[Captions by Y Translator] In today's video, using the simplest of tools,
I'm going to teach you how to make a bow drill fire.
[Music]
Hey guys, I'm Nate.
And I'm Calli, and it is really cold out here.
So I'm going to teach you guys
how to build a fire with nothing but this.
That is, we're going to use a knife to make
some other tools to make a fire.
Today, we are learning how to make and use a bow drill,
the classic holding a stick
and passing a bowl over it to create a friction
that it actually starts a fire.
Now, you guys in the past have seen Nate
and Grant teaching
multiple ways of making different types of fires.
The reasons that a bow-drill fire is so cool is
that it's been around about as long as people have,
and you can use the simplest of tools to make it.
So here's the basic idea.
Using a knife,
paracord, and nature, we're going to teach you
how to make the tools to build a fire.
It looks like we've got quite a few materials out here,
but you're saying we basically just start with a knife,
and everything is from that.
Pretty much yeah.
If you're in a survival situation,
you don't even really need the paracord.
In a pinch,
you could use a shoelace for maybe one or two
bow drill fires.
But to make things simple,
we're going to have some paracord.
First off, I wanted to show
you why paracord is so essential to have,
especially if you're out hiking in the wilderness,
and you might need it for a survival situation.
This is a piece of paracord
that has been used several times,
but it's already worn through.
So I've already cut a new piece of paracord to use
with this bow.
This is a willow bow.
Now with your bow,
you just need a piece of wood that's pretty decently curved,
but is really really strong.
Now, Willow and Juniper
are known for having a nice gentle curve,
and being really really strong.
Now what you don't want is a piece of wood
that's too thin for your bow,
or something that's going to be green,
or sap like, or resinous.
The problem with that is
as soon as you start trying to drill with that,
it's not going to last.
It's not that Willow
and Juniper are the only types of wood that works for this.
They just happen to be two
that make really nice shapes and strengths for making bows.
They're also native to the area that we're in.
So as long as you have a non-resinous, soft,
very very dry wood, you should be good to go.
There's always going to be some trial and error,
but I bet you can start your own fire.
This is a piece of sage root,
and that's called the fire board.
That's going to start an ember,
and that ember is going to be what starts the fire.
So this is just a piece of board
that's been flattened pretty well in both sides,
and while I think power tools
may have been used to make this particular one,
you definitely don't need to.
You can get this shape with a knife
if your patient,
or honestly, even just a sharp rock.
Now, this is a sage spindle.
Now, this is a sage branch,
and again, you can use other things.
Other excellent fire boards
that you can use is going to be dry cotton wood,
as well as Yuka,
but I didn't have any Yuka available.
So we are using sage root and the sage branch.
This right here is a palm rock.
Obviously, it's a rock,
and it's chosen because it fits nicely into your palm.
That's going to be pretty key,
because you need to hold on to it really well
while applying a lot of pressure from the top.
You can probably see there's a little divot
in this rock right here,
and this you make by just finding another rock,
and you start drilling into it,
and that's going to take you some time.
Keep twisting it
until you have a divot that's just the right size to fit
with the piece in your stick.
As you can see, I've already assembled the supplies,
but this is probably my favorite thing
that I carry with me when I go backpacking.
This knife has a nice fine edge along with a saw blade.
So as long as I had this knife and some bootlaces,
I could probably start a bow drill fire
in most areas in this region.
So you can already see
that I've cut the notches in this bow.
We've got one on this side, one on the other,
and that's just keeps the Paracord
from slipping out of place.
The most important thing to remember
about a friction fire is
that resinous wood is not going to work.
Neither is any sort of wet wood.
This needs to be as dry as dry can get,
and it's all trial and error.
You're usually not going to get a fire on your first, second,
or even third try, but you will get there.
All right.
So for the very last thing that you're going to need,
this is Juniper bark.
Now, Juniper is very common in the desert around this region.
Now, this is incredibly dry.
You can see how it's just flaking off
as I hold it.
There's literally
like it's dark dust falling off of this stuff right now.
That is exactly what you want.
