Fire School Part 2 Bow Drill Lessons

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

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okay so the next step is to make our heart board again we want this thing bigger around diameter than our spindle I've got my spindle in my pocket so it doesn't get wet so let's cut this off again a bahco laplander but make a lot shorter work of this then multi-tool saw for sure okay start off with a piece about that big I hope it's big enough in diameter remember that we can always make our spindle a little bit smaller if we need to as far as the diameter that spindle goes now I'm looking at sorry just saying I'm seeing it looks a little bit pithy right there it's been dead for a while you can see as I'm smacking with this one it's sheared off is that going to make a major difference maybe yes maybe no cutting - with my knife see what it feels like it's not too bad it's not too bad now let's cut this other side off

what I'm hoping to end up with here is a board that is close to a half an inch thick and I'm just going to see this basically into a rectangle about a half an inch thick and about this long and I'm going to flatten it out really good and about the finished thickness I want is about this right here and you can see that's about the thickness of my thumbnail and that's what I'd like to end up with for a finished thickness once I've carved this down [Music]

okay for our bow we just got another branch of that tulip poplar about the length of my armpit to my palm pretty straight branch this doesn't have to be above the difference is I'll have to run my spindle through the outside of the string instead of the inside of the string

I put the spend on the inside of the string without the curve I'm going to have friction along the linear side of this bow and I don't want that so I have to put the spindle to the outside of the string so destroying is in between here in the spindle if I had a curved piece of wood I could go ahead put it to the inside and it wouldn't matter but I'm trying to use what we collected and not worry too much about going out looking for a great bow and all that stuff so I just use one of these same tulip poplar branches pop the bark off of it I cut a notch in the back here notching the front to tie the bank line to real simple procedure of cutting a log-cabin notch and a quick stake notch or a seven notch here and that's where my string is going to run and hold and I should be ready to go with that okay so to attach our string to our bow pretty simple process I'm just going to take one into this number 36 Bank line this is tarred mariners line there's a couple place you can find this on the internet most of the places you buy this is not going to be tarred properly stuff they carry at Walmart does not have tar on any more tarred line has been a standard since the early days of mariners a tarred hemp rope all the time this is a nylon tarred line we sell this on our website and buy it

sometimes at Bass Pro Shops are generally out of stock on it but you can buy it there now I'm just going to come in here and I'm going to put a very simple bowline knot in here that's big enough to fit over the diameter of the front of my bow and the reason I'm doing that and because that's going to sit in this notch here then I'll pull it back here and I'll wrap it inside now I'm going to come back here I'm going to come around to that seven knots that I created and I'm just going to come in here and pull this down through here just like that to create a half hitch keep it on top just like this pull it back against itself so I've got this line straight across here it doesn't have to be real tight at this point because remember I've still got to be able to load my spindle in here I've got to give myself a little bit of slack then all I need to do is wrap it around here a couple of times and I can finish this back here on the handle with a clove hitch so I can come around here and wrap it and on the last wrap I want to make sure that I have an X to go through just like if I were lashing I want to go through that X with my tag so that I have that clove hitch style knot and it's not going to come undone on me [Music]

