a nice yellow color and in good condition. You don’t want it to be gray and dull and what we call panky and then it breaks apart easily. We want it to be good nice and solid. With the hazel, I also cut this green, lots of couple with Hazel all over the UK, just find yourself a nice straight piece, it’s really easy to find straight pieces, grows abundantly and you can dry this is just a few days in the wilderness. So, I’ll show you how to do the hand drill with this. Just made them very close so you can see what I’m doing. Here, I have my piece of ivy. What I want to do first off is create a small depression in it which then I’m going to burn in with the drill. So, I use my knife, if again I’m using a knife, I’m safe, I'm always to the side. Never anywhere, may be inside of the legs. Big artery is right down inside of your legs, you don’t want to stab them, and you won't have very long to live if you do. So if you do work, you can work with all best stuck to your knees. So you make sure that, where the hems away. But this I’ll just going to work on the side at here. Remove any stones that might catch with a knife on, from carving and I slip and I hate it, so I don’t want take the knife. First thing you're going to do is just carve to make it a little bit flatter, then take the end of my knife and hold it like this. Gives me control, also damaged limitation, if I do slip, because I need that much of the knife that’s going stick in me. So, put the point in and turn like that. Turn the wood around and just chisel at a tiny little depression. Make sure the sides are quite stiff because that way you’ll get lots of friction on the side which will start the burning process. So, once I’ve done that, make sure to finish it right. There we go, put the knife away, once I’ve done that, as a couple of different positions you can sit in, you can sit in if I move back for this or you can stand in and called the bow drill positions which is like this, gives you a lot of darn wood pressure like that. Or you can sit down, like this and put your one foot on it, one leg at the side, the other foot like that. Or, my preferred technique which is far more comfortable is just to sit like this. The fat part of my calf pinning this to the ground, now a little tip, when you’re trying to get grip on the drill, one where the people say you should lick your palms, this gives you the edge and how you can wet them, and that gives you the edge and I tend to find that wears off. I’ve got dry hands, to something I’ve discovered is the sap and a Douglas fur tree. On the outside of a Douglas fur you can get little bubbles all over it, if you pop those, it’s got a very lemony, piney smelling sap in there. You can use that put little dabs bit on your hand. I’ve already put just a little bit, I keep it in this little container here. You don’t want too much, because if you have too much, it’s going to create too much of these on your hand until it’s going to burn. You want just enough to create a little bit of tackiness and that tackiness will last. It also means that you don’t have to push in so hard to maintain grip on the drill. So you keep pushing in to maintain your grip on the drill especially if it’s quite small drill, that’s when you're going to get blisters. So, you don’t want to do that better have slightly sticky hands and not have to grip too perfectly. So, as I’m drilling as you can see—I’m drilling between there and there on my hand. Start at the top, and I drill down. When you I get to the bottom, I pin it, move back to the top, and down again. That changer, this is quite important. Quickly you do that for the last sit you use in the end. Because when you're changing over, the drill is actually stationary for a short period of time. And I think that’s pretty much enough, you can see a smoke coming off, do it one more. There we are, and then I burned in as you can see there, small depression. Then, next thing I have to do is to create this small wedge and cut the wedge out of it. So, there's a small piece of wood here, I’m going to collect the amber on that, again, I’m going to pin this down with the outside of my leg. We’re using the fat of my calf; I think the righter place so I want to get my hands down there so I come away a little bit. You also have to be careful that it doesn’t shift around too much, because if it’s wobbling around as you are drill the ambers going to fall to pieces. So again, with small amount of resin on my hands, take the drill. I just start to drill very gently to start with. What you want to do is to keep at the drill and the inside of the half before you start to tear the fibers off into the notch, because it’s no good tearing cold fibers off. The harder you press and the faster you spin, the more fibers you’ll tear off that will drop into the notch as dust. And you rather have those hot than cold. And then we get about 4 and start to speed up a little bit there. See the smoke’s already starting to form, and back up. Small press assessment pull, I get to the bottom I hold it with one hand and I move back to the top. It’s nice black amber that’s forming. Always make sure you're breathing, and there we have amber. Always watch the end of that, its red-hot, don’t put it near or anything we can melt, any clothing or anything like that. This is point where don’t rush. A lot of people rush and the amber fall to pieces before it’s grown enough. I find it very gentle in my hand, if its windy day, there's been some gust around here, I’ll cover it just so it isn’t blown to pieces. Its in there, I’ve got old dead bush grass that was lying in the hedge. So what I’ll do beside that’s growing slowly, give it a quick rub on the trousers, flux up the inside. I’ll make a small nest in the middle, and then I take my amber. Hello little dog, hello. Then I’ll put it in there and then, start to blow gently. And there we have fire. Can you see I wasn’t blowing too hard? It was a nice sustained lengthy blast. If you blow too hard you can blow the amber to pieces, you don’t want to do that and you need to feed it. You also can’t hold it too close to your mouth because then you can put it at and there we go. I hope you’ve enjoyed that. Hello, hello little dog, hello come on. Just reviewed the film footage and I like this little interrupter from my friend here and one thing about dogs is they’re really good trackers and especially good at finding badger mark. And as you can see while I start being filming she’s been tracking the local badgers and he found one of there toilets and decided to roll in it. So this little pup is having one hell of a washroom when we get back. Yes, you are, yes monkey little troll. And also, it looks like I was setting fire to my coat at the end. Don’t worry, I put the burning grass bundle far behind my coat and upwind as well so I wasn’t in any danger. So thank you for watching and you can stay away from me and if you want to learn anymore, come to LearnBushCraft.co.UK. We run courses in the East Midlands and I hope to see you there. Thanks. Bye.