Now, I formed, as best I can a nest.
It's very very loose
because we need air flow to get through.
But we're going to need even finer bark dust inside it.
That's what's going to catch the ember
and really get it to spark.
So Nate, let me show you how to do this.
So as you can see, very very loose here,
and I've got quite a bit more.
So what you're going to want to do, almost as if you
were trying to form a rope,
and then you're going to twist it around.
See if you can form that into a nest.
It's gonna just fall apart in your hands.
Now, something you
might want to note is Juniper bark is useful as it is,
just so many splinters.
So just a very loose nest, air can get through it.
To make it kind of nest shaped,
I just wrapped it around in a circle,
and now I'm kind of folding it in on itself.
So here's a couple of differences that I was saying.
This piece of sage root was cut using power tools.
This one was split a little bit more naturally.
We've taken a knife to it,
we'd cut a notch, and then we taken a stone,
and split it in half.
And as you can see,
we've had lots of successful fires with it.
So, your easiest knots honestly on one side,
and normally the straighter side,
you're going to go ahead and put just a regular old square knot.
So on the straighter side of your bow,
if you happen to have one, just tie a knot.
It doesn't really matter.
What's going to matter is the other side.
If you happen to have a bow, like mine,
where one side curves a little bit more,
that's going to be the side
that you want a clove hitch knot.
The reason that that's so important is it that way,
we can actually adjust the tension as we go,
so that we can make sure that we don't drop our spindle.
All right, so it's a little bit loose,
the clove hitch.
I can tighten it as I go.
That's...
Now we go hunting with it, right?
First thing that we're going to do,
while we do have a usable section here for the fire board,
Nate is really excited to use my knife.
So we're going to let him go ahead,
and cut a new notch into the board itself.
Now, what you want to remember is that you're going to actually
have your foot placed
on one side of this to hold it in place.
So you're going to want to try and keep it as close
to this other hole here as possible.
Near the edge.
Few different ways that you can do this.
There's a pizza cut, there's a regular notch,
but what you're going to do is you're going to cut a fine line
from here all the way through to the other side in the bottom.
You can choose a rectangle, you can choose a pizza cut...
At this point, it's really just preference.
But the important thing is that the notch
that we cut will actually go all the way down
into the middle of this divot.
When we're using our bow drill,
the ember will form in this divot right here,
and we need the notch
so it can actually fall out onto whatever surface is below it.
Not just fall out, you need that for airflow.
The ember will not form without that.
So now, what we're going to want to do,
you're going to drill a very small divot.
So the friction of the spindle
is actually going to make the hole much much larger.
But we start with it pretty little.
The reason why?
You just don't want this to slip out of place.
Now, everyone has preferences.
You can see
that this spindle is a little bit rounder.
It's been used a little bit more than this one.
Now, if you have more of a round edge here
where it goes into the fire board,
you're going to get more friction,
more chance of a fire,
but this is going to start smoking a lot faster.
So now we've got our fire board ready.
We've got our spindle.
Our bow set up.
Now, the last thing
that we're going to need with all of this,
is we need something to catch our ember.
Now, if you're out in the wilderness,
and you don't happen to have just a piece of leather,
you can actually use just a leaf or another board.
What you're going to do
is you'll place this underneath your fire board,
it'll catch the ember.
So that once the ember is formed,
you can drop it into your Juniper nest.
I'm taking a little bit of this Juniper bark,
and I'm just shredding it and pinching it,
and turning it into just the tiniest smallest
dust fibers that we can,
and that's what we're going
to try and get the ember to really ignite first.
All right.
So Nate's got our nest.
I'm going to go ahead and get everything prepped here.
So I've got my piece to catch the ember.
I've got my fire board.
I have my spindle, and then palm rock.
Now I'm taking off my gloves,
because as nice as they are, it's really not going to help
when I'm trying to hold this bow.
So what you're going to want to do is you're gonna have
your dominant hand with your knee on the ground.
Your other foot's going to hold your fire board,
and then take your your bow,
and take your spindle.
Now, this will take if you try sometimes.
