Primitive fire from start to finish -Mantis Outdoors

Description

Yeah a warning as you could Probably already see this is not a short video. I am out in my personal space with my kids teaching them the bow drill. Have had several request to do a all encompassing bow drill tutorial. So come hang out with me in the family in the woods while we construct a bow drill from start to finish

Video Transcription

[Music]

hey how you guys doing this William Irish Mass outdoors I've gotten several messages on Facebook and even some on YouTube itself for me to do a bow-drill instructional video and it's about that time

what one of my kids Ethan and Kevin they they need to go through this as well so might as well film it and showing them how to do the bow drill at the same time so the way that I teach how to construct and use a bow drill is from stick to fire pretty much you know we have a beautiful piece of cedar here and this is our tinder bundle this is our hora forward our spindle our bearing block everything except for the bow and we'll go harvest one of those really quickly as well not very hard so that's one of the things that I see on certain videos and even certain instructor instruction look at that 3 2 1 you know something that I see and you know some videos and certain even instruction instruction oh my can I spit that out bring it one to one you know something that I see in you know some YouTube videos and even some instructors that I've been personally at their classes you know saying well we gotta go and we got to find out a sycamore for our spindle and then we're gonna go try to find you know poplar for our heart board and you know we're gonna make a rather stone and we're gonna bore it out or for a handhold you that's just nonsense in my opinion you know in my opinion the practical application for something like this is if you had to absolutely use something like this here you're not gonna want to be trying to hunt down seven different kinds of wood for your bow drill you know use need one really good softwood poplars white pines red Pines a little bit to resonate for it what you know eight even white pine if you get the wrong piece you're not gonna have very good looks just so much resin but it can't work Cedars are one of my favorites the cottonwoods and poplar tulip poplar absolute favorite you know but there's a lot of different trees and woods that will work even if I don't know exactly what the tree is if I'm

on the west coast I have no idea what this is I know I can know that this is a potential wood that's gonna give me a coal just by touching it feeling it putting it to my cheek when it split putting my fingernail in it okay this is a really soft wood because it leaves real easy fair net figure nail dance you know I really can just barely even touch that wood and leave a fingernail indent that's one indication that I'm gonna have success hopefully so we're gonna get the kids involved here we're gonna have them solve this up I'm gonna be showing them how to bust the boards out carve it up and stuff like that so let's get to sawing this up and get to making the bow drill so there's two different ways you can do this one you can do it just the way it is you can hold it just like this and you can sell it or you can use a plumber's vise which is kind of crouching and doing what do you want Florent vices like this holder would just like that and now you know squeezing it with your leg and then holding it against your leg I get you like and I want probably cow then I want probably about right there a little bit more of that not all right that'll work that'll work yep stop take your hand up a little more don't let stool do the work go back and forth don't push use the whole song it's there to use all of it

yeah good job son all right I'm gonna kind of give you a couple pointers here all right so when you're so on you don't want like I said you wanna be pushing down we need we need a belt like this because we could probably bust the a bearing block out of that piece but I'll just solve this just goes to show you you know just start it and I'm not pushing I'm using all the salt that I can right to the very tip all right so like I said this is gonna be our bow drill set it's also gonna be part of our tinder bundle okay the cedar bark is awesome for tender especially for a bow drill so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take back my knife I'm just go straight down and I'm gonna harvest that I can even kind of good down this way as well little yeah but I'm gonna do that all the way around you can even do it with the back that's all that Ethan was using but this whole the whole piece that we harvested is gonna be used for our Bodrum alright so we'll do that with all the pieces that we solve and then I'll give this to you guys to kind of work into a tinder bundle okay alright so this is the piece that I'm pretty sure that I want for my hearth board all I have to do is really just look at it see where the heartwood is and then kind of punch it out you know I don't want to do anything like this with an axe you know people are like why would I baton a knife this is one of the reasons I want a specific cut out of this wood all right so this is my heart it's not in my opinion ideal there's a lot a lot more heartwood in there that I would normally get so now this next step that I would do is probably clean up this wood this board so what I would do is what I use plain tea and that's why I like a nice straight edge knife because like I sit here and plan out this board and get a flat surface really quickly get a nice straight flat or flip it around love cedar smells great all right flip it around do the same thing I've got a couple of hard knots on one side get those nice and planed out hey pass that down okay so most of the time I carry two knives and a lot of people ask me why the surface especially was designed for a companion knife so this is one of the reasons why those small details my new dig tales I probably could do this with a Sosa's no problem but I like to have a smaller knife just to do little cleanup jobs like this just clean that board up get it nice and squared ready to collect coal

