How to Make a Bow Drill

How to make a Bow Drill Fire I'm going to show the Bow drill, this is what it consists of, we’ve got 5 main parts. This part is what we call the—so this bat is as long as from your wrist to the end of your elbow, so your forearm. About three fingers wide, 1 finger and has to be made of a dead dry wood, in this case I’ve used willow. I’ve also used willow for the drill here, which is about as long as from my finger to the end of my thumb and about a finger and a half thick. Nice dry willow, good way to test see if the willow’s dry enough is to take a slice off with a knife when it’s still attach to the bottom of tree, wet your lips, hold your lips against it. If it’s not dry enough, you’ll feel it coming back as being really, really cold and drawing heat out of lips. If it’s dry enough then I will almost be a bit like, sort of holding your lips against the dry piece of cardboard. So your lips will really good at sensing whether things are dry or not. For hardness wise, you need to use thumbnail and see if you can push little thumbnail mark into the wood. If you can’t get a mark in there at all, it’s just too hard. If you're thumbnail goes right in it, it’s just too soft. You just want a little mark just on the surface. —which has to be a rigid piece of wood and it has to have a gentle curve to it and it doesn’t have to flex. Lots of people think, “Oh yes, it’s not a good bow because it doesn’t flex”, if it flexes then you're not going to be able to impart the back and forth movement into the spin of the drill. For the cord, a lot of people use para cord but I use this stuff which is what we use in climbing not when there's a chalk stone that we put in cracks from a climbing and we just use this cord to link it to our carabineers and it’s really good, heavy duty, strong cord. And it doesn’t wear out, this bit here I had for about four years, I’ve lit quite a few fires with it, lost count really. And as you can see, that’s it’s still in good condition, so yes. For our lengthwise for the bow, I always reckon from the end of your fingers to the middle. The other thing you need is what we call the bearing block and this is greenwood and it’s carved as more depression in like that and that sits on top of— What we need to do first of all is burn in a depression like this before you carve the notch because a lot of people will carve the notch, hand carve a depression with the knife. There's no need to do that straight away, but your first job is to flatten off the part of the wood where you're going to use, where you going to put the depressions. So I just carve this off here. Create small depression, put in the knife end and twisting it round like this so, I’ve created a bit of a depression in there. My next job is to burn in, so I have my drill, which I have carved flat at the bottom. There, reasonably flattened to a slight point that’s to maximize friction and to carve it to a thinner point to the top to minimize friction. That one there, sits on there like that. So, I got my bearing block here which will go on the top in there, I will put some green leaves, got of couple of dock leaves around here, I’ll just pick, I’ll put it in there, helps to minimize the friction again. I’ll make to turn easier. Now I see a lot of people struggling when they turn a wrap the drill into the bow string. People find it quite difficult. So I always say, the best way to do it is to hold the bow string like this, hold it so the bows hanging down, place the drill, point it down the way from you on the top like this and then just wrap it around like that. So, good position is to put your foot about half and inch away to an inch away from the side of the depression. Put you're shoelaces out of the way and have the board underneath the arch of your foot. Then you can put the drill and the depression, take your hand, hold the bearing block and put it on the top like that. Then the next biggest key, you see a lot people trying to do the bow drill like this, they can't do it because this top hand doesn’t brace and hem got enough strength in control, to be able to hold it completely still. And the way around that is, feel down the front of your shin, you’ve got your shin bone. And you’ve also got a little indent here behind the back of your thumb just in here. Lock those two together, and you can pull in hard this way and that’s the real thing to concentrate on. Don’t worry about the time pressure, that’s all it has to take of itself, as long as you are pulling your wrist into your shin and holding it rigid. That’s the main thing. The other end holds by wrapping your entire hand around the bow and the string. Not like this but like this. You get the hold up that way, you can put more tension on the string if you need to, to tighten it up if it starts slipping, also gives you great control. Start things slowly, you will definitely don’t want to push them too hard. Okay, before your next pit you now need to cut your notch edge like this here. So, way to get the right size for that is to use your knife, I’ll use this depression here that I burnt in earlier and I’ll place the tip of my knife in the center and then I’ll just put a line straight down. I’ll do the same to the other side. So I’m going to line going straight across like this. Then, I’ll place my knife there and I’ll put another line down so it created a T. Then I’ll divide each of these right angles here in half to another between the 2 and same on this side. Don’t have to be light line, just so you can see them. Then again, these sections here, I’ll divide these in half again, there and there. And these final two lines I’ve created here and here, if you can see, that’s the bit I want to remove. That’s about an 8 and that’s the right size for the notch. Okay, so, I’ve got notch carved, I’ve got my drill, you don’t have to do this when you're practicing, this is just to show you have effective bow drill can be. And I drop it in a bucket of water. Now I have to dry this wood off though before I can use it, I can actually put it indoors or put it into a airy dry place for a couple of days until the water dries off it or you can use the bow drill technique to dry the wood. And the way you do that is just to drill very, very slowly with a low damp wood pressure. Because when you're drilling here and rotating the drill backwards and forwards, you're creating heat by friction, and the pushing down, increases that heat to a point where it then starts to consume the end of the drill and the inside of the depression and deposits the hot dust in the notch and that’s what gives you the fire. We don’t want to take it that far, we want to stop just before that happens so we’re creating heat to dry the wood out, not to burn it. And very carefully, I’ll start to drill. When I start to see smoke, I’ll stop, we have tide a bit of smoke so I’ll stop and I’ll let it cool, and I put it in again, I’ll drill again. It’s good practicing your technique, you shouldn’t be going too hard. Okay, I think I’m ready to give this a go now, so onto 3-1 recorded, I have to drill like that. We lubricate the top with some green leaves. With any dust collections in here, I get rid of it because that’s going to have to the moisture. And to stop, and I’ve got an amber. Now in this part don’t panic, I’ll let it colorless, let it grow. Start to spit right on to cover it a little bit. Just fanning it with my hand, just to give it a bit of air, it’s really damp on the ground and I might pick it up quite quickly. I use the end of my knife just to push it down out of the notch. Now we have an amber.