INTRODUCTION
Many primitive, aboriginal civilizations made fire with a fire-drill, and kept their fire sticks with them. For them, between twenty seconds and two minutes was all the time needed to produce a flame. I have certainly made a thousand fires with this method, and I have made at least five hundred different experiments with various kinds of wood. These instructions have been put together for the purpose of educating you about primitive fire-lighting methods and to provide the best materials and techniques for that purpose. I can safely promise this: That every man or woman who will follow the instructions I now give will certainly succeed in making a fire.

Suppose that you are camping or hiking, far from civilization, and you're sure you have everything you need. Unfortunately, you find you have no matches or flint, or those you do have are unusable! Knowing how to start a fire using the “bow-drill method" described below might be indispensable. Even though it might, with little experience, be a slow and possibly frustrating way to start a campfire, it could save your life or at least impress your camp-mates.

Before rushing in, take the time to read these instructions through carefully.

TO BEGIN
Gather firewood. Gather several handfuls of kindling, typically tiny pieces of wood in various sizes, starting with some that are as thin or thinner than a toothpick, but longer; then several handfuls of wood about the thickness and length of a pencil; and lots and lots of wood bigger than this, up to about the thickness of your arm. Avoid wood that has been lying on the ground, since it may be damp. Instead look for snags, which are dead branches that have fallen off trees but which have gotten caught in lower branches or on bushes. It is possible to snap dead branches from trees but only take those that immediately snap free; if it bends without breaking, it's still alive or not dry enough. Avoid green wood since most won't burn well at all.

Prepare a nest. Use small fiber in the “cup”, such as cattail, in which you will expand the coal, with slightly thicker fiber on the outside. For example use dead fern "leaves" and dry leaves on the very outside to shelter the nest. Make sure you leave a hole for the coal. There can be many layers but the one used to expand the coal doesn't burn well, so don't use too much of it!

Make a bow, using any bent stick 1.5 to 2 feet long, with a strong buckskin or belt-lacing thong on it. Use wood that is only slightly bendable for the bow. Many beginners select a bow that is too flexible. You'll be putting a lot of pressure on the bow, and dead wood is more likely to break than similarly sized green wood. A lighter bow is easier to control and takes less strength to push back and forth, but it has to be stiff enough to not bend when you're using it. The bow doesn't actually have to have much of a curve to it. I've used bows made from sticks that are perfectly straight, and they work just fine. The hard part is figuring out how to best attach the shoelace (or whatever you use) to each end of the bow.

You need a little slack in the cord so that you can twist the drill into the bow. Once the drill is in the bow, the tension should be nice and firm. But that's getting a little ahead of things.

Drill and Block
Take a piece of dry, sound, balsam-fir wood (or else yucca, cedar, cypress, tamarack, basswood, or cottonwood, in order of choice) and make of it a drill and a block, as follows:

The drill can be made of the same kind of wood as the fireboard or a different kind, just as long as it doesn't have any pitch in it, is light and fairly soft. Your drill should be not more than five eighths of an inch in diameter (about as thick as your thumb or index finger) and ten to fifteen inches long. The larger your drill the harder you have to work, so if you're little and light, smaller drills may be better. There is no use in having an immense pile of powder to get a spark. I whittle my drills until they are perfectly straight and perfectly round. If the drill averages five eighths of an inch in diameter, is perfectly straight, and tapers off at the top nicely, it will revolve smoothly and bring your spark quickly. What will be the top end of the drill should be shaped like the end of a pencil. The bottom end should be more blunt. Take some time to get the drill just right. It will pay off. The top of the drill must be sharper so that there is less friction. The drill should be held perpendicularly and should be held solidly by the hand resting firmly against the shin bone. The drill should be placed in the bow so that the loop is on the outside of the thong away from the bow. This prevents the drill from rubbing against the bow.

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The hearthboard should be two inches wide, ten to twelve inches long, five eighths of an inch thick. The fireboard and the drill both need to be some kind of light, dry, non-resinous wood. You will have to find what you can in your own circumstances. It will be better for the board to be somewhat harder than the drill. The best wood for this won't have any sap, and will be just soft enough to dent with your thumbnail without gouging.

