Learning how to Start Fire with Homemade Bow Drill Primitive Skill Project is an excellent lesson to invest in teaching yourself and could save your life one day.
A bow drill is a simple rotational hand-operated tool of prehistoric origin. As a “fire drill,” it was commonly used to generate friction to start a fire. Bow drills were used as far back as the 4th and 5th millennium BC.
The BOW DRILL consists of a bearing block or handhold, a spindle or drill, a hearth or fireboard, and a simple bow.
The drill offers an ancient method of starting a fire without matches or a lighter, a method that applies friction to generate heat. The heat eventually produces an ember in the burnt sawdust. The ember is tiny, smaller than the head of a cigarette, and fragile. Once the ember is formed it is carefully placed into a “tinder bundle” (a bird’s type nest of stringy, fluffy, and combustible material). Once the ember is in the tinder bundle it is then carefully nurtured and coaxed into flame. Once the tinder bundle bursts into flame, it is placed into the fuel that has been assembled ready for ignition.
Here are a few things on Amazon that can help you to get started:
Bow Drill Kit Fire Starter Primitive Wood Survival Practice Friction Fire Tool Scout Outdoor Activity Kits Teaching Outward Bound Training
Bushcraft – The Bow Drill Bible (Book)
Emergency Fire Steel and Bow Drill Socket
The spindle, carved to reduce friction at one end and maximize it at the other, is held in a hole in the bottom of the bearing block, and at the other by the baseboard (which also is known variously as the hearth, hearth board, or fireboard). The string of the bow is wrapped once around it so that it is tight enough not to slip during operation. A variation on this is called the Egyptian Bow Drill. It attaches the string by wrapping it around multiple times, or actually tying it to the drill or through a hole through the drill shaft, then wrapping it as quoted by Wikipedia.
Click here to read about how to Start Fire with Homemade Bow Drill Primitive Skill Project PART ONE:
http://sensiblesurvival.blogspot.com/2012/02/start-fire-with-bow-and-drill-part-1.html
Click here to read about how to Start Fire with Homemade Bow Drill Primitive Skill Project PART TWO:
http://sensiblesurvival.blogspot.com/2012/02/making-fire-with-bow-and-drill-part-2.html
