Well, last summer my scout troop asked me to council the Wilderness Survival merit badge. I feel bad if I ask people to do something I can't demnostrate, so I spent the weeks before our big survival campout honing my skills. I decided to try fire by friction. I figured it was the one most useful skill I could pick up because it depends on the least amount of man made equipment. Knowledge is light to carry and I don't usually leave it behind.
I started reading books by people who obviously copied each other's work. I read about how good dry hardwood made the best drills, how the things would burst into flames, how shreaded birch bark was good to catch the coal with....and none of it was all that helpful. After a solid day of messing with bad instructions I read a web page from a church camp that had a lot of success teaching this to eight year olds. Well, if an eight year old can do this, I figured I should be able to also.
Here are the best tips I can give on how I eventually got good at lighting fires with friction.
First, use soft dry wood for the drill and fire board. You want a low density. You're trying to concentrate heat. Dense hardwood conducts heat away from the tip of the drill faster than light softwood. I had my best luck with dry Northern White Cedar.
Next, I used scraped cedar bark fuzz for tinder. Paper, birch bark, cotton balls, magnesium shavings, all this is too big to really work.
Third, realise that all a bow and drill can make is a pile of hot sawdust which eventually forms a glowing coal. You get smoke, but no flames or sparks. Don't expect it to work like a Bick lighter.
Expect to have to cut a bunch of new notches in your fireboard. You will wear out many of them before you get a fire the first time. After you get the technique down you can get many fires from one notch. Also, resharpen your drill when it becomes too blunt.
Here is the process in full.
First I took a block of dry cedar from the firewood pile. I split a plank about 3/4 inch thick out of the log, and a 1X1 square drill. I whittled the drill down to an octagon. Until it wears in the little edges help the string grip. A square grabs too much and a circle can slip.
Next I took a dry maple stick and whittled a divot in it for a hand peice. I've read about how indians would set a small stone in their hand block for a bearing, but I cheated and used a little axle grease. The oil from the sides of your nose works pretty well too.
I whittled the ends of the drill next. The bottom was bluntly conical, the top rounded.
I made my bow out of a broomstick sized green hardwood sapling. I used 1/8 nylon cord for a string, it was the only thing that would hold up to all my practice drilling.
I put the drill about 3/4 inch from the edge of the board in a little depression I pecked with my knife. I took about 20 slow light turns on the drill to get a notch started in the fireboard and to get the hand block and drill fitting together well.
Next I carved a V shaped notch into the center of the depression in the fireboard. The notch should be undercut a little too. If it is too big the drill will hop out of socket and if it is too small the hot sawdust won't fall down where it belongs.
Next I scraped cedar bark with my knife until I had a golf ball sized lump of fluff. I've heard that cattail fuzz works too, I didn't try it. Charcloth from a flint and steel kit didn't even work as well as cedar fuzz. Birch bark, no matter how small, was useless at this stage.
I put a big woodchip under the notch of the fireboard and set my mouse nest of cedar bark off to the side.
The rule of thirtys says you first take thirty slow strokes with light pressure to get everything set up. Without stopping, next you take thirty faster strokes with a little more pressure. You should have a pretty big pile of wood dust by now. If you stop, don't clear this dust away. In fact, some people save extra in a film can. This dust is what forms the coal. After the second thirty strokes, push down even harder and take thirty really fast strokes. This can be an excelent cardio workout by the way. I even take 35 or 40 sometimes to be sure the coal has a good start.
Now, don't touch anything. If the pile continues to smoke after you stop drilling, you have a coal. Let it grow a little, then carefully dump it into your mouse nest.
Crunch the nest down carefully and begin to blow. Sometimes I use a strip of birch bark as a handle around the mouse nest. Blow gently at first, and harder as it begins to smoke more. Eventually this will burst into flames. Packing it too tight smothers the coal, but if it is too loose the glow won't spread through the fibers and it might just burn through.
It takes practice, but it can be done extremely fast by a practiced hand. Some people, while they are practicing, keep a film can of the wood powder from failed attempts for future attempts. I even mixed a little wood dust into my tinder nest. It can be done with almost all natural materials, but I would say the odds of hitting it right in an emergency without practice are low. It is a very satisfying skill no matter what, and I highly recomend everyone try it some time.
