Good detailed descriptions but could use a few close up pictures or diagrams to illustrate the points. You are not the only person to have asked for more pictures! It seems I was wrong when I wrote this article. I assumed that people were happy that the basics were covered in various books. My aim was to help people along with more detail and tips based on having taught this technique to lots of people and seeing where they make mistakes and get stuck. I thought that if I included the basics people would think I was re-hashing what was already out there.
It seems like comprehensive, in-depth articles covering the basics and the advanced detail is what people are after. Thaks for your feedback Ken. It will only help this blog get better. In the meantime good luck with your bow-drilling and let me know how you get on.
My name is Paul also, just thought id mention that. I started learning the bow drill by myself through reading and YouTube videos just a few weeks ago, I started practicing on some cedar I bought at lows and had success w that.
Your blog is a great source of inspiration. I am enjoying reading your advice and pointers. This particular post is very helpful, it goes much further than any of the books I have read. Some step by step photos would be very helpful. Good to hear from you.
Thanks for your feedback Matt, I really appreciate it. This is the first article that i have read of yours, and so far i am quite impressed with the levelof detail that you publish. As has been said prior to me a few pictures would not go amiss. Great site. A fascinating subject and as you say it is deemed a core skill or benchmark for Bushcrafters.
The learning , understanding and development of the skill can be mirrored in many of the Bushcraft skill sets. It certainly is always the beauty of being taught as opposed to reading about skills and trying to self teach. Invariably the teacher passes on those valuable tips and clues which make all the difference between success and failure.
I am always bemused to see people with really well honed Wilderness living skills do very little work towards producing a Bowdrill set the sets look very rustic,almost untouched and yet achieve an ember relatively easily, espeically when using just Stone age tools.
When I will stuggle with a well made, pleasing to the eye to set. Personally my own success with Bowdrill is a little limited. Some skills I am happy to keep on trying and perfecting to banish the possibility of defeat.
Great article Paul, i tried many many times to create fire with a bow drill it was really really hard work!! I use a piece of fatwood or a rock w a hole in it. Ive had a lot of success using tulip poplar as there are a lot of them in western NC. Great article, I first learnt friction fire lighting using the Bowdrill under your instruction while on the Fundermental bushcraft course back in After much practise I was able to make fire.
I kept the the set I made and after reading this I feel that I should get it out again and start practising. Great to hear from you. I reckon you should definitely dust off your set and have a go with it. Maybe even make a new set from scratch! I must have been sitting next to the photographer. I am involved in a project working with youngsters, and I have just recently succeeded with my own bow drill set, after a bit of trial and error.
One aspect that is less covered and that was critical for me is the actual body position. It also emphasizes that technique, not strength is the key. Before I got my first ember I sometimes drilled to exhaustion. When I finally got it right I discovered it actually goes fast and with moderate effort. Thanks for your comment. Thank you so much Pierre for sharing this video! Thanks for the video suggestion Pierre, and thanks for all the accumulated knowledge I gathered over the weeks bingelistening AskPaulKirtley and reading through this here article.
I succesfully made my first ember just now after two previously failed attempts. And for jow, more practice practice practice until it works everytime with materials gathered in the wild…. Hi paul, firstly I want to thank you for showing me the skillls required for making fire by friction, as I have all ready said earlier in the comments you did this back in He has never done this and wants to show his group something new.
So after a several goes we had the ember required to get small fire going that we soon turned into an afternoon of fueling it while sitting drinking tea. A fantastic afternoon and a great feeling to know that I have retained the knowledge and skills to be able to create fire from nothing more that some wood, a piece of string and alot of effort.
Hey Mark, how fantastic! For those who like knowing these things! He took a branch of shining laurel, gripped in the palm of his hand, and trimmed it with a knife. And hot smoke breathed upwards. So altogether, very appropriate for Bushcraft! For me personally the most important thing is not to start with too much intense and force, depending on the matarial you have it might take short, it might take a bit longer.
Also, watch your breathing since you are in a posture which does tends to give you a little less air. As for using the bow drill to start fire. We lived out in the wilderness in the North Cascades last year and most days we had to light a fire using this method.
We were living as stone age people, our clothes were all made from Buckskins, all our tools from bone stone and wood. Food was foraged and hunted using bow and stone tipped arrows. We had dried meats that we had processed from a buffalo before we set out. It was quite challenging after a 7 hour walk as we were nomadic in bare feet with big blanket packs or burden baskets to light a fire! But we had to no giving up no matter how tired and hungry we were.
The key to success is persistance and repetition. Your technique becomes some refined that you can seem to light fire with almost any wood. Thanks for sharing your experience. When you have to rely on a skill it certainly focuses your mind and increases your determination to succeed. I agree about teaching a skill too — in teaching it you have to deconstruct and analyse what it is you are teaching.
