I am having issues with my bow drill. I can get smoke for days on end, but no ember. I am using a cedar fire board and a cedar spindle. I use steady pressure and motion on the bow, and speed up when the smoke really gets going. I get alot of dust in the notch and just a spec of black dust on top, almost like it's trying to become an ember. Any help would be great, thanks in advance.

I've also had problems with cedar. Try poplar for fire board and spindle... it works for me.

John

Thanks I'll go out tomorrow and find myself some new materials. Thanks for the heads up.

Getting the Bow Drill technique down and understanding the various useable woods, pressures and speeds that it takes for success can be pretty tough. There are a lot of factors that can affect your outcome so I don't think I could help much without seeing your technique.

It could be something as simple as cutting a smaller notch in your hearth board or using a thinner board. A thick hearth and a large notch make for a lot of effort.

There are also external variables such as humidity and the dampness of wood to consider.

You should be able to get a coal with most Cedars, but they're not all the same. For example, it has been my experience that I can more easily produce a coal with Eastern White Cedar than I can with Eastern Red Cedar.

Willow and Basswood have always been easiest for me to use, though I've been told by some that it should be just as easy to use White Cedar.

Sounds like you are real close! I would not start making big changes just yet.

Often "going animal" right at the end with carefully increasing pressure and speed despite your fatigue can achieve the temperature you need to get a glowing ember. And once you get a sense of the speed and pressure needed you can go to both earlier in the process, making for a shorter though maybe more intense effort.

Try also varying the thickness of your hearth board and the size and position of your notch. Listen carefully to the sounds. Be sure to keep your spindle as vertical and steady as you can.

As others have said, different wood can make a difference, as can difference in moisture content, etcetera. But don't chase a lot of materials until you are pretty sure your technique is solid.

And this may sound silly, but consider taking a moment before you begin to think about and maybe give thanks for the sun, trees, soil, and all that you are using. I sometimes even ask for help from whoever might give it in releasing fire from the fiction and wood.

this site helped me, I was able to get cedar going, the first time took hours, it will probably take me that long next time since it has been a while.
http://www.wildwoodsurvival.com/survival/fire/bowdrill/pmoc/basicbowdrill.html

the key is to read the powder look about 2/3rd the way down

Boghog,
Great info page thanks. I'm going to give it another go this afternoon after work. Thanks again.

My guess is that you aren't applying enough pressure. If you are getting dust to form add a little more pressure to really heat things up and a little more speed and go as long as you can.

FWIW – I couldn’t get poplar to work for me but, cedar on the other hand worked the first time I tried it.

Adam
Thanks I'll give the cedar another shot or 2 and see if more pressure and speed are the ticket. How wide should the notch actually be?

Hum….I’m not sure I’ve ever measured the size of the notch. I’m guessing that it makes a 45 degree angle from the center. Here’s a pic that doesn’t quite show the notch clearly.

This set was made from some very well aged Douglas Fir



Here is a coal from cedar (Note the notch on this one wasn’t a "v" shape but more rectangular.)

There are various formulas and ratios suggested for "good" notches, but maybe we first should look at what a notch on a bowdrill hearthboard is supposed to do.

Some ideas:

help keep the spindle from flying away
maximize wdod-to-wood friction
deliver friction-produced "dust" to one small area
deliver fiction-produced smoldering "dust" to one small area

These ideas, if accurate, suggest:

a relatively narrow notch
a notch that does not go into the bottom of the spindle socket
a notch big enough so dust will not be trapped in the notch

Given variables in spindle size, hearthboard thickness, size of "dust" produced, ease with which dust falls from the notch, and whether or not your setup is producing smoldering "dust,"
you may have to adjust your notch several times with any given pair of spindles-and-hearthboards before things work right.

You may also have to work on the business end of your spindle to get its shape and size to work well with your socket in producing friction, "dust," etcetera.

Thoughts?

I would love to see someone take a scientific approach to this a la Mythbusters and using differing dowels, bases and pressures, scientifically ascertain which woods are best suited as well as which woods are not suitable.
Anyone out there who has a drillpress and some time? I would love to see the results.
I'm just saying....

Should my spindle and fire board be of the same wood? I can get smoke for days. Just on top of the dust I can see where it seems to be charred and the board itself smokes quite a bit.

My first instructor told me to work until the smokes "wreathes around the spindle, not just comes up as one thread" if that helps.

Cedar on cedar should work.

The hearthboard should not smoke much if at all but I am not sure what the adjustment for that would be.

How wide is your spindle where it touches the hearthboard socket?

How thick is your hearthboard compared to the width of your spindle where it touches the hearthboard socket?

Is your bowdrill making squeaking noises [too slick from charring or lubrication] or a more raspy rubbing noise [good friction of wood on wood]?

Anybody you can go to that is decent with a bowdrill?

Spindle about 1/2", fire board about the same 1/2". I have gotten both sqeaky and raspy sounds, it's good to know raspy is good. Thanks for the additional info.