it does tags through there and I'll be alright there we go just like that so you've got that X right there you've got that line coming through it then you can dress that up down to the bottom like this and then just kind of tighten that down and it'll hold just fine like I said you want this thing here to be pretty straight down your bow from this back notch down to where your bowline knot is you've got to have a little bit of slack in there just going to stretch a little bit on you at first so if you got a little slack it's okay now let's talk about loading the spindle okay once we have our string on our bow now we can face the bow away from us just like this take our spindle and load it up through with the end that we went down going up right now so this is the end that's going to go down on the fire board this thing that's going to go up into the bearing block or handle so we load the fire board end up and we twist it down just like this so when we twist it pops into the string just like this and that's the way it's going to be running it's going to run on the outside like this of the bow so it's going to travel the length of that bow just like this on the outside that's not going to create any friction whatsoever between our bow and our spindle we don't want any friction anywhere except on the board that's going to alleviate that and it will give us the whole length of this bow all the way down to this knot and all the way down to the handle end that that spindle can spin freely just like this okay now let's talk about our hand holder bearing block okay the bearing block the bearing block is the most difficult thing to reproduce from natural material and make it effective that's why you see a lot of guys carrying things like bone or antler or glass or a piece of metal or they have a divot cut into our knife handle all of those things are materials that don't wear away very easily wood burns up and when that divot gets deep inside your hand hold it begins to rub on the shoulders of your spindle and that causes friction in your top block or your handled which reduces the friction in the bottom it also makes it harder to operate the bow which means it takes more energy to produce the same effect what I've got here is I've got a piece of green cherry that's about the size of my fist and about two inches in diameter and I'm just going to take and baton a section off of this piece of cherry just like this

if I've got a choice if I have a choice when I do this I'm going to trim off the side that has the most growth rings because it will be the most dense on that side if it has stacked growth rings on that side tight growth rings I shouldn't say the most I should say the tightest growth rings are the least growth rings you can see if you look at this piece of wood the growth rings are out here and they're spread apart from the center that means this area of the tree was facing south toward the Sun so this is the more northern side of the tree and it's going to be dense and harder there because there's going to be less SAP wood and more heartwood kind of technical but it'll be a harder piece of wood in general the fact it's green is going to make it burn slower and that's important and I can debark this if I want to make it pretty or I can just leave it if I'm trying to make a quick set so now I have to cut a couple of divots or starters they need to cut one in my top block and then you cut one in my fire board or my hearth board this one needs to be pretty much centered on the wood here and here and I'm just going to take my knife and pretty much drill that in there keeping my knife blade away from me all the time so if I'm going to cut I'm going to cut with a knife blade away from me so that if it slips it slips down into here and not into my hand I'll turn this thing over and do the other side

if you've got a good hard piece of wood you're not going to have to cut that divot real real deep and it will wear in there okay when you first start to use it anyway this is a good dense piece of wood I can tell by that thick fuzz it's creating right there where the grain of the wood is this has got good green heavy green in it I want that for my bearing block I don't want that for my hearth board my spindle once I get that give it put in there I can just kind of rotate my spindle in here a little bit and clean it out and I want that to ride nice and smooth right there if this burns in too deep it's going to be on these shoulders and then I'm going to be getting friction in the top which is what I want to avoid that's why when he's a green hardwood for this top so it doesn't burn and if it does burn hopefully it will polish and it won't continue to Waller out the whole bigger and bigger but hopefully I'm only going to have to use this one time get my coal I've got a good fire lane I'm ready to rock and then I can prepare for the next fire in my progression of fire we'll talk about that in the next episode so we're going to marry those up a little bit and then we're going to go over here to our hearth boards and we're going to need to figure out where we want to put our spindle and hearth board to turn our coal remember that you're going to have to cut a v-notch in this hearth board so you have a place for the coal to go for the dust to collect to make that colt so you're going to back up a little bit and I'm going to back clear up this backside here figure right here in this area that I haven't carved off that's where that hole is going to go and I'm going to do the same thing here I'm going to dish that thing out just like this keeping the knife away from me and just cutting a divot in there just like that and all I need is a spot in there deep enough like that spindle will rest in there because the deeper I cut this now the less fireboard I'm going to have when the time comes to make my Ember and that's important to understand as well with a thin fire board you may only get one shot before you've got to change this and go somewhere else and again I'm going to do the same thing I'm going to take my spindle and put it on here and I'm going to turn it a little bit on a solid surface and kind of marry it up with my arm a little my arm strength a little bit here so that when I put it in there it marries up quickly it doesn't slip and jump around on so you can see I put that divot in there now now I'm ready to what's called burn it in which means I'm going to spin the spindle on the board to create a hot spot right there and burn it into the board and that will tell me if it turns the right color of black that this set is probably viable so we have our bow we have our top block or a bearing block we have our spindle and we have our hearth board this is tulip poplar soft wood doesn't matter what species soft wood willow will work Caesar will work white pine or pine will work if you use the SAP wood and not the heartwood spindle is made from the same material the bearing block is a hard piece of green hardwood we took another tulip poplar branch and we made our bow and again this is a straight bow so our spindle has to ride on the outside of the string not the inside all right so now we're going to get ready to burn this in I've got a piece of wood leaned up against my board so that I can put my foot on that board and not put moisture into the board right now I'm just trying to see that this thing is going to ride smoothly I've got to keep this bow level as I run just like that now what I'm looking at is I'm looking at two things I'm looking at my bearing block to make sure this not expanding too much I'm looking at the top to see how about it's starting to shoulder out and I'm looking for color here and color here before I decide I'm going to go after this for real I've got a couple things to consider I tightened up my bowstring just to make sure it was good and tight my spindle looks okay but I'm going to need to dress this front end I'm also going to need to cut my V notch and this looks like it's fine so I have to worry about that these two things need to be worked out then I'm going to need something to catch my coal and I can use anything like this flat piece of wood for that to catch my coal on top of this is my board to make sure that I don't put moisture into the rest of my board in case I have to use it later I put my foot on this we're going to need a V notch here ready to dress this top point and then we should be ready to rock and roll and try to get a coal first of all let's address this we're just going to come in here and knock that shoulder off at the top I don't want to knock that burnt area off because as it's burning it's hardening so I just want to come in below that and create a new angle there that goes up to that point but doesn't knock it off