This increases your understanding further. Your adventure in the North Cascades must have been a wonderful, life-affirming journey. The pictures of your group in the link you sent to me definitely gave me this impression. I have found some great suggestions reading the material selection to correct my mistakes I think I have always used wood TOO dry just to say the biggest one. What I find really useful in articles like these, apart from a good basic description of the technique, are the advanced tips or common mistakes description, that sometimes are the the gap to fill in order to a achieve good results once you got the basics.
I hope you can use it to trouble-shoot your bow-drilling and that you build up to achieving consistent results and, therefore, greater confidence. Let us know how you get on. Good luck! Very inspiring — the new photos are very useful. One of my main aims between now and September is to make Bow drill a second nature skill.
Thank you for this excellent article. Great article. Delivered as usual in a straight-forward easy to follow manner! Top class stuff! As I said before, I really enjoy reading your style of writing, this article in particular is brilliant, many thanks Paul! Great Article Paul, seems you may have brushed a little ash from the fire in your hair mate………keep up the good writing…. More Articles. When I researched bow drill technique I found that most, if not all, tutorials suggest the heath should only be a little wider than the drill and yet yours seems quite wide.
It obviously works for you but I just wondered about your thoughts on this. Willow and Willow for me by the way! Good question! If you think about the physics of what you are doing, however, the expanse of wood outside of the area that is in contact with the bottom of the spindle makes no difference. At least not to the efficacy of generating friction and the actual mechanism of making an ember.
In cold environments, it can be advantageous to make a wider hearth board. Indeed, records exist of native peoples in Alaska doing just this. The thickness of the hearth certainly makes a difference though, and this is mentioned in my article. Where the width of the hearth does make a difference is in how long it takes to make the board.
If you start with smaller diameter material and make a board only a little wider than the drill then you have less carving to do. This can save some time and effort in making the set. I finally got the bow-drill to work last week and was very proud of myself! This was after a couple of weeks of trying and a little help from my boss! We then went on to teach a group of children how to do it, and although many of them did not have the strength to get it to work their motion and technique was good, so hopefully some time in the future they will have success with the bow drill — the parents who did were very pleased with themselves!
Thanks for all of the advice and tips you give on here. As a bushcraft beginner who has been trying to get better for the last two years the discovery of this blog has been invaluable, so thank you!
I did when I was giving my first ever demo to a Cub pack and the cramped position made it very hard with food inside me…I knocked out smoke for them but had to give in. This was a reason why I let the skill slip for a while.
It is more of a static camp kit than something to make on the move but it was a real education understanding how to make it work. The condition of the hearth has made little difference to me providing it sits flat, even to the extent of two simple splits with an axe or batoned knife either side of the heart of a sawn length of branch. Give it some edges to grip! I was intrigued to see Ray using a doubled cord in the video, increasing the grip on the spindle.
Definitely giving that a try, as well as using the knuckle measurement for future pieces — a handy tip I will be taking away. If the spindle is too smooth it may slip, but in my experience of teaching people this technique, unless you specify smooth, people make it too lumpy and this causes some vibration problems.
Many small edges is best in my experience. Have a play with this and let us know what you think…. Hi Paul, brilliantly informative and useful article as usual. I struggled with bow drill for a long time in the end Ross Bowyer sorted my technique out and I cracked it. Seems to work really well. Do I get points for improvising or slated for cheating? Hi Paul just had a look on the article on using a bowdrill, some great tips Making fire by friction actually amazes me.
I tried this in my back garden a couple of years ago, Got smoke and got the ember and then put the ember in a ridiculously small piece of cotton wool and smothered it. Hi folks. Good work Paul very good detail here. I know it sounds draft but I find a calm mind and a relaxed body make for better results.
Any thoughts on this? Yes, I think there is a lot of validity in taking the approach you do. One female instructor that used to work with us, would calmly warm the set up after cutting the notch, building up some dust in the notch.
While part of the benefit of the break was a physical one, I also think it helped remove the pressure that one is apt to put on oneself, allowing her then to just focus on achieving success. Hi Paul and fellow bloggers. I too took a long time to crack this, many days in the woods sweating like a pig and sounds like a wounded donkey emanating from my camp surrounded by many frayed and broken chords.
The memory of that first sucess and that feeling of accomplishment will stay with me forever. I feel that this skill has taught me the importance of never giveing in and to have faith in myself and my skills.
Keep the faith folks. All the best Adrian. My friend uses a dried cane of horsetail and a hearth of dried yucca root, catches the ember on leather and transfers it to tinder of dried cattail down.
