I think Willow should work just fine. A friend of mine once picked up a willow twig from the street gutter on our way to camp at Mt. Hood. When we got there we realized no one brought matches… totally stupid. So my friend pics up some other wood… don’t remember what, and gets a hand-drill coal in like a minute with the willow twig. Pretty sweet stuff willow. I saw a guy make an entire bow-drill set out of a single willow branch, cordage and all. Then he made a coal right there with it. The whole process took him maybe 30 minutes. This was a tracker school instructor from back in the day.
yeah, i could tell when i split my fireboard out of a log that the bark would make excellent cordage.
i have only “pretended” to make cordage so far–once i read about the concept of twining, i took some strings from the kitchen and twined them together into a thicker chord in order to practice the technique.
i wanted to try getting some bark fiber out of the stuff i’m working with now to try to make some cordage, but it seems pretty hard to extract when it’s this dry. when i cut the tree down last fall, the bark was really easy to get to, tho.
I knew I forgot something. This really only applies when using natural chordage, not parachute cord…
You must hold the bow at a 45 degree angle when drilling. This makes the cordage not rub against itself as you drill. Parachute cord is strong and protected and you don’t need to worry about it, unless you want to train yourself for how to do it the “real way.” I don’t know how many nettle cordage strings I’ve accidentally broke because I was used to using a shoelace or parachute cord… A reall bummer after spending the time to make the cordage.
yeah i meant to ask about that. i remember reading it in elpel.
i was going to ask about the general longevity of natural chordage.
for now i’m using some nylon clothes line.
Hmm. I used a nettle cord for a long time. My friend Nicholas made a nettle necklace and wore it for years, showered with it on an everything… kinda like Hemp. Lasts forever.
Now, twisting it and pulling it definately shorten the life span… but if you know how to treat it & know how to wrap it… it’ll last quite a while.
I busted a coal last night. On my second try of the night and my third try total.
The first try last night I was able to get a really tiny coal, but the wind blew it out before I could shelter and gently feed it air. The next time I tried, I got a lot of smoke and a lot of powder, but not anything that seemed like a constant enough smoke to tell me that I had a coal. I gave up, and was looking at how much powder I had–a huge pile–when I realized that there was a fat coal inside the mound of powder.
I blocked the wind and gently fanned it to help it grow. Then I grabbed my nest I had made the other night–dried grass stuffed with cattail fuzz. I was afraid I’d smothered the coal when I dumped it in the fuzz, but it was pretty healthy by that point. The wind and I blew it into health, consuming the cattail and making a lot of punk before the grass caught… and then I had flame.
I wasn’t interested in building a fire, so I had no tipi of tinder set up. But I grabbed a cigarette to light off the nest. I’m sure the whole neighborhood wondered what that weird guy in the house by the creek was yelling about. I danced and smoked and loved my fire.
Cattail fuzz has some awesome longevity. It was still a nice red smoldering punk long after the grass had burned away. I refused to put it out and just let it burn itself out in appreciation of the energy that was being released and transformed. I sat smoking my camel, keeping my sad son away from the pretty red stuff he wanted so bad, tending the smoldering punk to keep it from catching my lawn on fire.
It was a good night.
Thanks for all your help and encouragement.
Awesome! Gratz! ;D
Congratulations! Sounds a lot less frustrating than my first attempts a bowdrill. But then I didn’t have the gentle guidance of dumdumdum… Urban Scooouuuuttttttt.
Haha. Nice job! You’re ready to move to the next step: Green Oak 
haha green oak. yeah, i’ve heard that story, stalking wolf… i mean, urban scout.
i’m definitely going to play around with my willow set for a while. maybe try a cattail hand-drill set. i’d like to find some other ozark soft woods. maybe find a slightly harder wood for the fireboard. experiment with using a crack in the wood instead of splitting a plank and carving a chimney. maybe try the two-piece round-stick fireboard variation–make some attempts to drop the energy investment in getting a set put together.
by the way, scout, here’s the infamous coke can bottom reflector fire you referenced in the post about cotton balls and vaseline. i’ll drop a link in that post too.
here’s another great page on the wildwood survival site of friction material usefulness. it would be a good thing to add to the wiki if i can find it get permission–or if we can start our own chart and fill it with our first-hand experiences.
i was able to talk my friend luke though busting a coal on my bow-drill set last night. unfortunately, the tinder bundle i had prepared (just dried grass–no cattail down this time) wasn’t too user friendly, and he wasn’t able to get a flame. but the coal was nice.
kick ass, the bowdrill is bomb. when i use natural cordage i use what i’ve heard called ‘the egyptian bowdrill method’, damn, i’d love to hear that over some huge stadium speakers…
tie the cordage on the bow real loose and wrap it around the spindle 5 or 6 times until its taut enough. go for it THE EGYPTIAN BOWDRILL METHOD, shit that’d sound good in baritone with some wwf echoes.
now try the fire plow
i can bust coals like nobody’s business now. but i’m having trouble getting tinder bundles to flame up.
what do you guys use for tinder bundles?
my best luck has been with standing dead cattail leaves twisted into a nest and stuffed with fluffed cattail down. that combo has worked a few times.
usually, though, the tinder gets charred but never ignites before the coal dies out.
any suggestions on materials or blowing techniques would be greatly appreciated.
