I used to never have an interest in friction fire. I watched a show a while back and thought maybe I'll give it a try. My grandson (16) came over the other day and I asked him what he wanted to do, he said he didn't know. I told him I wanted to make FIRE with a bow drill.
To speed up the learning curve we watched two you tube videos. One was some lady it looked like she was making kits, she had been to some week long school learning, it took her a while, but she got a fire going. The second video was a about tips, not getting in a hurry, cutting the notch at an angle and such.
So, went out in the garage and got some materials together. It was way easier than I thought it was going to be. We started with an oak drill and cedar board. To add a level of coolness to it we used a slightly curved beaver chew stick for the bow. 5-50 cord for the string. Oh, the Grandson seemed kind of interested became really interested when it started smoking. The cedar was less than a 1/2 inch thick and the oak drill went through that pretty fast. We basically burned three holes through the cedar and moved on to a pine board. Like the guy said in the video don't get in a hurry. Also, the coal forms in the dust.
We really didn't have good birds nest material. It was it was raining hard and steady outside. I had him go around the garage and pick up the spider webs with the leaves and pine needles. Unfortunately I had cleaned out the garage so pickings were slim. We got a coal, put it in the birds nest and couldn't get it going. We got another coal in the birds nest and got it going a little it was smoldering didn't seem like it was going to go so I put it down. Jacob was going to start working on another coal and I thought don't get in a hurry I picked it up and a little light breath and FIRE.
When I think about the ancients getting fire way back in the day, no bic, no matches, no scout masters juice I think how cool and now we can do it too. In a related story, I was talking to a buddy of mine about this and he told me in his youth he was trying to make fire. His dad offered to help, he thought his dad didn't know anything. His dad took his bow drill set up and poof instantly made fire. Apparently his dad grew up in WW2 Norway and sometimes they didn't have matches or money to get matches and that's how they started the fire to heat there house and cook.