I'm probably going to fling this across the yard,
but what you're going to do,
is you can see I've got this kind of loose here,
and I can tighten it as me be with my clove hitch knot.
I'm going to take my spindle,
and I'm going to twist it into my paracord.
Watch out, Nate.
Perfect.
Okay.
So this is a really really good tension
because it's tight, still mobile though.
So what we'll do now, I'll hold this.
I'm going to take my left arm,
because I'm right-handed, embrace it against my left leg.
Get that spindle into that little notch that Nate's made,
take my palm rock,
goes on to the edge of the spindle.
And now, believe it or not, this is all been easy part.
This is the part that takes a little bit of practice.
You're going to pull it.
You're going to pull it back and forth pretty darn slow
until you see smoke.
Once you see smoke,
you want to keep a really even pace.
Now this pace needs to last for about 30 Strokes.
So you can kind of count the ABC's in your head.
It's about the amount of time it's going to take,
and as you do that,
the downward pressure of your palm rock is very important.
[Music]
So all that took was really about 15 seconds.
You can already see that they've got some friction,
and we've already dark in the wood.
We've already have a little bit of smoke.
So we're going to keep going.
If at any point you're feeling
like your bow string just isn't staying tight enough,
it's pretty darn easy to take your leftover paracord here,
wrap it around that clove hitch knot,
and this is why you want to use the more curved edge
where your hand is,
because you can actually tighten the string as you go.
[Music]
At this point, you can see
that Calli has smoke coming off of the spindle.
What you're really looking for in an ember is
when you stop using the bow and the spindle,
you should see a thin stream of smoke coming up.
If you have a successful ember,
it will continue smoking after you stop using the bow.
Still smoking, still smoking.
Okay.
Here's a chance.
I may have an ember.
It's still smoking?
Little.
Nope, that one died.
All right, that's okay.
Getting it on your first try doesn't normally happen,
but you could see the smoke rising off of it,
and you can see,
this has been a sharpen point before...
We worked that way...
Very out of breath.
We've worked that down to almost a flat edge now.
So that's what it looks like to just a few passes.
All right, Nate.
I'm tired.
Wanna give it a shot?
[Music]
Nice.
[inaudible] this one,
There you go.
Now, hold it up.
Don't breathe on it, jus hold it up.
There you go.
See that?
This is what we want.
He's got one.
Okay, now stand up,
and just sort of pass it through the air back and forth.
Gently and don't do this over anything flammable.
He's got a flame guys.
He did it.
[Music]
I made fire.
He's advanced to the level of caveman.
Yes!
Now, obviously,
we weren't looking to create a bonfire here today.
But if you'd had a pile of kindling ready to go,
some nice dry wood and tinder, this would have caught.
You would have been good to go.
So it's been a couple of days since Nate and I showed you
how to make a bow drill fire.
Now Grant wants to try.
What can I say?
I like fire.
[Music]
It's still smoking, still smoking.
Still smoking.
Okay, cool.
You got one.
Didn't say I was the best,
but I do like making the fire.
All right, very carefully here.
[Music]
It is just a little baby fire waiting to happen.
You got to cradle it, be gentle with it.
[Music]
That's a good sign.
[Music]
Boom.
[Music]
There we go.
You finally warm-up.
Burn these goosebumps away.
Thank you, Calli.
It works.
So, just some thoughts after having done that.
The ember that I got to actually start and catch on to that,
it was little.
There was quite a bit of burned wood material.
You probably saw that.
It looked like it was about the area of a dime,
and stacked up maybe quarter of an inch tall.
So like there's a lot
of stuff that looked like it might have worked,
but the actual ember, the one that was still burning,
that was about just this tiny little glowing orange spot,
and that's what we got to catch and grow into all of the bark
and the shredded dust that we made out of it.
And what you want to remember there is there's one point
where Nate even thought it wasn't there anymore.
The red glow doesn't stay.
You've got to remember that it's still surviving.
So long as you can see smoke,
chances are you still probably have a viable ember.
You still just need to transfer it over,
and let it sit for a second,
and it should be okay.
It's all you need.
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