Works fast, effortless.. Cattail fluff makes great tinder and nests well. Found his version brilliant, always planned replicate it one day. Hand-drill is a lovely, elegant method of firelighting as long as you have he right source materials. Bow-drill, however, is more widely applicable, and works better in the damp of the northern temperate and boreal zones due to the greater mechanical advantage you achieve. However this bow drill lark is so far beating me!!
Any answers would be marvellous!!! Keep up the great work Phil. I seem to get a polishing effect on the drill tip and hearth instead of any real heat or dust despite a good sustained rhythm. I carved the drill from what I thought was a dead and dry branch and created a hearth by double spiting a dry log. Both were Norwegian spruce. Great read this Paul it has certainly pointed out some of my weaknesses, it just makes me even more determined to master this technique!
Hi Paul, Just got my very first coal thanks to this blog. Great blog, brilliant info. I never paid much attention to this but I think it is the missing piece of the puzzle. I seem to only burn in about half of the end of the spindle.
I goes black and produces some smoke and then I stop and start carving the notch. I think this is my problem. I have been trying to get the whole end to burn in but it takes too much energy. I can just about make a small indentation in it with my nail. What could be wrong? I did dry the wood out on a heater for days.. The grain is ridged. There are no knots but there is quite a pronounced ridged grain running along the suface.
Could this be the cause? I cut a section of living Ivy and then dried it out to make my hearth and drill. So the wood is just too hard. I should have used dead wood which would have been softer. Hi Paul. Great article on bow and drill.
Tried this with the scouts and hope to try it againa in September when we start again after the summer recess, only problem is: we only manged to get smoke and brown powder, walking around our local wooded area we cannot find standing deadwood so what do you do then other than use green wood? If you make a hearth board which is somewhat like a floorboard — of even thickness and width along its whole length, then you will be able to drill several times into the board before it needs to be replaced.
For a typical size, which allows you to fit your foot onto the board, you will get maybe four holes in one board. Clearly, the longer the board, the more holes you will fit. With the spindle, it will start off a length which is comfortable and relatively easy for you to hold in position and stabilise.
As the drill wears down, it will become harder to stabilise, to a point where, ultimately, you will be better off making a new one. If you choose a spindle and hearth board of hardness which is roughly equal, then they will wear roughly equally, with the spindle shortening in length by the depth of the board each time you drill through it and the board will be of a thickness approximately equal to the diameter of the drill.
This does not, however, take into consideration the possibility of you having to re-shape the top of the spindle once, or even several times, during the course of use. This will shorten the spindle also. So, I would say, while you may get four holes from one hearth, your spindle may not last long enough to drill all of these holes, depending on the consistency of the spindle wood, the hardness of the bearing block and the efficiency of your technique.
As a general rule, I would say you should expect to get two decent sized embers from each hole, three if you are lucky. Its been a while since I have been on hear. Some may laugh and scoff at this but in 8 years of practicing bushcraft skills I have never been able to make fire by friction, until this morning!
I would be using the wrong wood, green wood, wrong techneque, wrong tinder, not enough tinder, dropping the ember and running out of steam mid way. But after reading this article all seemed to drop in to place. I used a wind blown branch off a lime tree for the set I used the inner bark for tinder and even used its leafs in the bearing block. At first I thought it was a fluke I was so happy! I am looking forward to trying this techneque with other woods now.
And fantastic news! Congratulations on success with the bow drill. If my article has been of help along the way, then I am very glad too. Lime is a lovely, silky smooth wood for bow-drill. Hi Paul Great article that I will share with my colleagues who are just starting out. As you say a morning of Persistence and I had fire. I use an enlarged set at work so its more achievable for the young people i work with to get a good result working together. I recently found that Burning Bush works really well as a spindle with sycamore.
Kenny, this is great. Persistence is the key. Fantastic you are sharing skills with young people too. More power to your elbow. Thanks for your comments. Please tell them to feel free to leave questions in the comments section if they have them. My early problems revolved around getting a decent tinder bundle and then I had a string of successes. Then I went back to the same hearth board, spindle and bow and failed repeatedly.
At the beginning, I got the ember quite easily, now I just run out of steam first. Great advice and instructions, Paul. My first two attempts created a lot of smoke very encouraging but no fire perplexing. Then I realised the notch was too narrow. As soon as I widened it a little I obtained my first ember easily. Lighting the fire from that was easy. This time I placed an old receipt under the hearth board to collect the ember. Quite quickly I produced an ember, which I collected on the old receipt.
I picked it off the ground to show my friend. As I dropped it to the ground again it spontaneously burst into flame! The receipt was made of thermal printing paper, very common.