some of the other smaller details stuff like cutting notches is to look at good more than adequately be done with the soapies it's faster and a little bit more efficient with a smaller blade that I can get in here rock back and forth and do the real fine detail there we go and there we go that's something that should be fine it's not tested yet it's not proven yet but we'll see how it goes all right so this is gonna make my spindle and you know if I had a little bit of a bigger piece I could have cut my board out and got a spindle out of that same piece a little bit smaller than that you know glasses go section by section but what I want is something that goes from my elbow to pretty much my wrist like this even a little bit longer if it come up to here that's just as fun and it's fun to me you don't want your spindle to be too big because then it'll be a little unwieldy you won't be able to lock it in as well you don't want it too small because you want it to be about this size because once it's running on the drill or on the hearth board you'll be able to lock your leg in just like this or lock your arm in sorry your wrist tightly to your shin and you still you know you know hunched over too much you're not trying to struggle to control it and things like that so let's go ahead and construct our spindle so what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of work around this to get a rough shape and then I'll take this knife to kind of do some crafting chops to get more of a rough shape and then some slicing to get that final spin [Music]

obviously all this stuff can be used for the actual fire that you're gonna be making I like spent discard all that nice fresh cedar so now what I'm going to do is just some light chopping getting the basic design that I want one thing that I see some people do that leads to a lot of failure is they think of a spindle and they get this thing just perfectly round you don't want that you want some asymmetrical like maybe a hexagon kind of shape going on something for the Rope to kind of grab on all right so that's my basic shape never gonna get some you know more precise slicing out of this and go make our bearing block and find a boat alright so let's get these fine slices out of here right where we want them nice little knot up there knockout all right so now this is the end basic shape of my spindle this is my spindle now I just have to contour both ends and what I need to make a decision right now is what side is gonna be on the actual heart and what side is gonna be in the bearing block you want kind of a round nose tip on that on the side that's gonna be on the heart and I want pretty much a pencil point on the other because I want less friction in the bearing block and more fiction friction on the hearth

so I'm going to be rounding this over and what I do is I start about an inch right here start going around following the previous lines pretty much that I already made but I need to take a couple swipes out of a piece that's a little oblong that's fine and once I'm satisfied with that then I'll move up about a half an inch start taking slices from that you can already see where this is going start to see that nose being around you usually one on this bar I'll take about two passes and then I'll start moving up even more and now I'm pretty much at the final part where I'll start knocking the tip off and there you go so this is another key to this as well is if you see all these indents right here it's almost like a soccer ball that just grabs that wood and starts grinding it and starts eating it up together we'll go through that here in a second that's really pretty much it that's all that I need there's something that I can hold on to and have that spindle in here now the one drawback to this is you know this is all the same components this your your brain block it is beneficial to have it maybe out of a little bit harder wood because this is a soft as the other stuff and you know your spindles gonna drill up in here and it might shoulder out give you some problems but I know how to deal with that as well so all I really do is just take my knife and this is one of the key design features of this knife is the spear point make it really symmetrical hole let's get in there and drill a nice hole something that's gonna accept the opposite end of that spindle you know this doesn't look like the state distinct safest thing in the world but you know I'm not applying a great deal of pressure at all I'm doing real light pressure just busting that whole hour

all right there we go all right so you know this time of year you're not really going to find too much but like plants like common knowledge Fras things like that a real useless genic that's real easy to put those leaves into your bearing block that's gonna give you some lubricant up here it's like I said you want very little if any at all friction up here so all your friction to be down here but you know we can use maybe some something from our bag

maybe we're using tool maintenance this is like a deer fat tallow perfect you know even spit just bit of thing you know some people don't know but like around your nose and behind your ear tie like body oils and things like that you can even rub that in there you know anything to get a little bit of lubricant into that hole right there so you have as little friction as possible up here you know this will do for about it's flexible but it's not too flexible I might want something a little bit thicker but we're kind of losing daylight and I want to get this video done and show them how to actually run on the board so what I do is I put my potential bow into my armpit and I extend my fingers at the point of my index finger that's where I want to cut and I'll just take this and run it round three four times little chilly out here everybody's sniff look after I break that through to a couple of layers of the stick itself and then I'll be able to get a clean break up take clean that up a little bit alright so that's pretty much my bow that'll work