It seems like you may need something to bridge the size of the cattail fluff & Cattail leaves.
IME cattail down burns up to quickly before the bigger stuff can ignite. I use it to kick start the bundle and ignite the smaller stuff. I generally use red cedar bark or inner cottonwood bark.
One time I used crumpled up wax paper outside of a Pizza Shop. No one, even me, thought it would work… so the whole “praying for a coal” thing isn’t always neccesary. The gods will give it to you when you know how to make fire-love. You ask with your body, not your mind. Know what I’m sayin?
The gods will give it to you when you know how to make fire-love. You ask with your body, not your mind. Know what I'm sayin?
i think i know what you’re saying, but i’m not sure. if i were trying to blow wax paper into flame, i’d definitely be praying with my mind. something like “mother, these poor dinosaurs and trees have been raped by civilization, but they can be freed into your bosom with this flame.”
until my body knows how to ask, though, i’ll probably keep using my mind/heart to ask brother willow to share his energy with me. he really seems to like me, and i think he’s trying to teach me with all his offerings.
hopefully, as i do more, my body will get it and i’ll have that kind of body prayer you’re talking about. but at this stage, my mind and heart have been in this place for a long time now, drinking up words about fire. now my body is finally getting the chance to try out what my mind has gathered. so my bones have some catching up to do.
animalhands!, what kind of advantage does the Egyptian (-gyptian, -gyptian, -gyptian)* method give you? it seems like (mind you, i’ve never tried) that with that many wraps on natural cordage, you’d just be providing more wear on the cordage–and consequently, you’d have to make more cordage sooner.
enlighten my over-civilized mind
*my lame attempt at a “ready to rumble” echo effect.
Cant imagine anyone would have one around but the metal crown top from a beer bottle makes a good socket for the spindle…
Really good instruction by Urban Scout, thank you!!
Some points from my experience:
most people tend to move the bow too fast…this provocs the powder to take a sausage shape with black colour–> the powder becomes coal before it reaches the critical temperature… Try to work more with differing the pressoure, rather than changing speed… also use the whole length of your bow… I use mostly a bow which reaches from my heart out to my finger tips of my arm extended to the side…
if the powder tends to become flaky or sausages you can first produce some fine powder by moving slower and when you have a enough of it you make a sprint which will produce some hot flakes which fall into the powder and ignites it… (because the black stuff cant hold the glow itself)
to test the quality of powder you have without having succeded to get an ember, you can touch shortly the powder with a lighter flame and see how well a ember developes…
Some wood which will not work with normal bowdrill-prodedure can become very functional if you first drill with a thinner handdrill and later when you are trough the board you can start with a bowdrill set. like this you use the downpressure more effetivly and turn it into friktion (imagine the eye of a hurrikan, where there ist no movement)
as urban scout mentioned, the smoke often changes when there is an ember… often the smoke moves up in a more centralized and denser shape. Often you will feel that the smell changes and it bites you in the nose…
like urban scout I think the shape of the spindle is much more important than loubrication (my eares,nose or hair are out in wilderness (HuuuHuuu…!!) mostly dry by ash and mud, so I dont have bodyfat to lubricate) I often point the upper part of the spindle like a pencil (remember the eye of the hurikan) if you need lubrication you can put leaves into the hand element (some work better than others)
If the tip of the spindel becomes shiny: ad pressure and sand or some of the produced powder
Its beautiful to learn wilderness skills… you always discover new things
[quote=“WildeRix, post:1, topic:116”]i realized while reading tom brown that the old willow that fell down last fall should be some good softwood for a bow drill. i spent the weekend whittling a spindle and splitting a fireboard from a log. i have everything but the hand socket so far, as i don’t have any harder wood for that. i keep checking peoples’ rock gardens for a good river rock with a dimple already spooned out, but i haven’t had any luck yet.
[ul][li]how detrimental will it be if i end up using willow for the hand socket as well? will it just wear out fast? [/li]
[li]how much does greasing up the socket and the spindle top keep the friction and wear down? [/li]
[li]what’s the best thing to use for lubing the socket and spindle–especially if the socket is soft wood?[/li][/ul][/quote]
Sorry to open an old thread !
But I thought I’d post and mention I gave 3 attempts this week with a bow drill, all three pieces made of willow.
It definately starts smoking etc… but on the handle >.<
So a hard handle is a must, I’ll go out tomorrow and give it another round!
One thing I did stumble with alot is keeping the string tight, i made my own using blackberry runners (these are young soft thin shoots that come off a major part of the vine, approx 1 meter long, anything longer than thatgets a little brittle) and they work well, but yea, the string gets loose and the grip starts to slip on the drill.
Any ideas ?
if your handhold smokes, don’t forget to lubricate it with something! earwax, green plant matter, pitch, something!