It seems to be an excellent form of tinder! Paul I gotta say I consistently find that you provide very clear concise instructions on everything. Just one question… When finding dead wood for spindle and hearth, when the wood is going slightly grey presume from rot will that have a negative effect on the results? Hoping to get on a course in All the best, Alex. Hi Alex, thanks for your positive comments. Just make sure you practice with a variety of different species for plenty of variation, as each species tends to have its own characteristics and feel.
With respect to your question, the short answer is it depends. As wood seasons it does change colour. Water penetration and fungal growth will also change the colour. All of these factors will change the physical consistency of the wood. The main things to check for are whether the wood is too hard or too soft thumbnail test and if the wood is damp.
Grey colouration may be an indication of at least one of these factors but equally, the wood might be dry and of a good consistency.
I have had some success with it, but not practiced in for at least a year. In addition its not my go to technique, partly as I am 63 its damn hard work stamina wise. Although technique wise I am lacking finer detail. I could definately do with some more instruction.
Today and yesturday, I used a bought kit, more for children, size wise really, however I did get a good ember and fire on two consecutive days. I had to try several times each time. On the 2nd day although I got a good lasting ember, follow up attempts failed. I found that my cord kept moving up the spindle which is very straight and then it snapped and I had to attach anotherr cord. I wondered if it was fatigue creeping in and perhaps I was dipping with my stroke and sending the cord up the spindle.
I just read the above article to reinforce what I learnt from reading it a year or so back. So much fine detial and places to go wrong. Your email address will not be published. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Skip to content. Thousands of Summer giants fall to successful early bow season hunters every single year; will you be one of them? Whether you connect or not each season, can either determined by the lower odds of luck or the higher odds of a strategically defined plan of attack.
Here is a set of early bow season tips that you can use to tilt the odds in your favor this year:. Although there is a way to effectively hang a bow season during any time of the year, earlier is typically better to a point. When I can actually prioritize the time, I like to set my stands so that the signs of clearing shooting lanes are brown, crisp and dead by the time I hunt.
That typically means an August 1st cut-off in most areas. By the time a mature buck moves into his preferred Fall habitat closer to October 1st, he shouldn't be able to tell if the changes to the area were completed during late Winter, or mid Summer. As long as the cut limbs and brush have completely died, it will all look the same to a mature Fall giant.
I actually experienced some years where I spent so much time planting plots, installing treestands, setting game cams and cutting habitat improvements that my shooting time took a back seat. It was a slow progression, but eventually my shooting skills began to suffer.
Shooting early and often will not only make sure your muscles are in shape, but it will give you time to work on any inconsistencies in shooting form, or symptoms of target panic.
In order to consistently connect on a mature buck during the early season you have to know exactly where he beds during the day, feeds at night, and how he gets there and back. Recognizing the natural lay of the land and both quality feeding and bedding areas is the first step, but there are also ways to increase your odds! Mineral stations, waterholes and mock scrapes can all be used to make sure that the patterns of use you are hunting are established early, often and consistently throughout the entire hunting season.
If the local deer herd can smell you, hear you or see you while you access your early bow season stands, than it will be nearly impossible to run into a mature buck. Only improving the habitat in areas that you do not expect to access through during hunting season is an important practice, but so is making sure that your access trails are clutter free and quiet.
Your goal should be to get in and out of your hunting stands while leaving as little hunting pressure behind as possible. Check out these critical season saving tips by reading, "Scent Control For Deer". Of it creaks, tings, pops or squeaks I suggest you fix it or get rid of it.
Your stand location should be the closest you get to spooking any deer. When you make a successful stalk to your stand, the last thing you want to do is announce to the woods that you have arrived. Is a climber appropriate for these conditions? I think so, as long as the access is quiet, limbs are pre cut and your climb is dead quiet. When you get the entire movement figured out, you have enhanced the movement and entered your stand with the prowess of an elusive cat; where is your scent blowing?
Scent control starts with your stand location. During an early bow season hunt you often have to allow many deer to pass before a mature buck travels by, so it is vital that you can blow your scent into a non-deer area.
My favorite deerless areas are steep terrain features, waterways, roads, houses, open fields and mature, opens forests.
During the rut I like to place a premium on morning stands but this is not the case during early bow season, October Lull or Kate season, where mature bucks are often already in their bedding areas well before daylight. However after sitting all day away from high quality food sources, all deer in general can be counted on to move to their evening food sources with precision.
Many evening mature buck opportunities are spoiled due to ill-timed morning hunt. If any portion of the line of deer movement from bedding to Feeding and back again is spooked, than the opportunity is over no matter how far the bedding and feeding areas are located from one another.
0コメント