Take the hearthboard and mark a spot about 1.5 times the drill's diameter from one of the hearthboard's long edges. Dig a crater there about 1/4 inch deep and about as wide as your drill. The notch should be cut into the board deeper at the bottom than at the top, and wider from a side view at the bottom than at the top. The narrower the notch is, while allowing the powder to drop, the better. The notch should be so cut that when the hole has been drilled, there will be just a little slit running from the side to the center of the hole through which the powder drops down. The wood must be cut smooth, or the spark may stick and not drop below. I have found it best to have the notch face me rather than have it the other side of the board away from me. I have noticed that the average person leans his drill, which causes it to push against the outside rim of the hole and to break the side away. Usually it is better to start your hole above the notch and then open up the notch until it connects with the hole.

The most important thing is to make sure that it's not so wide that when you start spinning the drill in the hole, it just slips out through the notch. About a "sixth of a pie" is good.

Set your fire board aside for now.

For tinder use a wad of fine, soft, very dry, dead grass mixed with shredded cedar bark, birch bark, or even cedar wood scraped into a soft mass. Basically, anything that is dry, fibrous, and will take a spark, or "catch" and ignite should do (pocket lint, feather down, dried mosses, and shredded plant fibers such as cedar bark, are more examples).. The tinder should be absolutely dry, compact and finely shredded. If the tinder is too loose the powdered wood will fall down between the fibers A meadow mouse's nest does very well for tinder. It is easy to get a number of them after the snow has gone from the wet meadows in spring time. Place a handful of your best tinder on the ground next to your fire place.

The Socket is a simple little thing is made in many different ways. Sometimes I use a pine, hemlock or other softwood knot with a pit one quarter inch deep, made by boring with the knife point. Be very careful not to slip and cut yourself during this process! It is a great help to have a good one made of a piece of smooth, hard stone or marble, set in wood; the stone or marble having in it a smooth, round pit three-eighths inch wide and three-eighths inch deep. Your socket can be made of bone, wood, or rock. If you're really lucky you'll find a rock that you can easily hold in your hand, and that has a nice smooth dimple in it that will take the pencil-sharp end of your drill. A fist-sized rock is better than a tiny one, as the friction can heat the thing up really fast if it's small. But you have to be able to hold it and control it. The deeper the dimple, the better. The smoother the sides of the dimple, the better. You're trying to avoid any and all friction between the socket and the drill. If you can't find a rock, the easiest socket to make is wood. It should be small enough for you to comfortably hold in your hand, but big enough that your fingers don't wrap all the way around it and touch the drill as it's turning. The one I use most was made by the Eskimo. Of course, other things can be used as sockets. One person used a little glass lip balm container as a socket. Basically, whatever you can find or fashion is fine. Lubricate the socket with resin, chap stick, whatever. (Do not use water.)

The hole in the socket should be large enough and deep enough to hold the upper point of the drill solidly without slipping out. The socket itself should not be held in the fingers but in the palm of the hand. Never let a light muscle do what a heavy muscle can do. There is a very general tendency to let the wrist get away from the shin bone, which leaves the hand wobbling, unsupported in the air.

The coal catcher chip will provide something to catch the coal that's created, keep it insulated from the cold ground while it becomes a coal, and carry it from the ground to the tinder. This can be a dry leaf, sliver of wood, piece of paper, bark, etc. Whatever it is, make sure you can pick it up without fumbling around and dropping it.

Now we are ready to make the fire:
Under the notch in the hearthboard set a thin coal catcher chip. It may be helpful to place a small pad of tinder between the fire block and the chip.

Turn the leather thong of the bow once around the drill: the thong should now be quite tight. Put the hearthboard on the ground. (Reverse the following for lefties). Put your left foot on the hearthboard about one inch to the left of the crater. The arch of your foot (not the ball or the heel) should be over the hearthboard. Make sure the ground is pretty flat or bed the hearthboard into the ground; you don't want it to wiggle or rock much if at all. Kneel on your right knee. Make sure that your right knee is far enough behind your left foot that you make all 90 degree angles.

Hold the left wrist against the left shin. You must hold the drill steadily upright, and cannot do so without bracing the left wrist against the left shin, and having the block on a firm foundation. Hold the bow in your right hand, drill in your left. Put the drill on top of the string with the pencil-sharp end pointing right, and twist it into the bow. If it's too hard to do, loosen the string a bit but the string must not slip once wrapped around the drill. Put the blunt end of the drill on the crater. Put the socket on the drill.

