Tried starting a fire with a bow drill in the shop at work on a Saturday last year. We used kiln dried pallet boards as the base and bearing block and a broom handle for the spindle. We shaved pallet material with a razor knife for tinder. We were quite surprised to get an ember after about 20 minutes but we couldn't get it to ignite to flame. We didn't have much of a tinder bundle, left it on the ground and blew. I realize you need to have a good size bundle to pick up and blow into but we Didn't have the right material. After the first ember went out it was 3 hours before we got another and managed to ignite it to flame and have a tiny fire. The hole glazed up and so did the spindle. Bearing block was smoking instead of the baseboard etc. it certainly was fun
Well last weekend a group of us went winter camping. It was raining when we got there and had been for over a week. It's wet in the bush in British Columbia during the winter. We tried a second time using only what we could find in the bush. Found a downed birtch tree that had fallen against another downed tree so it was off the ground. We used that for the base board and a maple spindle. We shaved cedar bark to use as tinder and I kept it in my pocket for the day to dry.
We knew we didn't have enough of a tinder bundle to really pick up and fold around the ember but we just wanted to get an ember and blow it into a flame. We placed the baseboard with the notch over the cedar on the ground and went to work. We were surprised that we had a good ember after about a half hour (we had to play with the spindle and widen the notch a bit). We left the tinder on the ground and managed to blow it into a flame but it would go out as soon as we stopped blowing. I figure it wasn't quite dry enough. We took a quick break and tried again. This time we weren't getting much smoke and things were looking glazed again. We cleaned the end of the spindle and started a new hole but didn't have the same success.
It was at this point that we looked back at the coolers full of beer and a 15 lb prime rib roast slow roasting over a bed of maple and cherry coals (of course we used a rotisserie and a small generator) and decided we would call it quits and enjoy a cold one. We knew that a larger and dryer tinder bundle would have given us a fire. We were just happy to have gotten an ember and a flame from material we gathered in a soaking wet forest. I am already looking forward to our 5th annual winter camping trip next year!!
Cheers
Gary
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