It might not help but I found the Arizona episode of Dual Survival very helpful with my own hand/bow drill firemaking. Dave had no end of frustration until he realized Cody's secret: you have to let the ember smoulder on it's own for a few moments before trying to add it to your tinder.

a good practice board is a cedar shingle, you can get a bunch for short money

In general yes they should be the same. But certain combo's of wood work well together.

Squeaky is bad. It means your spindle has glazed over and won't provide friction needed to make a coal. A quick fix is to drop a couple of grains of sand in there and that might rough up the spindle enough. But you may just have to rough it up a little with your knife.

If you do put a couple of grains of sand into the hearth to rough up the board and spindle remove the sand before you go full force into attempting to get a coal or you may find that the sand inhibits the process.

All good tips to collect and try.

Try to remember to keep the dust from previous efforts and put some in the socket and notch. Particularly the blackened dust can act like charcoal or charcoal cloth in tiny form to catch a spark easier.

Starting a fire using the bow drill method is an art form in itself and it takes a lot of practice to have a high success rate. I have successfully managed this only a few times under controlled conditions. I hope that I will never have to resort to this method in a survival situation where the conditions are not idea...and this why I always carry multiple methods of fire starting; wooden matches, BIC lighter, firesteel.

Thanks for all the help folks!! I went into the garage tonight and got an ember 3 times in a row and actually got a flame in a tinder bundle on the 3rd. Thanks again for the help.

Congratulations!

Excellent!

What seemed to do the trick?

Steady pressure and speed until I got good smoke, eased up on the pressure and gave it about 10 more full strokes, and there it was an ember! I also opened my notch up a bit.

SWEET! Great job.

Going to get some cattails now and try hand drill a bit. Any suggestions on what else may be a good drill other than cattails?

As a now successful bowdrill fire-starter, it becomes your right and duty to try darn near eveything around you and share with us what you discover!

Hand-drill is for most a much bigger challenge.

I have thus far got Red Cedar, Pine, and Poplar to the point of a good ember. I used a willow spindle on all three.

As for trying the Hand Drill I just want to mess around and see how it works.

In my experience if the spindle and board are too soft they tend to reduce each other to powder before getting hot enough to produce good coals. Slightly harder wood seems to work better. On the other end too hard a wood can build up a lot of heat but fail to drop a coal.

The wood, of course, is best very dry. Slightly green or damp wood can make things much more difficult. You have to generate enough heat to drive off the moisture before you can start to get near ignition temperatures.

Irony is that drying the spindle and board over a fire makes them work better. Kind of like needing a flashlight to change batteries or downloading a better driver to get the PC to run. Bootstrapping has always been an issue. I knew a Boyscout leader who would use a blow-dryer to prep his bow-drill setup before demonstrations in a damp climate.

i once saw a film where a guy in Canada got dropped off in the brush by a chopper and did a survival camp as part of his PhD thesis.he busted rocks to get tools to make the parts for the bow drill and said it was a all day process to get the thing together and working.he never let the fire go out for the month or so he was out and said it was so much work that anyone who had to do that would never forget his matches again.he was a pro,like the guy who did the Ikea fire drill or those "natives" i see in the "how they live" Anthro movies.i would suggest that if you want to get the knack on how to do this that you make the best set you can and try it out every day--every day..maybe while watching some mindless TV you can work the bow to get the idea of how much pressure you need to exert on the spindle--and so on--be a kid in a pre-modern world who needs to learn to make a fire and not a guy who is just fooling around to see if it will work,if you really want to use it as a survival tool.i also saw another film from Canada made in the 50's where a native guy takes nothing more than a big splinter of pine and works it--fast and hard--in a grove in a split open pine block and gets a fire.i assume he grew up learning how to do that so it was second nature.
sorry..another 1:30 AM run-on...maybe the best survival item for fire making would be a tiny surgical implanted sparklight stick you could cut-dig out of your leg when all else failed.

IMO I think that to just have the knowledge, confidence, and ability to be able to create an ember is a major undertaking itself. Do I plan on getting dropped off in the middle of no-where, nope not in my immediate future. However I do spend a considerable amount of time in the outdoors and if I did need this ability I would feel better about knowing I can atleast or I have in the past created fire.
I do think that in a survival situation to actually think you will just grab up some materials and make yourself comfy, is not likely to happen. There will be a good amount of "suck" involved with it. However to have the self confidence of being able over time if need be fend for yourself and survive as comfortable as possible will increase your chances down the road.
Same for me just rattling on early in the morning at work.

"KEEP UP THE FIRE"

Keep on preparing! It is often true that: opportunity + preparation = luck.

I recall the stories of native americans coming upon starving and sick settlers, not even conceiving those folks could be sufffering such things, because all around them were wild plants for food and medicine. One sad but classic case was wagon train members suffering from scurvy that could easily have been prevented and cured by tea made from the needles of the pine and other conifers all around them.