Grab as close to the end of the bow as you can. Now, put some downward pressure on the socket and draw the right hand back and forth steadily on level and the full length of the bow. This causes the drill to twirl in the pit. Soon it bores in, grinding out powder, which presently begins to smoke.. It's a delicate balance between putting too much and not enough pressure on the drill, and having the bow string too tight and not tight enough. You must begin lightly and slowly, pressing heavily and sawing fast after there is smoke.

The Spark. When there is a great volume of smoke from a growing pile of black powder, you know that you have the spark. When you get your spark, hold your left hand on the board as you take your foot off, and tap with the right hand (to loosen any spark that might hang onto the notch) before lifting the board. Cautiously lift the block, leaving the smoking powder on the chip. Fan this with your hand till the live coal appears. Now, put a wad of the tinder gently on the spark; raise the chip to a convenient height, and blow till it bursts into flame. When you put your tinder on the spark, hold it down in the back and on the sides so that you will not blow the spark away. As more tinder catches, you might have to turn and/or reshape it to keep the ember spreading into more and more of the tinder. Keep blowing and working with the tinder bundle until you get flames.

The Flame. Make a teepee or "house" out of wood. If you like, make a floor to absorb moisture. Putting sticks at right angles works well. Remember the order tinder, small sticks, larger sticks, larger, larger... do not forget to leave a hole in your house to put the coal into and spaces between sticks so your coal can "breath."

If the fire does not come, it is because you have not followed these instructions.

A Few Tips

• If you can, find someone that has done this and have them teach you. It'll save you hours of grief!

• Practice makes perfect. Do this at home in your spare time, so your body will learn how to do it! Do it several times and you will always know how to do it.

• If you have a good coal in your nest, the nest will literally burst into flames so be ready with the rest of your fire before actually lighting it.

• The next most important thing is to get the right combination of woods for the drill and the fire-board. If you're in a real emergency situation, you won't have much choice. The first decent piece of wood you find will have to do. But if you have some time, gather different woods and use different combinations of them until you find the best set. Some people that swear Yucca on Yucca is the best, and others that swear just as hard that Seep Willow on Saguaro (a protected species, so find out what the law on using it is before using it) is the best. I've found that just about any soft, dry, non-resinous wood works, but some combos of the same plant work better than others, depending on how long the particular plant has been dead.

• Some people prefer to use a harder wood for the fireboard and a softer wood for the spindle. Since the fire-board is usually less than an inch thick, it doesn't take too long to burn through it if it's soft wood. A spindle made of the same wood as the fire-board will burn a number of holes through the fire-board long before the spindle is used up. Since cutting chimneys and burning new holes in a fire-board takes a long time, it is preferable to do it less often.

• Some people prefer spindles of about a hand's span in length (maybe 10 inches). They tend to not pop out of the fire-board or the socket as much as a short spindle. And they last a long time before being worn down to little stubs.

• It's important to keep the string tight so that it doesn't slip on the drill. But if it's too tight, it will make the drill pop out of the socket or the fire-board. There are a number of ways to deal with the string adjustment.
1) One way is to just tie good knots at exactly the right point so that the string is just the right tightness, nothing slips, the string never stretches, and the spindle never compresses. This being an imperfect world, that doesn't happen very often. Get the string almost tight enough, hold at the very end of the bow, and then squeeze the string up against the bow as you start to saw back and forth, if needed. Even if you get the string just right at first, it often will loosen up as you're sawing back and forth, so this is a good technique to master. If needs be, work your hand up the bow to get the string tight enough. This is a good reason to have a longer (two feet long) bow.
2) To keep the cord firm, you might have to loop it around your finger(s) or adjust it by tying a tighter knot.
3) Another way to keep it tight is to put another stick, (preferably thick, as this method can snap smaller sticks), in another loop, near the end. Twirl it around and around until you reach the desired tightness, and then 'lock' it against the bow. If it keeps slipping, then hold that end in your hand.

• Chimney shape is important, but not essential, so long as it is slightly wider at the bottom than at the top. A narrow shape is preferable, about "1/6 of a pie," U-shaped, but V-shaped notches work too. The chimney is where the hot powdered wood is going to collect and meet up with air, allowing it to turn into a coal. A wider chimney usually means you'll just have to create more punk (the hot powdered wood), but also allows more air in.

