Run a bow drill

A bow drill turns muscle into an ember at around 400°C using nothing but wood and cord. It is the most reliable friction method for a beginner, and it works in Britain with British woods.

It is also genuinely hard, and most people who try it fail for reasons nobody told them about. This page is mostly about those reasons.

Be honest about this first

Carry a lighter. Carry three. A bic lighter costs almost nothing, weighs nothing, works wet if you dry the wheel, and gives you thousands of fires. Ferro rods, matches in a waterproof case, and a lighter in every coat pocket and bag are the actual answer to fire in an emergency.

Learn the bow drill anyway, for three reasons: it works when everything else has run out or got soaked, the skill does not expire, and understanding why friction fire works teaches you more about combustion than any amount of reading.

But do not confuse it with a plan. A person who can reliably bow-drill in the wet is unusual and has practised a great deal. Expect a first success to take several sessions, and expect wet British weather to be harder than any video suggests.

The five parts

The bearing block is the part beginners get wrong. Its job is to hold the spindle top with as little friction as possible, the exact opposite of the hearth end. Use a dense hardwood, a piece of bone, a stone with a depression, or a green wood block. Lubricate its socket with anything greasy: nose grease, ear wax, a green leaf, animal fat, a bit of soap. Friction at the top steals the work you want at the bottom, and it also makes the squeak that tells you the set is polishing rather than cutting.

Choosing wood

The single most important property is dryness. Ideal wood is dead, standing, off the ground, and dry through. Wood lying on the ground is wet whatever the weather has been. A dead branch still attached to a tree, snapping crisply rather than bending, is what you want.

Spindle and hearth should be similar in hardness, and both medium-soft. Two hard woods polish each other; two very soft woods just crumble.

Good British choices for both parts:

• Ivy (the thick woody stems), one of the best and widely available
• Hazel, easy to find and works well
• Willow, especially standing dead
• Lime, excellent
• Elder, dry and dead, works but is brittle
• Sycamore, birch, alder, horse chestnut, all workable
• Clematis (old man's beard) stems

Avoid: oak, ash, beech and hornbeam, all too hard; and anything resinous like pine, which tends to polish and glaze rather than powder.

The fingernail test: you should be able to dent the wood with a thumbnail, but not sink into it. If your nail slides off, too hard. If it sinks in easily, too soft or too damp.

Carving the set

1. Flatten the hearth board on the underside so it sits stable, and flatten a strip on top.
2. Round the spindle, straight and even, roughly 20 to 25 mm across. It does not need to be perfect but it must not wobble.
3. Shape the ends differently. This matters. The bottom end (hearth end) is blunt and rounded, almost flat, to maximise friction and contact area. The top end (bearing block end) is sharply pointed, to minimise it. A spindle pointed at both ends is the classic beginner error and it wastes half your effort at the wrong end.
4. Burn in the socket. Set the spindle about 15 to 20 mm from the edge of the hearth board and bow gently until you have a smooth round depression and a ring of brown dust. Stop before you make an ember; you are only seating it.
5. Cut the notch. A V-shaped notch cut into the socket from the edge, taking out about one eighth of the circle, or roughly a 45 degree wedge, going all the way through the board.

The technique

1. Load the bow. The cord should be tight enough to twist the spindle firmly with one wrap, loose enough to get that wrap on. Wrap it so the spindle sits outside the bow, not between bow and cord.
2. Kneel with your left foot on the hearth board, close to the socket, holding it still. Right knee on the ground.
3. Lock your left wrist against your left shin. This is the thing that separates people who get an ember from people who wobble. Your bearing-block hand must be rigidly braced, not floating. Shin contact turns your leg into the machine frame.
4. Bow long and level. Use the whole cord, keep the bow horizontal, and keep the spindle vertical. Short choppy strokes are the second most common fault.
5. Start slow and light to warm the set and generate dust.
6. Then speed up and press down to convert the dust pile into an ember.
7. When smoke is thick and self-sustaining, stop. Give it another ten hard strokes, then stop and leave everything absolutely still for twenty or thirty seconds. The dust pile is now a coal and it needs air and stillness, not more drilling.
8. Lift the spindle away carefully. Tap the hearth board gently once to drop the ember free of the notch, then lift the board straight up, leaving the ember on your ember pan.

Reading the dust

This is the diagnostic almost nobody is taught, and it tells you precisely what to change.

Black dust is the target. If the pile in your notch is black and fine, you are close, and the remaining task is simply enough heat fast enough.

Troubleshooting

Smoke but never an ember is the classic and it has three causes, in order of likelihood:

1. Moisture. Water in the wood boils at 100°C and the steam carries heat away, so the dust cannot climb toward the roughly 400°C it needs. All that smoke may be steam. The set feels like it is working and it never will. Fix: dry the set. Keep it in your coat against your body for an hour, or in a sleeping bag overnight, or gently by a fire. This single change fixes more failed attempts than any technique adjustment.
2. No notch, or a bad notch. The dust is not collecting in one place or air is not reaching it. Fix: cut it properly, one eighth of the circle, right through the board.
3. Dust scattering. The pile blows away, or falls out of the notch, or gets ground back into the socket. Fix: shelter the set from wind, make sure the notch is clear, and check the ember pan is snug under it.

Other faults:

• Spindle keeps popping out. Cord too loose, spindle top not pointed enough, or bearing hand not braced. Brace your wrist against your shin.
• Cord slips on the spindle. Cord too loose, or spindle too polished. Roughen the spindle where the cord runs, or tighten.
• Cord keeps breaking. Use paracord inner strands, a boot lace, or rawhide. This is one place where modern cordage is worth carrying.
• Hearth board splits. Too thin, or the notch cut too wide. Use a thicker board.
• You are exhausted before anything happens. Very normal. It is a sprint at the end, not a marathon throughout. Warm the set gently, rest, then commit hard for twenty seconds.
• Ember forms then dies. You moved it too soon, or too roughly, or the ember pan was damp. Give it thirty seconds of stillness first.

From ember to flame

The ember is fragile and the transfer is where many first attempts are lost.

1. Have your tinder bundle ready before you start drilling. Not after. A dry bird's nest of fine dead grass, cleavers, honeysuckle bark, birch bark shavings, clematis down or teased-out jute string, fist-sized, loose in the middle and finer toward the centre.
2. Tip the ember gently into the centre of the bundle, using the ember pan. Do not touch it with fingers or tools if you can avoid it.
3. Fold the bundle loosely around it. Loosely. Squeezing smothers it.
4. Hold it up and away from your face, and blow steadily. Long even breaths, not short puffs. Watch the glow spread.
5. It will smoke heavily, then more, then catch. When it flames, it flames suddenly and hotter than you expect, which is why it is held away from your face and downwind.
6. Place it under your prepared kindling, which should also already be laid before you started.

The whole of the preparation, tinder bundle, kindling, and fuel graded from matchstick to thumb, should be done before you pick up the bow. An ember has a life measured in a minute or two, and gathering kindling while holding one is how people lose a fire they worked half an hour for.