just a little control right there we'll be fine just like that again remember preparation of the material is the key to the success here okay that should be alright now we can save all these little shavings for a fire light but we're not going to talk about that right now so we won't worry about it now we need to cut our v-notch our v-notch needs to come in at an angle across here and across here a lot of the notch size and width have to do with the material that you're using if you're using a lighter material a softer material you can generally get away with a smaller notch but you're going to need more width on that knotch

especially with a poplar type material because it comes out in fibers your charcoal will be creating fibers that will be kind of long and stringy they have to have a lot of oxygen flow to get a good Ember so what I like to do with my fire boards when I'm using poplar is I'll come in here and I'll cut a v-notch just like this coming in from at an angle on both sides about a quarter of an inch wide the front tapering to and eight and I want that notch to pretty much end right at the edge of my burn in so when I pop all that stuff out of there and go to clean this up of my knife you can see that that notch is right at the edge of where I burned that in coming in there out of V I've got to make sure that I've got an area that doesn't dust can spill over so I'm going to clean that out just a little bit and give it a little bit of a ramp right there on the bottom side I want to make sure I'm getting plenty of oxygen flow so what I'll generally do is I'll come in here on the bottom side and I'll carve in just a little bit on an angle here and here to create a little bit of a V underneath there right here and here so that oxygen can flow in from the bottom and get to my ember and I think that's all important stuff and all of those little variables like that there's little subtle nuances are things that can get you messed up remember you only want to have to do this one time if you can help it so the better preparation you do to begin with the better off you're going to be that board is not very thick you may only have one bite at the Apple here now that we've got those things straightened out we're ready to try to get it done so we're going to set our board here and put our notch right here on top of our couch set our foot placement right here as close as we can get to our hole without rubbing our foot with the spindle on the bow we're going to get the bow loaded up just exactly like we talked about remembering that we tighten our string that's probably going to be a little harder to load the bow this time that was the last time I like to get mine in the middle if I can we're pretty close to the center we'll get ourself on here and get comfortable we've got to make sure that we get this buried into our shin then we can use our shin and lean our weight forward to get downward pressure putting our chest directly over the top of the spindle and this is the form that we want

I'm Dave Canterbury pathfinder school i thank you guys for joining me out here today for another video I thank you for all your support and comments I thank you for supporting our business our school all of my instructors affiliate sponsors and Friends and we're back another video as soon as we can thanks guys

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