EARTH SKILLS NEWS www.earthskills.com © Jim Lowery August 2015 THE LEARNING CIRCLE: NOTES, THOUGHTS & PROJECTS I. Improve your bow drill firemaking Have you struggled with getting a bow drill fire consistently? Do you wonder what’s wrong with your apparatus or technique? Would you like to be able to try some more advanced tricks that will make firemaking easier for you? The bow drill is, in my view, the most practical of all the primitive firemaking techniques. You can get fire with many kinds of woods in many habitats, without bringing anything with you—even cordage or a knife. The hand drill is simpler, but in most locations only two or three woods at most can be used for the hand drill and hearth, and that only using very well practiced technique and strength. However I have made bow drill fires with 28 woods in my area. When we teach bow drill firemaking in our classes, we stress that mastering the technique is the most important factor. Many students, both men and women, need practice and especially the wrist and arm strength that goes with it, but if the technique is correct, success will come with time and practice. On the other hand, bad habits die slowly and so in this article I want to offer some trouble-shooting, a few reminders based on the mistakes we see most commonly with students, and some more advanced tips. (A review of the bow drill apparatus and technique can be found in your notes from our Wilderness Skills class, in Tom Brown, Jr.’s Field Guide to Wilderness Survival, and Larry Dean Olson’s Outdoor Survival Skills. There are also many YouTube videos demonstrating the bow drill, one of the better ones by Alderleaf College; see https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=L5vWqdo3Yw4.) Technique is everything Well, not everything, but a lot. Only when your technique is perfect can you begin to make compromises with the wood you select and with each part of the firemaking apparatus. In other words, you can get by with marginal equipment. You don’t need to search as far for materials Good technique allows you to get fire from many woods, and you will be able to get a fire going where others couldn’t. The bow even with a funky apparatus. drill technique is a lot like learning a musical instrument; the more comfortable you are with it, the easier it is to create something beautiful out of a crude and funky instrument. How is your technique? If you have a smooth, rhythmical stroke and get smoke without your apparatus squeaking, your technique and apparatus are probably pretty good. On the other hand, if you feel you are struggling, check the chart on the next page and work on correcting the problem. Practice until things are smooth. Tricks and tips with technique If your technique is pretty good, consider some additions or modifications to make your bow drill firemaking more consistent. Controlling the bow and handhold is a good place to improve. Often, just as you’re getting a lot of smoke from your bow drill strokes, the cord starts to slip on the spindle and you just can’t maintain the same amount of downward pressure and still get the rotations—and therefore the heat you need—for the final push. There are two ways to handle this problem. One is to manually increase the tension on the bowstring with a couple of fingers from your bowing hand. Just pull in on the bowstring and often the tension will improve enough to finish the job. Another is to move the cord to a different place on the spindle. Usually the rope slickens the surface of the spindle in the middle where it’s first looped around it. You can move the rope down on the spindle by pushing the bow down a little on the forward stroke and down again on the next back-stroke, then keeping it level there for the duration. Move the rope up on the spindle by pushing up a little and pulling up on the backstroke. Often the rope will grab better in one of these places. Either or both of these techniques together can give you another five or ten strokes which may be enough to get a coal. 1113 Cougar Ct., Frazier Park, CA 93225 • 661-245-0318 • [email protected] Troubleshooting with the Bow Drill Fire: Common Mistakes and Failures From teaching the bow drill fire to many students, we have noticed these most common obstacles. 1. Inadequate wrist and arm strength. You don’t need to be a bodybuilder to get a bow drill fire going. Most people who practice the technique are able to get a fire at least with the easier woods, such as willow or cottonwood. But the stronger your wrists and arms, the easier it is. Even many men who are otherwise in good shape need to work on wrist strength. For women, wrist strength is most often the biggest area to work on. Inability to get smoke consistently, or a wobbly spindle usually means you need to work on wrist and arm strength. A spindle that often pops out means you are tilting the handhold, and can also suggest the need to improve here. Develop strength in two ways: do push-ups at least a couple of times a week, and practice the bow drill fire. Try the firemaking twenty times, making a new apparatus each time. Then do it another twenty times. Many students think that trying a bow drill fire a few times should allow you to perfect the technique. It doesn’t. 2. Stubborn attachment to a poor apparatus. Once you’ve gone to the trouble to make a bow drill apparatus, it’s a pain to make an entirely new one. So, many people struggle for hours with their apparatus, even though the spindle has become way too short, the cord keeps slipping, and the apparatus begins to bind and squeak. Months later, they will pick up this sorry set and struggle with it again until they give up entirely and buy three cases of matches. The fact is, the first attempt you make with a spindle and fireboard is the easiest one. From the second attempt on, it gets harder and harder for a whole number of reasons I won’t bother to list, but take my word for it. Look for any of these signs: your apparatus is squeaking; you notice it’s harder to stroke the bow; the cord is slipping; you’re having a hard time bracing your wrist against your shin. For some of these you may be able to make some quick adjustments (see main article), but mainly it’s time to burn a new hole or begin with a whole new apparatus. The more bow drill apparatuses you make, the easier it gets, and besides, you will learn far better technique from a good appa- ratus then you will from a poor one. 3. Incorrect foot placement. The left foot which stabilizes the fireboard (assuming you are right handed) must be directly on top of the fireboard, i.e. the arch must be over the center of the fireboard and the foot should almost touch the spindle—maybe a quarter of an inch away. Correct foot placement affects everything else—the pressure you apply to the handhold and the smoothness and power of your bow strokes. Many bow drill students persist in putting the foot back farther so that the ball of the foot, not the arch, is on top of the fireboard, or the foot is a couple of inches away from the spindle. If you correct this problem, you will discover you have a smoother, more powerful rhythm — and it is much easier to control the apparatus when you need to make subtle adjustments for marginal equipment. Another useful technique is to vary the downward pressure of the handhold and the speed of your bow stroke. If you learned firemaking on cedar or another challenging wood, you probably pushed as hard as you could and stroked as fast as you could. With more strength and especially easier woods, you may have to vary speed and pressure. In fact some woods have a very delicate “friction point”; that is, they require a very exact downward pressure and speed. Pushing just a little too hard or stroking a little too fast takes off dark, flaky particles that won’t form a coal, and pushing too lightly or stroking too slowly forms dust without quite enough heat. As you stroke, look at the texture and color of the dust after you’ve gotten good smoke, then adjust the pressure and speed accordingly. The dust should be dark chocolate brown. If it’s a medium or light brown, push harder, and if it’s black and flaky, let up. For some woods, you may have to lighten the pressure but increase the speed. Tips with the bow drill apparatus Usually you’ll be selecting standing dead wood, of course of medium hardness. An ideal size spindle in my experience is about 5/8 inch to 7/8 inch in diameter, because that surface area grinds down a good amount of hot dust, the corresponding fireboard notch is large enough to hold heat in a good sized coal, and you can get adequate rotations of the spindle without tiring your arm out too much. Of course the 1113 Cougar Ct., Frazier Park, CA 93225 • 661-245-0318 • [email protected] fireboard must be bigger than the spindle to allow for space between the hole you are drilling and both edges.