alright so the next step is to mark the top and bottom and all I'll do is just like Deaver to it so I'll go around just like this and I don't want to go too deep I just want something so my rope doesn't slip up and down so just be virtue on one side go around once or twice and then flip the stick and do it on the other side there we go that's just gonna give me something that the ropes going to hang in give me an anchor point basically I'll do the same thing on the other side and we'll get right back to you all right so we're ready to string this up what I do is I kind of put the bow into my lap a little bit bring the string up around into the notch and under and then give that boat just a little bit of flex and tighten it up do the same thing under and this will flex I'll probably have to take this apart and flex it tighten it up it's good to do it now all right you know this is the the stick itself is going to loosen and the nylon itself is going to stretch so just a little bit of adjustments that need to happen now I'll just put a clove hitch in and it work gobs of this alright so now we have to decide which side of the board that we're gonna run on and one of the tips that I use is make sure that whatever side of the board that you're running on you always make your hole that's close to your foot that's possible on this side of the board you don't want to make it down here because if your foots going here and you make your hole here if by chance we do have a failure we're gonna have to move down the board and so now we're gonna have to move where your foot was and more likely your foots going to be damp and wet and now that's majorly increase our chances of failing on our next hole so make a space right there put your hole start your hole right about there

and I think all right so I know where my holes gonna go I'm gonna go back on the board

about 2/3 of an inch I'm gonna start that hole I'm just gonna get something that my spindles gonna sit in and write in because the spindle itself is what's gonna make the hole I'm just making it easy on myself right now by giving that spindle some a hole to write in all right so that's almost done again just taking the spear point of that knife just knocking a tiny little hole in the wood just like that now we're gonna burn in we're gonna cut a notch and then we'll be ready to see what this bow drill set can actually do okay so now we're ready to burn in what we're gonna do is we're gonna give ourselves as much chances for success as we possibly can which means I'm not gonna let this spindle touch the damp ground not gonna sit it down let it soak up water from the ground right through got it if I need to I'm gonna put this in my pocket whenever I possibly can same thing with the hearth board when I sit it on leaves I'm not gonna let the even the bottom of the hearth board soak up any water and moisture anything like that you know it might not

affect it might affect it but with something like this if I absolutely am down to using a bow drill I want everything to be in my advantage and my you know I'll set myself up for success as much as I possibly can all right so now it's time to get this spindle in here and see what's happening with this set this is one of my key indicators on if I'm going to have success or not it's just by burning in because if I see nice black smoke nice black dust you know it's going to give me a good sign that we're gonna have success

yes I'm just fine and I don't want to go too crazy with it I think we're gonna be okay nice black dust I'd like to be a little bit blocker than that again I think we're gonna be okay don't need to save it some people say do I don't all right so now we burnt in a little close to the camera you see how we you know kind of count toward that dip I want that I want to reshape that really quickly you know I want to get some fresh wood on that spindle I'm gonna bust those shoulders that I put in there and again this has just given me every option for a successful run as possible might seem mundane some people but you're the little tiny things in a bow drill will cause you to have a failure when I do this I'm also inspecting I don't want to see any cracks blitz anything like that this is real smooth nice all right so now we're ready to cut or not so what we're going to do is we're going to take this and we're gonna do a V and we're gonna go key to this one of the key things that I tell everyone is try to cut that V 1/4 of the way into your hole and as tight as possible you want it to be tight as V as absolutely possible so let's go ahead do that so that's another reason why I like to carry you know smaller knives for stuff like this because I can really I ball and get in there and see where I want to cut that notch there

all right so one of the other things that I do is I bore out this and that allows for dust to collect and gather a little bit bigger of a member it also allows air to get to it more rapidly Network I just take a piece of this cedar bark cut it like that and that will give me a tray for my dust to collect and also for me to knock the invar out will also have a leaf underneath this as well that just gives me a stable platform to remove that Ember

and then place it into a tenderloin all right so we're gonna lay a leaf down and we're also gonna lay our piece of cedar board and just like that now we're ready to see what we got all right so I had the kids busting down all that cedar bark and a little bit extra stuff that I brought with me as well they did a pretty good job but probably bust it down a little bit more but what I'm gonna do is I'm going to kind of contour this into a bird's nest and I don't want to pack it too tight so I'm going to kind of be loosening it up and just spinning it around in my hands just like this

some clumps there I'll kind of even out then keep spinning it and what I'm looking for is for the bottom of the bird's nest to be a little on the thin thought so when I'm blowing I'm passing the air through it completely and we're just about to where I'm gonna call this good just like that so that's gonna give me something to put my ember into and then pick up and then blow through it gently at first and then I'm being able to squeeze this kind of taco it a little bit bring it up breathes again through it I want the air passing the squat bring it up into the air is because I want the oxygen to be running through it and up the heats gonna be rising through the tinder bundle bringing this tinder bundle to combustion this reel just when I start out I can't be blowing on this take heart and that's one of the hard parts of this is that once you guys get done you're gonna be winded because you're gonna be giving it your all so yeah it's kind of kind of you got time let the coal kind of congeal and redden up you'll see it kind of glowing breathe get your breath relax take a deep couple deep breaths put it in your tinder bundle and then we're gonna slowly breathe and maybe even just kind of rock back and forth and get wind on it just like this maybe we'll see I'm gonna show you guys how to do this okay and then slowly pick it up and then bring it up like this allowing and you know see my hands how they open up allow the air to go through it and you'll start hearing that jet you know sound like a jet engine it's just and then you'll hear it start to warm up and just then you'll start seeing yellow smoke once you start seeing that game on pretty much good to go so let's get to it