• Keep the bow in the middle of the drill. If the string moves up the drill it will create more horizontal force up near the socket and will be more likely to pop out of the socket. This is one of the reasons I like longer spindles. If the string moves one inch up a 10 inch spindle, it's not as bad as if it moves one inch up a four inch spindle. To fix this, keep sawing away, but rotate the bow up in the Y-axis (so the bow would touch the top of the drill if you rotated it all the way up). The same is true if the string works its way down the drill. Rotate the bow so that it would touch the drill near the ground if rotated all the way. The bow string should always be horizontal to the ground (if the ground is perfectly flat) and perpendicular to the drill. Don't dig the tip of the bow into the ground, or up into the sky, ever. Learn to keep the bow flat and level as you saw back and forth.

• The notch and the drill end that goes into it should both be rough, not shiny and smooth. The roughness promotes friction. If they get shiny, put a little sand in the notch. This is an old Native American trick that many settlers missed.

• Don't be afraid to take a little break if you're tired. This takes a lot of energy when you're first learning, unless you're one of those people that are just natural fire starters. If you are, lucky you. For the rest of us, taking a break to regain some strength can make the difference between a warm, comfortable night in the friendly woods and a cold, dark night in the inhospitable wilderness. Try getting the notch nearly full of dark wood dust, then taking a break. Once you are rested, you can "pour it on" right away to bang out a coal since the notch is filled and ready to go. Or, as soon as you tire out, let someone else jump in and knock out the coal before the dust cools down.

• If there are two of you trying to "bust a coal," you can "go tandem”. One person sets everything up normally, but before starting to saw away, the second person kneels down opposite to the first, puts their left hand on top of the other guy's left hand (which is on top of the socket), and takes hold of the bow with their right hand. The first person is the lead, and starts sawing away, and the second person adds their strength and speed by pushing down on the socket and pulling back and forth on the bow. This can take a bit of coordination, but makes busting a coal a lot easier, especially the first time.

• An alternative method is to rapidly rub the drill along a groove in the fire-plank. This is the "fire plow" method that Tom Hanks displayed in "Castaway." Make a quick, exaggerated "pool cue" motion (forward and back, drill at an acute angle to the fire-board) in a 4-6 inch groove, until a pile of hot wood dust builds up at the end of the groove and forms an ember. This requires fewer materials than the drill method and takes less dexterity (which would be good when your hands are very cold), but it requires more raw strength and a lot of coordination to stop each stroke at exactly the right spot to avoid blowing away your hot dust pile.

• It's been found that this is easier if your hands are somewhat sticky (i.e. with pitch).

• Place the NOTCH on top of your tinder "NEST" and you won't have to transfer the coal risking losing it. The coal falls directly into the nest. This method dramatically shortens the effort required.

Warnings

• Caution: drill, board, socket and fire are hot.

• Not a practical way of making a fire. Takes much practice and does not always work, especially in survival conditions (shaking hands can screw it up).

• If you know you're going to have to make fire this way, and you don't have a flashlight with you, make sure you plan plenty of time for it before night fall. Experienced campers have been doing this for years and still have difficulties doing this in the dark. Even if you do have a flashlight, do this during daylight hours. You'll be glad you did.

• When you're done with the fire, cover the ashes, and make sure it's out!

• Be very careful about what kind of wood/leaves/twigs you burn. For instance, rhododendron is very poisonous, so make sure not to get wood/leaves/twigs from (under) it. Do your research beforehand so you know what to (and not to) burn.

• Don't do this in under a burning ban.

• Be sure to not let the board rock as you are drilling. If it does, the change will cause the air trapped in your sawdust to collapse on your ember, effectively smothering.

• While this is a good skill to have and it will certainly impress people, it is best to buy a couple of aviation magnesium and flint fire blocks. They are cheap, small and each one will start several fires. Just clip one to your backpack and slip one in your pocket and you will have the ability to make fire anywhere that you can find fuel to burn. You should never assume that you can just gather together the pieces to make a good bow set and start a fire. Also, it takes a lot of effort to start a fire this way. In a survival situation, conserving your energy could mean the difference between life and death.

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