I recently made fire by friction using a bow drill. You can see what I mean by reading this explanation or consider the history of the technique on the excellent Pitt Rivers Museum web site.
Anyway, the 4 stages in the picture are, from the left:
- First attempt. Lots of stop and start drilling. I got a very small ember but couldn’t keep it alight 🙁
- I didn’t bed in the drill enough and it kept jumping out, so abandoned 🙁
- I got a nice ember, but my tinder wouldn’t take, I think it was too damp 🙁
- I took a break, dried the tinder thoroughly, got a nice ember and this time the tinder took fine – success!! :))
I was using a bought drill set from Dave Watson and got help from the excellent folks on the BCUK forum. Having figured out all the different wood I was using, and seen how the various pieces fit together, I should be able to move on from here to making my own set from what I can find, which is the real trick.
This was immensely satisfying!