all right so one of the biggest important thing about the bow drill is full okay how I run the bow drills right now like I tell all my students everybody's different everybody's do this different try to copy the form that I use as much as possible but make it comfortable for you if you're uncomfortable that's not right okay so I'm gonna step on the board but I want the arch of my foot that's close to that hole as possible and the reason why is when I put my spindle into the hole I want to follow my shin as straight as possible again the reason why is because when I lock my wrist in that means the spindle is gonna be as straight as possible contouring to my shin and another thing that that does is it allows me to push my body back or forward or side or side if I see coal or dust rather like maybe dumping on the top part where I don't want it to I can push forward and that'll start to kick that dust into the notch where I want it to okay

so let's give this a shot see what happens

all right so I lay that deer all right so other than having my leg right here I put my knee right behind this heel just like this okay see and then I kick that foot over okay that Paisley tripod is my body out so I'm really stable okay and that allows me one I'm stable - I don't have my knee out here so I have you know a straight path to run my bow drill okay now I'm going to start out really slow make sure I'm locked in a little bit and what I'm doing right now is I'm just warming that spindle up into the art board both of them or warming up right now and it's a feel that everything start up smoke I'm starting to get cold copy my stuff give a little bit downward pressure a little bit faster I want to use all my bow once I see that not filling up completely cranky

baby that's a fail but you see all this dust that we have you know this isn't something that always works even though I've done this thousands of times don't always get success this is flat as possible for the most rich as possible out of here well my squeak it'll start warming up start here squeak go away I'm not panicking freaking out or anything just wanna baby it [Music]

real life

next week they choose fate yellow smoke last time no sorry and now from here when you're adding your tender or your kindling you're probably gonna have to get in here if this starts to kind of get love I'm gonna have to get in here the baby it breathes in it keeps it going to get your other kindling up to temperature and get that stuff composed ago maybe a little bit smaller stuff but we'll see what happens

yeah I shouldn't watch what you guys were collecting this is a little too on the big side you guys need a lots more that's okay no big deal it's your first time

I was busy making a bonus stuff here we go you know the point of this persistence even though you guys should have got like this stuff right here like pencil ed this whole bundle should have been this size I wasn't really paying attention to what you guys were gathering so it's kind of my fault but even though I don't have exactly a perfect condition right now I'm persistent

I'm keeping up with it I'm not giving up I need this fire so I'm keep going keep going keep going never give up we got something that's alive it's eaten just going in cedar on there know what I don't want to do is I don't want a pile well I got flame and I start just piling stuff on here you know I want to let this breathe I want to let it eat you know if we had this whole pile that was nothing but these little tiny sticks we have a good sustainable fire going but we're nursing it we're working with what we have you'll get it going now here's the thing now that you guys seen all this and seen this go from stick to a fire you get a sleep on it in then in the morning you to get to do it all we have Eastern redcedar right over there you guys get to do every single thing that I just did tomorrow morning and so we're really really really gonna have to nurse this this is I said like my wife when I said get go gather pencil-lead type stuff this is like we're pretty much wasn't met so we've got a bunch of you know pencil-sized so what thumb-sized yeah that's okay like I said this is just to teach you guys you guys assume you start fires a million times so you know as far as this process goes you guys have seen it a million times but we'll get this fire going get some get some food rolling go to bed wake up get to it morning and he was another little secret I'll probably burned that though drill that complete budge Allah said that I just made I'm gonna burn it no cheating guys see it's not exactly what I'd call sustainable yet but just from that troublesome little fire that had wood that was a little bit too bad gave me a heck of a time you know just keep at it I kept at I kept at it I didn't give up and now we have something that's starting to grow something that's gonna be taking about pencil-sized would keep feeding it keep letting it eat and get some and then eventually we're going to progress up to you know wrist thumb and wrist size wood so if I go then we can start cooking less we have a nice cool bed hey how you guys doing this William Myers mess outdoors and I've been getting several messages on three two one alright so we're gonna get the kids to not die we're gonna get the kids to you